Ancient writers used citation formulas to identify quotations and guide interpretation, with different practices across Jewish, New Testament, and rabbinic texts.
Most intertextual connections between texts in antiquity are subtle, with allusions reusing phrases without acknowledgment, echoes carrying motifs across centuries, and structural patterns repeating themselves while the borrower remains silent about the borrowing. The same writers also had a more direct technique available to them, in which they could quote a source openly and mark the quotation with a fixed introductory phrase that identified the passage as borrowed. These introductory phrases, known as citation formulas, are the most explicit kind of intertextual marker, identifying a source and indicating how the new text means for that source to be read.
The patterns in which Jewish and Christian writers from the third century BCE through the third century CE used these formulas reveal a great deal about how each community understood its relationship to inherited texts. Writers use these formulas for different purposes, with some authorizing a legal ruling, others claiming that a long-promised event has now occurred, and still others justifying an interpretive move by grounding it in a prior verse. Reading the formulas attentively makes the citing author's stance toward the cited text visible in a way that thematic or verbal allusion alone cannot.
Explicit Quotation in Second Temple Literature
Second Temple Jewish writers used scripture in two basic ways, distinguishable by whether or not the citing text flagged the borrowing. Explicit use means that biblical material is introduced with an overt reference to its source, while implicit use embeds biblical language into the new composition without flagging it.1 An explicit quotation, on a standard analysis, reproduces at least a three-word biblical phrase with reasonable accuracy and introduces it with a formula identifying its source.2
In the narrative books of the Apocrypha, explicit quotations are relatively rare, with Tobit, Judith, and the books of Maccabees preferring to embed biblical language into the texture of their stories rather than quote it openly. When they do quote openly, the formula tends to occur in a moment of speech such as a prayer, a discourse, or an admonition, where the speaker has reason to invoke a divine command or a prophetic word as authority. Tobit's wedding prayer cites Genesis 2:18 to ground the institution of marriage in God's own speech, while 4 Maccabees uses formulas of the form "as he said" to introduce verses from across the Pentateuch and Prophets in service of philosophical argument.
The sectarian writings found at Qumran use a recognizable set of introductory formulas, including ka'asher katuv ("as it is written"), va'asher amar ("and that which he said"), and hu' asher amar ("this is that which he said"). Legal works such as the Damascus Document and the Community Rule use these formulas to introduce biblical support for communal regulations. In the pesharim, commentaries that interpret prophetic and psalmic books as predictions about the community's history, the formulas introduce a biblical quotation before the explanation labeled pesher.3
In the Habakkuk pesher, the most fully preserved continuous commentary, the choice and placement of these formulas were not casual, since the commentator uses one set of formulas to introduce the initial citation of a verse and a different set when a verse is requoted later in the commentary for further comment.4 These distinctions appear minor on the surface, but they show how the commentator thought of the cited text, whether as the primary object of interpretation, as a supporting proof, or as a phrase being revisited within an ongoing argument.
Citation Formulas in the New Testament
The New Testament writers inherited this formulaic language and adapted it to Greek, with the most common Pauline formula, kathōs gegraptai ("as it is written"), serving as a near-literal Greek rendering of the Qumran phrase ka'asher katuv. Paul also uses formulas built on verbs of speaking, such as "the scripture says," "Isaiah cries out," and "David himself says," to introduce verses across his letters.
Comparison of the introductory formulas used in Qumran, the New Testament, and the Mishnah shows that the New Testament formulas align more closely with Qumran than with the rabbinic tradition, since there is not one example involving "he said" or "he wrote" in the Mishnah that is identical with the Qumran examples, while the New Testament formulas are often literal Greek translations of many of the Qumran introductory formulas.5 On this basis the New Testament's introductory formulas reflect first-century Palestinian Jewish usage attested in the earlier or contemporary sectarian Qumran texts, while the Mishnaic formulas represent a later development beyond that first-century usage.6
The Gospel of Matthew develops a distinctive variant of the citation formula, with roughly ten to fourteen of Matthew's quotations introduced by the fulfillment formula, a phrase such as "all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet" followed by the citation. These formula quotations are clustered heavily in the infancy and passion narratives, where Matthew links specific events in Jesus' life to specific prophetic texts.7
Matthew's fulfillment formula presents the narrated event as the fulfillment of the quoted prophecy, adding a claim beyond the source's authority. Matthew makes no attempt to interpret the original sense of the prophetic text, and the formula instead focuses attention on the resemblance between the prophet's language and the event in Jesus' life, presenting one as the realization of the other.8
The Letter to the Hebrews uses citation formulas in yet another way, regularly attributing quotations from the Psalms to the speech of God, of Jesus, or of the Holy Spirit through formulas such as "as the Holy Spirit says," which has the effect of recasting the cited text as a present voice rather than a past inscription. The formula does more than point to a source, since it also identifies whose voice is being heard in the verse that follows.
The Letter of Jude offers a clear case, since Jude introduces a quotation of 1 Enoch 1:9 with a formula that closely matches the way other New Testament writers cite the Hebrew Bible. Attributing the prophecy to Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam and using the verb "prophesied" to introduce it, the formula treats 1 Enoch the same way other New Testament passages treat the prophets of Israel, by naming the prophetic figure and presenting the quoted passage as authoritative prophecy. The introductory style suggests that Jude viewed the Book of the Watchers as an authentic prophetic book on the same footing as the writings later included in the Hebrew canon.9
Citation Formulas in Rabbinic Literature
The rabbinic tradition develops a third pattern, distinct from both Qumran and the New Testament, beginning with the Mishnah, redacted around 200 CE, which contains relatively little scriptural argumentation compared to its successors. Where the Mishnah does interpret a verse, it uses brief formulas such as shene'emar ("as it is said") and talmud lomar ("the verse teaches"), and even these are not distributed evenly across the tractates.10
These formulas come into much heavier use in the early rabbinic legal commentaries and the two Talmuds, where they structure entire sequences of legal reasoning. Talmud lomar typically introduces a scriptural verse adduced to refute or qualify a hypothetical interpretation that a teacher has just proposed, with the pattern moving from yakhol ("one might think") to talmud lomar ("the verse teaches"), so that the cited verse functions as the textual constraint that decides the matter.
Shene'emar, the most pervasive rabbinic citation formula, attaches a biblical proof-text to a preceding rabbinic statement, typically to show that the statement was already implicit in or warranted by scripture, and the formula is so closely identified with rabbinic discourse that its presence is one of the recognizable markers of rabbinic exegetical style.
Both shene'emar and talmud lomar operate within a broader rabbinic hermeneutic that treats every letter of scripture as a potential source of further meaning, so that even apparently redundant phrases in the biblical text become starting points for interpretation that the citation formulas formalize.11 Where biblical poetry repeats a phrase for rhythmic effect, the rabbinic interpreter takes the second occurrence to carry additional content, with talmud lomar then introducing the verse that resolves what the additional content must be.
The contrast with Qumran is instructive, since the pesher formulas frame the biblical text as the primary object and the interpretation as commentary upon it, while the rabbinic formulas more often frame the rabbinic statement as the primary subject and the biblical verse as confirming proof. The two traditions share many of the same exegetical techniques, but the citation formulas signal different organizational priorities.
How Citation Formulas Establish Authority and Meaning
Beyond identification, formulas perform a second kind of work by transferring authority, since citing a text by formula brings the cited source's standing into the new context. The Damascus Document grounds its legal rulings on biblical verses introduced by formula, the Pauline letters support doctrinal claims with kathōs gegraptai, and the Mishnah secures rulings with shene'emar, with each formula performing a transfer of authority from the cited source to the citing argument.
Formulas also frame the relationship between texts in distinctive ways, with Matthew's fulfillment formula presenting the cited prophet as having spoken in advance of the event being narrated, the Qumran pesher formula presenting the cited prophet as having spoken in code about the sect's own time, and rabbinic talmud lomar presenting the cited verse as a constraint on the range of permissible interpretations.
The choice of formula often reveals the citing community's broader stance toward the cited literature, since the Qumran sect's heavy reliance on prophetic citation formulas reflects its conviction that the prophets spoke about its own crisis, Matthew's concentration of fulfillment formulas in the infancy and passion narratives expresses an ambition to present Jesus' biography as the realization of a single prophetic plan, and the rabbinic preference for shene'emar follows a model in which scripture confirms tradition rather than disclosing hidden meaning.
Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979), 96.
Annette Yoshiko Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 105.
Article
How Biblical Authors Identified Their Quotations
Citation Formulas in Second Temple Jewish, Christian, and Rabbinic Literature
Ancient writers used citation formulas to identify quotations and guide interpretation, with different practices across Jewish, New Testament, and rabbinic texts.
Most intertextual connections between texts in antiquity are subtle, with allusions reusing phrases without acknowledgment, echoes carrying motifs across centuries, and structural patterns repeating themselves while the borrower remains silent about the borrowing. The same writers also had a more direct technique available to them, in which they could quote a source openly and mark the quotation with a fixed introductory phrase that identified the passage as borrowed. These introductory phrases, known as citation formulas, are the most explicit kind of intertextual marker, identifying a source and indicating how the new text means for that source to be read.
The patterns in which Jewish and Christian writers from the third century BCE through the third century CE used these formulas reveal a great deal about how each community understood its relationship to inherited texts. Writers use these formulas for different purposes, with some authorizing a legal ruling, others claiming that a long-promised event has now occurred, and still others justifying an interpretive move by grounding it in a prior verse. Reading the formulas attentively makes the citing author's stance toward the cited text visible in a way that thematic or verbal allusion alone cannot.
Explicit Quotation in Second Temple Literature
Second Temple Jewish writers used scripture in two basic ways, distinguishable by whether or not the citing text flagged the borrowing. Explicit use means that biblical material is introduced with an overt reference to its source, while implicit use embeds biblical language into the new composition without flagging it.1 An explicit quotation, on a standard analysis, reproduces at least a three-word biblical phrase with reasonable accuracy and introduces it with a formula identifying its source.2
In the narrative books of the Apocrypha, explicit quotations are relatively rare, with Tobit, Judith, and the books of Maccabees preferring to embed biblical language into the texture of their stories rather than quote it openly. When they do quote openly, the formula tends to occur in a moment of speech such as a prayer, a discourse, or an admonition, where the speaker has reason to invoke a divine command or a prophetic word as authority. Tobit's wedding prayer cites Genesis 2:18 to ground the institution of marriage in God's own speech, while 4 Maccabees uses formulas of the form "as he said" to introduce verses from across the Pentateuch and Prophets in service of philosophical argument.
The sectarian writings found at Qumran use a recognizable set of introductory formulas, including ka'asher katuv ("as it is written"), va'asher amar ("and that which he said"), and hu' asher amar ("this is that which he said"). Legal works such as the Damascus Document and the Community Rule use these formulas to introduce biblical support for communal regulations. In the pesharim, commentaries that interpret prophetic and psalmic books as predictions about the community's history, the formulas introduce a biblical quotation before the explanation labeled pesher.3
In the Habakkuk pesher, the most fully preserved continuous commentary, the choice and placement of these formulas were not casual, since the commentator uses one set of formulas to introduce the initial citation of a verse and a different set when a verse is requoted later in the commentary for further comment.4 These distinctions appear minor on the surface, but they show how the commentator thought of the cited text, whether as the primary object of interpretation, as a supporting proof, or as a phrase being revisited within an ongoing argument.
Citation Formulas in the New Testament
The New Testament writers inherited this formulaic language and adapted it to Greek, with the most common Pauline formula, kathōs gegraptai ("as it is written"), serving as a near-literal Greek rendering of the Qumran phrase ka'asher katuv. Paul also uses formulas built on verbs of speaking, such as "the scripture says," "Isaiah cries out," and "David himself says," to introduce verses across his letters.
Comparison of the introductory formulas used in Qumran, the New Testament, and the Mishnah shows that the New Testament formulas align more closely with Qumran than with the rabbinic tradition, since there is not one example involving "he said" or "he wrote" in the Mishnah that is identical with the Qumran examples, while the New Testament formulas are often literal Greek translations of many of the Qumran introductory formulas.5 On this basis the New Testament's introductory formulas reflect first-century Palestinian Jewish usage attested in the earlier or contemporary sectarian Qumran texts, while the Mishnaic formulas represent a later development beyond that first-century usage.6
The Gospel of Matthew develops a distinctive variant of the citation formula, with roughly ten to fourteen of Matthew's quotations introduced by the fulfillment formula, a phrase such as "all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet" followed by the citation. These formula quotations are clustered heavily in the infancy and passion narratives, where Matthew links specific events in Jesus' life to specific prophetic texts.7
Matthew's fulfillment formula presents the narrated event as the fulfillment of the quoted prophecy, adding a claim beyond the source's authority. Matthew makes no attempt to interpret the original sense of the prophetic text, and the formula instead focuses attention on the resemblance between the prophet's language and the event in Jesus' life, presenting one as the realization of the other.8
The Letter to the Hebrews uses citation formulas in yet another way, regularly attributing quotations from the Psalms to the speech of God, of Jesus, or of the Holy Spirit through formulas such as "as the Holy Spirit says," which has the effect of recasting the cited text as a present voice rather than a past inscription. The formula does more than point to a source, since it also identifies whose voice is being heard in the verse that follows.
The Letter of Jude offers a clear case, since Jude introduces a quotation of 1 Enoch 1:9 with a formula that closely matches the way other New Testament writers cite the Hebrew Bible. Attributing the prophecy to Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam and using the verb "prophesied" to introduce it, the formula treats 1 Enoch the same way other New Testament passages treat the prophets of Israel, by naming the prophetic figure and presenting the quoted passage as authoritative prophecy. The introductory style suggests that Jude viewed the Book of the Watchers as an authentic prophetic book on the same footing as the writings later included in the Hebrew canon.9
Citation Formulas in Rabbinic Literature
The rabbinic tradition develops a third pattern, distinct from both Qumran and the New Testament, beginning with the Mishnah, redacted around 200 CE, which contains relatively little scriptural argumentation compared to its successors. Where the Mishnah does interpret a verse, it uses brief formulas such as shene'emar ("as it is said") and talmud lomar ("the verse teaches"), and even these are not distributed evenly across the tractates.10
These formulas come into much heavier use in the early rabbinic legal commentaries and the two Talmuds, where they structure entire sequences of legal reasoning. Talmud lomar typically introduces a scriptural verse adduced to refute or qualify a hypothetical interpretation that a teacher has just proposed, with the pattern moving from yakhol ("one might think") to talmud lomar ("the verse teaches"), so that the cited verse functions as the textual constraint that decides the matter.
Shene'emar, the most pervasive rabbinic citation formula, attaches a biblical proof-text to a preceding rabbinic statement, typically to show that the statement was already implicit in or warranted by scripture, and the formula is so closely identified with rabbinic discourse that its presence is one of the recognizable markers of rabbinic exegetical style.
Both shene'emar and talmud lomar operate within a broader rabbinic hermeneutic that treats every letter of scripture as a potential source of further meaning, so that even apparently redundant phrases in the biblical text become starting points for interpretation that the citation formulas formalize.11 Where biblical poetry repeats a phrase for rhythmic effect, the rabbinic interpreter takes the second occurrence to carry additional content, with talmud lomar then introducing the verse that resolves what the additional content must be.
The contrast with Qumran is instructive, since the pesher formulas frame the biblical text as the primary object and the interpretation as commentary upon it, while the rabbinic formulas more often frame the rabbinic statement as the primary subject and the biblical verse as confirming proof. The two traditions share many of the same exegetical techniques, but the citation formulas signal different organizational priorities.
How Citation Formulas Establish Authority and Meaning
Beyond identification, formulas perform a second kind of work by transferring authority, since citing a text by formula brings the cited source's standing into the new context. The Damascus Document grounds its legal rulings on biblical verses introduced by formula, the Pauline letters support doctrinal claims with kathōs gegraptai, and the Mishnah secures rulings with shene'emar, with each formula performing a transfer of authority from the cited source to the citing argument.
Formulas also frame the relationship between texts in distinctive ways, with Matthew's fulfillment formula presenting the cited prophet as having spoken in advance of the event being narrated, the Qumran pesher formula presenting the cited prophet as having spoken in code about the sect's own time, and rabbinic talmud lomar presenting the cited verse as a constraint on the range of permissible interpretations.
The choice of formula often reveals the citing community's broader stance toward the cited literature, since the Qumran sect's heavy reliance on prophetic citation formulas reflects its conviction that the prophets spoke about its own crisis, Matthew's concentration of fulfillment formulas in the infancy and passion narratives expresses an ambition to present Jesus' biography as the realization of a single prophetic plan, and the rabbinic preference for shene'emar follows a model in which scripture confirms tradition rather than disclosing hidden meaning.
Notes