The study of intertextuality in biblical literature typically focuses on identifying connections between texts: quotations, allusions, and echoes that link one composition to another. These categories have proven invaluable for highlighting the many literary relationships that runs through Jewish and Christian scriptures. There is, however, a related phenomenon that deserves additional attention, one that operates at a different level from the isolated echo or quotation. In certain texts from this period, entire narrative episodes appear to have been composed using earlier scriptural passages as models, with scriptural language and details incorporated in the new story. This writing practice has come to be known as scripturalized narrative.[1]
The concept reveals a degree of intertextuality that conventional categories do not fully capture. Where the study of quotations and allusions tends to focus on individual points of contact between texts, scripturalized narrative describes something broader: a style of literary composition in which scripture functions not just as a source to be cited or echoed, but as a template for constructing new episodes entirely.
The Origins of the Concept
The term "scripturalization" originates in the study of Jewish prayer during the Second Temple period. It was introduced to describe the increasing use of scriptural models, precedents, and language in the composition of new prayers, defined as "the reuse of biblical texts or interpretive traditions to shape the composition of new literature... the observable recontextualization of identifiable scriptural language." This definition encompasses both "clear references to biblical stories" and "biblical wording without regard to its source," which may serve simply to provide a biblical texture to the composition.[2] Three scripturalized prayers in particular (Nehemiah 9:5-37, Judith 9:2-14, and 3 Maccabees 2:2-20) illustrate how the compositional use of scriptural material eventually became "an unquestioned literary convention" in later Jewish and Christian liturgies.
The concept was subsequently adapted to describe a similar phenomenon in narrative literature. The observation that the Passion Narrative in the Gospel of Mark is saturated with scriptural language led to the proposal that the process at work might better be described as "tradition scripturalized" rather than "prophecy historicized," reframing the relationship between historical tradition and scriptural composition.[3] Rather than viewing the scriptural elements in the Passion Narrative as evidence that events were fabricated from scripture, or that historical memory was simply dressed up in scriptural language, this framework suggests a more nuanced interaction: "from the beginning there was an intimate interaction between historical event and scriptural reflection, so that the tradition developed in light of Old Testament languages and models."
Scripturalization as Compositional Technique
When extended to narrative literature, scripturalization describes a specific compositional process: "simply the use of a scriptural model or language, drawn from any number of sources, to aid the composition of a new work for any or no discernible purpose." This definition distinguishes scripturalized narrative from two related phenomena within the broader field of intertextuality.[4]
The first is inner-biblical exegesis, the interpretive engagement with scripture that presumes an author's conscious interpretation of a source text. Scripturalization does not necessarily entail conscious interpretation, since the "reuse of scripture does not necessarily entail the presumed author's conscious interpretation of scripture," making it a compositional habit rather than an exegetical one. The second is typology, the deliberate assimilation of a person or event to a scriptural model for a discernible theological purpose. Scripturalization, by contrast, is "less considered" in its aims; it may serve no identifiable interpretive or theological purpose beyond the compositional practice itself.
The identification of scripturalized narrative thus requires "a confluence of similar language and narrative details" best explained by positing a literary relationship. The proposed scriptural source must be easily identifiable within its original literary context, and similar compositional techniques must be identifiable elsewhere, whether within the same work or in other texts from the period. These criteria help distinguish scripturalized narrative from the kinds of faint verbal resonances that might be classified as echoes within a standard intertextual framework.
A Broader Literary Practice
The phenomenon of scripturalization is not confined to a single genre or literary tradition. It appears across a wide variety of Second Temple writings, including scripturalized laws in the Damascus Document and the Community Rule, scripturalized hymns in the Hodayot and the Psalms of Solomon, and scripturalized apocalyptic visions in 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra. In the realm of narrative, the technique has been identified in works originally composed in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, covering subjects both scriptural and historical. The Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (Pseudo-Philo), the Genesis Apocryphon, 1 Maccabees, and Judith each feature self-contained episodes in which a scriptural source clearly supplies language, narrative details, or structural form for a new story.[5]
Deuterocanonical literature provides some of the most developed examples of scripturalized composition. Among these works, the Book of Judith has been described as making "the most sophisticated use of a wide range of intertextual references," intentionally drawing on literary traditions from Israel's past to recreate national identity.[6] The motifs that establish these connections include victory songs, female killers, echoes of earlier heroic figures, and the context of a threat to Jerusalem. The narrative of Judith's slaying of Holofernes draws extensively on the account of Jael's killing of Sisera in Judges 4, a connection embedded not just in isolated verbal parallels but in the entire narrative architecture of the episode: a woman lures an enemy military commander into a private space, waits until he is vulnerable, and kills him with a weapon at hand.
The same compositional technique appears in New Testament narrative. The account of Jesus feeding the multitude in Mark 6:35-44 follows the structure of 2 Kings 4:42-44, where Elisha feeds a hundred men with twenty loaves of bread. In both episodes, a crowd needs feeding, a servant objects that the available food is insufficient, the prophet commands the food to be distributed, and food is left over after everyone has eaten. The scriptural elements are unmarked and woven directly into the narrative rather than being cited or attributed to a source.
History and Scripture Entangled
One of the most significant implications of scripturalized narrative concerns the relationship between historical memory and literary composition. Scholarly discussion of the Passion Narrative tends to present a choice between two alternatives: "history remembered," where the narrative records actual events, and "prophecy historicized," where the narrative was created on the basis of scriptural passages believed to be prophetic. The concept of scripturalization offers a third possibility. Rather than forcing a choice between history and literary invention, it suggests that "events generated scriptural reflection, which in turn influenced the way the events were remembered and retold."[7]
This model has broader implications for how intertextuality functions in narrative from this period. The presence of scriptural language in a text does not automatically indicate that the text was invented from scripture, nor does it mean that the scriptural elements were added as a mere veneer over independent historical tradition. Scripturalization describes a compositional environment in which authors thought in the language of their scriptures and naturally composed new narratives using that language as raw material. The distinction matters for the study of intertextuality because it suggests that many of the verbal and thematic parallels identified between texts may reflect compositional habits rather than either deliberate exegetical arguments or coincidental similarities.
The appearance of scripturalized composition across genres, languages, and literary traditions in the Second Temple period confirms that it was a widespread literary convention rather than a peculiarity of any single author or text.[8] That authors of diverse backgrounds independently adopted the same compositional techniques suggests that scripturalization was simply part of how literature was produced in a culture increasingly oriented around authoritative written texts. For the study of intertextuality, this means that the connections between ancient texts are not only more pervasive than they might initially appear, but that they often operate at a level deeper than the individual quotation or allusion: at the level of narrative composition itself.