Intertextuality entered biblical studies at a time when scholars were rethinking how meaning is formed in texts. Earlier work had focused mainly on how a passage was formed over time, tracing sources and edits to explain its history. This approach is often called diachronic, meaning it studies a text across its stages of development. In the late twentieth century, scholars began to shift their attention to the text in its (relative) final form, asking how its language, images, and patterns work together for the reader. This is a synchronic approach, meaning it looks at the text in its present shape rather than its earlier stages. Once this shift became more prominent, two different ways of thinking about intertextuality emerged from them. One approach highlights the role of the reader, exploring how readers notice or create connections between texts. The other focuses on the author, examining how earlier writings may have shaped what later authors intended to communicate. Both approaches ask how texts relate to one another, but they begin from different questions about how meaning takes hold.[1]
Synchronic and Diachronic
A key idea within this newer synchronic approach is the notion of a “reader in the text.” This does not refer to any specific person reading the passage today. Instead, it describes the role the text itself creates for whoever reads it. Every narrative, poem, or letter gives subtle clues about how it wants to be understood. It may signal what the reader is supposed to notice, what questions to ask, or how earlier stories should be brought to mind. By paying attention to these cues, scholars talk about an “implied reader”, the kind of reader the text envisions and invites. This helps explain why meaning cannot rely only on historical reconstruction. It also depends on how the text guides its audience to make connections, follow its themes, and interpret its patterns.[2]
As this synchronic approach gained influence, biblical scholars debated how broadly the term intertextuality should be used. Some argued that intertextuality should describe only this reader-focused way of studying connections, since it treats meaning as something that emerges through the text’s guidance of its implied reader. Others maintained that when a later biblical author consciously reused an earlier passage, a different vocabulary was needed — one that reflects intentional borrowing within the history of the text. For that reason, many scholars began reserving terms like innerbiblical exegesis or innerbiblical allusion for diachronic, author-oriented work.[3] These labels help distinguish between two tasks: tracing how ancient writers drew from earlier sources, and examining how the finished text invites readers to notice patterns and echoes on the page. However, this terminology is still not universally used, so research may be confusing as intertextuality is still commonly used to describe both approaches.
This distinction becomes easier to see when looking at how later biblical traditions interpret earlier ones. The New Testament provides many examples of interpretation that resemble the reader-oriented approach, because its writers often draw new meaning from older passages without relying on the earlier author’s context or goals.[4] A well-known case appears in the opening chapters of Matthew, where a line from Hosea, “out of Egypt I called my son” is applied to the childhood of Jesus. In Hosea, the phrase refers to Israel’s past, recalling the nation’s deliverance from Egypt. Matthew reshapes it into a pattern that fits the story he is telling, presenting Jesus as one who embodies Israel’s story and fulfills it in a new way. In doing so, Matthew treats the older passage as material that can be easily reshaped, showing how early Christian interpretation often worked through creative rereading rather than strict attention to the original author’s intent.[5]
This kind of creative rereading is not limited to the New Testament. Hellenistic Jewish writers, such as Philo of Alexandria, frequently approached Scripture in a similar way. Philo often drew new meaning from older passages by interpreting them through philosophical categories drawn from his own cultural setting. His explanations rarely depend on what the original author may have intended, and instead reflect how the text could speak to new questions and audiences. Later Jewish tradition continued this pattern. In the Talmud and Midrash, rabbis regularly explored meanings that go far beyond the earlier context of a passage, allowing familiar words and images to take on new roles within fresh interpretive settings. These traditions show that flexible reinterpretation was a common way ancient readers interacted with Scripture, using older texts as building blocks for new insights.
Seen from this perspective, it should not be surprising that both synchronic and diachronic approaches appear throughout biblical interpretation. The biblical texts themselves, along with the many traditions that grew from them, use older writings in both historically grounded and creatively reimagined ways. This mix of reader-oriented and author-oriented methods is built into the history of reading and interpretation.