"... How does one identify allusions, understood as deliberate prompts to readers? The question has been much discussed of late, largely in response to Richard Hays’s work on scripture in Paul. Parallels can be the upshot of unconscious borrowing or coincidence or the common use of stock phrases, and a writer can use biblical language for its own sake, without any desire to recall a particular subtext. Moreover, diligent searching can always unearth parallels between two texts. Justin Martyr discovered resemblances between the Pentateuch and Plato and took them to establish the dependence of the latter upon the former; and almost every verse in the New Testament has been thought by someone to depend upon this or that Old Testament text. Theological libraries are full of unsubstantiated intertextual theories, and proposals are often hard to evaluate ... does the affirmation that God raised Jesus on the third day ‘according to the scriptures’ (1 Corinthians 15:4) refer to Hosea 6:2 (‘on the third day he will raise us up’), to the promises to David (compare 2 Samuel 7:12 ‘I will raise up your seed after you’), to Psalm 16:10 (which is quoted in Acts 2:27 ‘You do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit’), to Deuteronomy 18:15, 18 (God will ‘raise up a prophet’ like Moses) or instead to some broader scriptural principle (such as God’s vindication of suffering saints and prophets)? ..."