Quotation, Illusion and Echo

I am writing a paper on scriptural echos and illusion in the Gospel of John. I see where Christopher A. Beetham wrote a dictionary article called “Quotation, Illusion and Echo”. This was found in the Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Can someone give me the gist of that article and its significance?

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Justin Gatlin

Here is the opening of the article: "This article explores the three literary modes of reference known as quotation, allusion, and echo. Their nature is discussed, some examples are presented—especially for allusion, which is the most misunderstood of the three—and definitions are provided. The article also briefly touches on these modes of reference and their relationship to and significance for biblical theology."

It then provides definitions, criteria for determining each kind, and examples. He says allusions are the least understood because true allusions are rare in the Bible, and that they are mostly just heightened echoes. A true allusion must have intentionality, a single identifiable souce, sufficient explicitness, and an essential interpretive link. Here is his discussion of the final criterion:

Essential interpretive link. This is the fundamental feature of allusion that uniquely distinguishes it from quotation and echo and gives it its brilliance and playful, artistic genius. In allusion, the author embeds a marker pointing to another, prior text, inviting the audience to recognize the marker, remember the other text’s original context, and link “the appropriate components that the new context requires to be fully understood” (Beetham, 19). Perri (301) writes, “Recognizing, remembering, realizing, connecting: these are the effects of a successfully performed allusion for its audience” (cf. Ben-Porat, 109–11). Michael Thompson develops Perri’s thought: “In order for the allusion to be successful, the audience must recognize the sign, realize that [it] is deliberate, remember aspects of the original text to which the author is alluding, and connect one or more of these aspects with the alluding text in order to get the author’s point” (29). John Campbell (19) adds, “Allusions invite us to select from our mental library, knowledge which is not in the text itself and without which the writer’s intention will not be fully communicated.” Irwin agrees: “For an allusion to be successful, in the sense of being understood, the reader must call to mind something not explicitly in the text” (“What,” 293).
Yet further it must be emphasized that in allusion the author intends the audience to connect very specific elements from the source text to the new context. Irwin writes, “In a successful allusion an author manages to get the audience to fill the gap in just the way he or she intended” (“What,” 293). The allusion marker “tacitly specif[ies] the property(ies) belonging to the source text’s connotation relevant to the allusion’s meaning” (Perri, 291). Michael Leddy (112) writes that allusion “invokes one or more associations of appropriate cultural material and brings them to bear upon a present context,” and Irwin asserts that it is these very associations that are absolutely “necessary for correct and completed understanding” (“What,” 288). Irwin states that a reader cannot just “call to mind anything at all in his or her ‘library of knowledge’ to complete the allusion” but must rather “call to mind what the author intended for him or her to call to mind” (293). Any other connections made between the source text and the new text apart from the author’s intention we can call “accidental associations,” but these are not part of the allusion itself because the author did not intend to create those associations (294)."

Christopher A. Beetham, “Quotation, Allusion, and Echo,” in Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G. K. Beale et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2023), 688–689.

Justin Gatlin

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1286412#Comment_1286412

If you have the beta version of the software, you can so a smart books search for "Quotation, Allusion, and Echo Beetham" and find the result for the Dictionary of the NT use of the OT and get an AI summary like this:

"The article explores the literary modes of reference known as quotation, allusion, and echo, and their significance for biblical theology. Intertextuality, coined by literary critic Julia Kristeva, refers to the interconnected relations between texts. Quotation is the most explicit mode, involving an intentional selection of text from a prior author. The article provides statistics on the use of quotations in the New Testament (NT) and discusses the purpose and goal of quotation. Allusion is a specific literary device intentionally used to evoke a prior text in a new context, and it requires the audience to recognize, remember, and connect the source text to the new context. Echo, the least explicit mode, may be intentional or unintentional and does not require the audience to recognize the original text. The article also discusses the role of quotations, allusions, and echoes in constructing a canonical biblical theology of Christian Scripture, providing examples and definitions for each mode of reference."

Christian Alexander

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1286413#Comment_1286413

Can you tell me what sources he cited in his article?

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1286504#Comment_1286504

I think you received this in another thread. Please don't post duplicates.

Christian Alexander

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1286539#Comment_1286539

No that was for Kostenberger's entry in the Dictionary of New Testament use of the Old Testament. How can I find out the Logos definition of Scriptural quotation vs illusion vs echo in the text?

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1286588#Comment_1286588

The about option on the interaction gives the definitions. They are the same as for Brannan, Rick. Noncanonical Texts’ Use of the Bible: Dataset Documentation. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2017.