This volume contains the papers from the 45th Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense, held in Leuven in 1996. The book comprises 14 invited papers as well as 21 offered papers read at the meeting. The essays are all concerned with the use of Jewish scriptures in the gospels, focusing on the individual gospels, or on sources (e.g. Q) used by the evangelists. The essays also reflect the growing significance in literary studies of the notion of "intertextuality", emphasizing the idea that texts can only be understood in relation to a network, or matrix, of other texts.

Most of the essays retain a historical-critical approach, focusing on the author of the NT texts concerned, though with full awareness of the insights to be gained from other approaches to the texts. Further, full cognizance is taken of the new light being shed on the NT gospels by the evidence emerging from the hitherto unpublished Qumran scrolls, with the newly available 4Q521 text being often discussed. The essays all show the very great importance of the Jewish scriptures, both in themselves and as interpreted by contemporary Jews, for interpreting the NT gospels and their traditions. This collection will be an invaluable resource for all those engaged in studying the gospels and their traditions, especially in seeking to locate those texts within their contexts in Second Temple Judaism.