Last week, we saw a sudden bump in traffic to our list of New Testament books that quote the Old Testament, thanks to the game show Jeopardy!
On November 16, the clue to the final round was “Paul’s letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations.” And there was much uproar when the contestant who responded with “Who are the Hebrews” was credited with being correct. So the fact-checkers among the show’s fans have been visiting our site in droves to observe that we’ve actually got Romans at the top of the list.
The biggest online uproar has been over the fact that most contemporary scholars believe Paul didn’t even write Hebrews, despite the King James Bible crediting the book to him. But I think the bigger issue is simply: What counts as a “quotation”? Because Hebrews has more OT references than Romans only if you count allusions (such that you count every reference to Moses, covenant, priest, or sacrifice). But by any measure of clear quotations or explicit citations of an OT text, Romans wins.
The Jeopardy! contestant with the correct answer should have blown out the others but instead lost the game!
Dr. Greg Lanier from Reformed Theological Seminary agrees that this is the more substantive problem with the Jeopardy! clue. His piece at the Gospel Coalition blog explains with much clarity and detail.
