I fully agree with the recent denouncement of most evangelical theology as psychopathically minimalist: see here and here and especially here (though I'd be grateful if someone could decode the unpronounceable acronym).

One thing I think we're too frightened of is identifying deliberate allusions in the bible. Unless there are actual quote marks and an introductory formula 'As the Scripture says...' then we tend to worry that we're reading things into the text.

Here's what Robert Alter (talking about literature generally, in 'The Pleasures of Reading') has to say about allusion:

‘Allusion is not merely a device, like irony, understatement, ellipsis, or repetition, but an essential modality of the language of literature.’ [p111]

‘Literary allusion... involves the evocation - through a wide spectrum of formal means - in one text of an antecedent literary text. The consequence, as Ziva Ben-Porat has observed, is a “simultaneous activation of two texts” in patterns of interrelation that are usually quite unpredictable.’ [p112]

‘How does an audience identify an allusion? The whole system of signaling depends, quite obviously, on a high degree of cultural literacy - an easy assumption in traditional societies with fixed literary canons and a high capacity for verbatim retention of texts, but something of a problem for contemporaries, who often come to literary texts from a background of loose canons, little reading, and languid memory.’ [p119]

Now that last point is fascinating. It seems pretty clear that, at least in comparison with our own society, both Old and New Testament writers were writing for communities with a fixed literary canon and a high capacity for verbatim repetition of texts.

Which means that we are MUCH, MUCH more likely to miss an intended allusion than we are to spot an unintended allusion. Which is very liberating. Let's try reading all of our bibles with open eyes.

Just as an illustration of this, I was amazed, while I was doing my research on the Song of Songs at the number of times I noticed resonances with NT texts. But none of NT commentators I checked seemed to recognise these at all. And it seems likely that that's at least in part because of the way we split OT/NT in the academy. And because most of us don't know the OT at all well. And specially not the Song. But also I wonder if it's because they're afraid of sounding fanciful, and of reading things into the text?

Anyway, here's a short list for you to check out for yourselves...

Song of Songs 2:10-13 and Luke 21:25-31

Song of Songs 3:6-10 and Matthew 2:11

Song of Songs 2:16, 6:3, 7:10 and Revelation 21:3, 7

Song of Songs 5:2-7 and Revelation 3:20

And if you haven't read Alter, you should. Especially if you're not persuaded about allusions - he gives some examples of how they work in ordinary literature which I think help us to have even more confidence about how they work in the bible.