Which Books Did Jesus and the Apostles Quote?

The New Testament is full of quotations. Most come from the Jewish scriptures, but not all, and the exceptions are the interesting part.

Mostly the Law, the Psalms and the Prophets

The scripture Jesus and the apostles knew was the Jewish scriptures, usually heard in Hebrew or Greek. The quotations are overwhelmingly from them, and three books stand out. When Jesus is tested in the wilderness he answers each time from Deuteronomy. He cites Psalm 118 about the stone the builders rejected and Psalm 110 about David's lord. In the synagogue at Nazareth he reads from Isaiah. Many New Testament quotations also follow the wording of the Greek translation, the Septuagint, rather than the Hebrew, which is one reason the wording of a quotation can differ from your Old Testament.

Quotations from outside the Jewish scriptures

Paul quotes Greek poets. On the Areopagus he says “certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.” In 1 Corinthians he cites a proverb, “evil communications corrupt good manners,” that the early church knew as a line of the playwright Menander. In Titus he repeats a saying about the Cretans and calls the speaker “a prophet of their own.” Quoting a writer does not make that writer scripture. Paul is using what his hearers already knew.

Jude and the Book of Enoch

Jude is different. He does not quote Enoch as a poet his hearers know. He says that “Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these,” and then gives words that match 1 Enoch 1:9 closely. This is the clearest case in the New Testament of a book outside the Jewish scriptures being cited as prophecy. Read the two passages together:

What follows from this is a matter of dispute. Churches that received 1 Enoch, notably the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, take Jude as support. Others note that Jude quotes the book without saying it is part of the Scriptures, and that Paul quotes poets as well. Both points are fair. What is not in dispute is the text: Jude knew the passage and treated it as a true prophecy against the ungodly.

Jude 9 and a lost story

In the verse just before, Jude says the archangel Michael disputed with the devil over the body of Moses. That story does not appear in any book of the Jewish scriptures. Some ancient Christian writers said it came from a work called the Assumption of Moses, but the surviving copy of that book is incomplete and does not contain the passage, so the source cannot be confirmed. Likewise 2 Timothy 3:8 names Jannes and Jambres as the Egyptian magicians who opposed Moses. Exodus does not name them, and the names come from Jewish tradition.

What we can and cannot conclude

Jesus and the apostles lived inside the Jewish scriptures and quoted them constantly. They also drew on Greek poetry and on Jewish writings from the centuries just before them, and in Jude on a book that most Bibles do not include. That does not tell us they held a larger canon. It does tell us that the line between “scripture,” “tradition” and “common knowledge” was not drawn the way later readers draw it, and that reading the surrounding literature is part of reading the New Testament well.