Paul's use of the the Old Testament

When Paul quotes Scripture, he regularly intends to refer, not simply to the actual words quoted, but to the whole passage. Again and again, when you look up the chapter from which the quotation is taken, a flood of light streams back onto Paul's actual argument. Among many favorite examples, I mention 2 Corinthians 4:13. "We have the same spirit of faith," declares Paul, "in accordance with Scripture--'I believed, and so I spoke'--we also believe, and so we speak." What does the quotation of Psalm 116:10 add to his argument? Surely believing-and-so-speaking is rather obvious? Isn't that what one normally does? Yes, but look at the whole psalm--the one we know as 116 in the Hebrew and English, divided into two in the Septuagint. It is a prayer of one who is suffering terribly, but who trusts in God and is delivered. In other words, it is exactly the prayer of someone in the situation of Paul in 2 Corinthians 4. Paul has the whole Psalm in mind, and wants his readers to catch the "echoes" of it as well.

N.T. Wright, Justification (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009), 33.

A Brief History of Interpretation

A very helpful summary of the history of biblical interpretation by Dr. Thomas Long...

http://community.tncc.edu/faculty/longt/REL200/intro-comp-interp.htm

Use of the OT in the NT

“…A very conservative count discloses unquestionably at least 295 separate references to the Old Testament. These occupy some 352 verses of the New Testament, or more than 4.4 percent. Therefore one verse in 22.5 of the New Testament is a quotation.” When you take OT allusions into account “it can therefore be asserted, without exaggeration, that more than 10 percent of the New Testament text is made up of citations or direct allusions to the Old Testament…278 different OT verses are cited in the New Testament: 94 from the Pentateuch, 99 from the Prophets, and 85 from the Writings. Out of the 22 books in the Hebrew reckoning of the canon only six (Judges-Ruth, Song, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles) are not explicitly referred to.”

Roger Nicole in Roy B. Zuck ed., Rightly Divided (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996), 183-184.