Abstract:
This article aims to explore and to apply what Gérard Genette refers to as kinds of transtextual relationships and what Ulrich Luz, in his application of these insights to the Gospel of Matthew, calls the encyclopaedia of the author or the original readers. The former enterprise entails exploring intertextuality at the synchronic level and the latter examines intertextuality at the diachronic level. The first pertains to Matthew’s pretexts. The second enterprise entails an engagement with pragmatical aspects such as the context of the intended readers and the sedimentation of prior texts designated by the notion intertextuality. In this article the pragmatical aspects concern a discussion of the manner in which the first readers could be addressed by the pretexts of the use of the word sōzō (‘to save’). It consists of three parts. The first represents a concise reflection on criteria and methods relevant to an investigation of intertextuality. The second exemplifies the ‘encyclopedia’ of Matthew’s intertextuality, that is ‘intertext’, ‘paratext’, ‘hypertext’, ‘hypotext’, ‘architext’, and ‘metatext’. The third part discusses the pretexts of the various occurrences of the word sōzō in Matthew.
