Catena · Wroot Press

A small Wroot Press project. Catena— Latin for a chain — is how the medieval scribes named a text built from links of older text. The Bible is full of them: a later writer reaches back, quotes, alludes, half-remembers. We mark those links so you can hear them. Each passage carries chips pointing to the Scripture beneath it; the kind of chip tells you whether the borrowing is a quotation, an allusion, a faint echo, or a figure with no words shared at all. The method follows Richard Hays’ Echoes of Scripture — including his honesty that some echoes are contested, which we mark rather than hide.

How it works · Hebrews 1:5 speaks with two older voices at once

1:55 echoes

For to which of the angels did he say at any time, ‘You are my Son. Today I have become your father?’ and again, ‘I will be to him a Father, and he will be to me a Son?’

Psalm 2:72 Samuel 7:14Psalm 89:26–272 Samuel 7:131 Chronicles 17:13

Psalm 2:7Quotation · High confidence

I will tell of the decree. Yahweh said to me, ‘You are my son. Today I have become your father.’

The royal-enthronement decree, applied to the Son. Verbatim (high volume) and recurrent — Ps 2 returns at Heb 5:5. The first link in the chain.

A solid chip is a quotation, dashed an allusion, dotted a faint echo, and ◇ a figural pattern with no words borrowed at all. The chip's color shows how confident the identification is; a trailing ? marks a disputed one. Click any chip to read the source it reaches back to.

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