Exegesis or Literary Reappropriation?

I received this question on another post and thought it may help others to understand an important distinction.

Regarding your point that we are not to rip passages out of context and string them together to provide a totally new context for each to suddenly we get what God meant by it all: What is your comment to the fact that Paul did this exact thing in such an egregious way in Romans 3:9-20 that a growing number of people condemn him as a liar. I don't now condemn him at all, but would just like to hear your comment on this.

The New Testament authors often don't have the purpose of exegeting Old Testament texts in order to get to their original meaning. Sometimes they are, sometimes they are not. Instead, what they are often doing is literary reappropriation. For example, when we quote the phrase from Hamlet, "To thine own self be true" in order to say one should be honest with himself, we are reappropriating the phrase that originally meant to keep a watch over one's finances. 

Now, it is possible for someone to not know the original meaning and mistakenly think that their use was the originally intended use, but it is also possible for those who know the original use to cleverly expand and apply the phrase to a new situation. The former is out of ignorance and the latter out of extensive knowledge and ingenuity. 

People often think the New Testament authors are speaking from the former, but I would reject this for a couple reasons. 

First, this is the hermeneutic of the day. One can see this in Qumran Pesharim, interpretive texts, where a literal meaning is understood but a further meaning is applied to a modern situation. Most of 2d Temple rabbinic interpretation centers not around knowing the original meaning, which was thought to be something that even a novice could understand, but an insightful application of the original statement to a new situation. This was not meant to contradict the literal meaning but instead to show that the text was living and that the rabbi had the Spirit of God with him for the purpose of application.

Hence, the famous Matthean use of "out of Egypt I called my son" is not a case where Matthew couldn't read Hosea and see that this was Israel. That is, in fact, Matthew's point. Jesus is Israel and so His parallel situation recalls this text to mind. Israel's story is Jesus' story and vice versa. This is also why He goes off to the wilderness to be tempted. He is the true Israel. Matthew isn't ignorant of what the original statement meant if exegeted properly in context. He is aware, and thus, can apply the statement to further the theology of Jesus. 

Second to this, when they do quote Scripture's literal meaning, they seem not only aware of the text they are quoting but the entire context, even expecting their readers to know it in order to get the point.

I would argue that both of those things are happening here in Romans 3. Paul has already argued that Gentiles are under sin and Jews are under sin, so he does not need these texts to make his case. Remember that he is likely speaking primarily to Jews here within the mixed church in Rome, since they are the ones who think they are not sinners like Gentiles. The rebuke in Chapter 2 should put that idea to rest, but then Paul does something interesting. He quotes a bunch of texts about the wicked in the OT that the Jews would not have applied to themselves. Based on his argument in Chapters 1-2, he wants to now say that these texts can be applied to both Jews and Gentiles, everyone everywhere. In other words, one would have to know both the original context in order to get the weight of the point and to understand that it is being applied now to all men, not just a particular group of men. This is Paul's "Thou art the man" moment. He is basically saying, "You see all of these horrible people and the things the Scripture says about them? Well, that's you too." It's a use of literary irony.

I have no problem with this use of Scripture. I think it is clever and all literature is used this way even in our modern day. My issue is more that people don't know the original context and so in ignorance are going to misinterpret the original statement as well as misapply/misappropriate it to further contexts because of that ignorance. Most today do not spend their lives studying the text so thoroughly that they are being clever to apply a saying to a new context, but instead are ignorant of the original and so misuse Scripture and come up with the wrong original meaning and therefore apply it in such a way that would often contradict the original meaning if it had been known.