This from an email I wrote yesterday to a longtime friend who asked me about use of the OT in the NT. I'd just referred him to a recent BiblicalStudies.org.uk posting:. The "there" below refers to the URL that I placed above this paragraph.

There is an article on Jesus' use of the Old Testament in PDF that is downloadable. I've not read it, so I can't say too much, but it sounds along the lines of the sort of thing you're looking for.

In re-reading the first sentence this morning (my friend responded to my email) I thought the following:

"Yet another example as to why reading the NT epistles is fraught with peril."

Why would I say that? Why, the prepositional phrase "in PDF", of course. What does it modify? We know because we know that "PDF" is the Portable Document Format and it refers to an electronic representation of a paper page. But what if I didn't know that, or if I didn't have the cultural wherewithal to put it together? Then my options are:

• "in PDF" modifies "the Old Testament", so I'm referring to an article about Jesus' use of the OT in something called 'PDF'. Maybe it represents a tri-consonontal Hebrew root, maybe it represents a subsection of his teaching and how he uses the OT in it ... hey, it could be anything.
• "in PDF" modifies "an article". That's what I intended, of course. I mean, it's obvious. Right?

Even worse, you can't disambiguate based on the second sentence. Some disambiguation is possible based on the URL that was above the paragraph (though the URL was to a .html page, not a .pdf page) and the further clarifier "that is downloadable" (all the more reason to ensure we have as much context as possible when reading epistles!). That could be enough of a cue to prevent someone from thinking that I was perhaps referring to Jesus' Palestinian Desert Forays, but with some of the exegetical method practiced out there these days, I can't guarantee it.