The Passive Participle ‮כתוב‬‎—A Citation or Keyword Formula?: A Case Study of MMT

The analysis of the uses of the passive participle ‮כתוב‬‎ in the halakhic section of MMT shows that the ‮כתוב‬‎ formula introduces keywords rather than summative quotations. By quoting keywords, the authors of MMT enable their addressee to easily identify a passage from Scripture. The way in which the scriptural passage is quoted suggests that the words introduced by the formula have been selected so that they are appropriate for only one passage, and that the addressee knows perfectly well to which passage the author refers. The selection of keywords does not allow us to note any exegetical act in it; it is only about quoting a text, which in itself is an argument in the polemic.