Ascribing inspiration to the composition and canonisation of the NT did not exempt it from the flux of history. Its contents were variously copied, quoted and interpreted. For example, early-church responses to Matthewʼs use of some of the OT prophets illustrate the freedom with which perhaps the most Jewish of the evangelists, having appropriated some of Judaismʼs greatest figures, was in turn appropriated by early Christianity, how also he was read by pagans and Jews, and how all, in good faith or not, sought to expose or defend or correct what readers thought to be its problems.