Matthew 27:9-10 attributes a prophecy concerning thirty pieces of silver and a potter's field to Jeremiah, though the closest match is in Zechariah 11:12-13. Given the care with which Matthew reflects on citations, attributing this simply to a copyist error should be a last resort.

In ancient Jewish exegesis, it was common practice to arrange material topically and evoke a broader prophetic theme. A partial answer lies in the fact that narrative and quotation passages from Jeremiah exercise their influence here as well. In Jeremiah 19, the prophet has to shatter an earthen potter's vessel in front of the elders and priests as a symbol of disaster because 'they filled this place with blood of innocents.' The prophet does this on the place that will be called 'Valley of Slaughter' and will be one large burial-place. The points of contact between this passage and Matt 27:3-10 are obvious. Matthew is invoking the atmosphere and theme of Jeremiah as the prophet of the rejection of the Messiah. This type of thematic attribution seems odd to a Western mind that demands documentary exactitude, but it was standard and subtle literary craftsmanship in the ancient world.

In Matthew 27:9-10, more than one prophet is cited in a quote; yet only one is mentioned by name. In 2 Chronicles 36:21, the first part of the verse is drawn from Leviticus 26:34-35, the second is from Jeremiah 25:12, yet only Jeremiah is listed.

What does this tell us? That it was an accepted practice to list the prophet who was making the main point. Composite attributions suit a common practice of Jewish exegetes. Z. H. Chajes in The Student's Guide to the Talmud relates a practice of the rabbis of quoting various persons under one and the same name. The rabbis 'adopted as one of their methods that of calling different personages by one and the same name if they found them akin in any feature of their characters or activities or if they found a similarity between any of their actions.'

The purpose of this collapsing down of identities was to enact a principle of praising the righteous and pious, and honoring those due such praise. Thus when Mark attributes the words of Malachi to Isaiah, he is enacting this principle by essentially melding the two prophets and giving attribution to the one who is the most deserving of honor and praise. This example also explains why Jeremiah was used similarly by the Talmud and by Matthew.

Nahum Sarna, a leading Jewish scholar, has noted regarding the canon of the Old Testament as it was understood in early Judaism: '...there was a period in which Jeremiah was regarded as the first book of the prophets. One proof is that you have a quote from Zechariah quoted as being from Jeremiah because in the Jewish way of labelling things you call a book by its first few words, and you call a collection of books by the first book in that collection. Thus one of the evidences that we have of Jeremiah being the first book of the prophets in the first century is the New Testament.' This is speaking in the language that Jews would speak and understand.

It has been objected that this practice is unlikely, or that certain quotes are not direct citations because of slight variations in word order and tense. However, in the ancient world, quotations were primarily done from memory, or adapted to reflect application to a slightly different modern situation.

Walter Kaiser notes: 'Matthew probably attributed the text to Jeremiah because Jeremiah, in many Hebrew manuscripts, headed up the collection of the prophets and his name was used to designate all in the collection. Our book titles with those chapter and verse divisions are a fairly recent innovation. Also Matthew may have attributed this quotation to Jeremiah because this text was paired with Jeremiah 18:1-4; 32:6-9. Thus he used the name of the better known and more prominent prophet. In fact, not one of the four other places where the New Testament quotes from Zechariah does it mention his name.'

Gleason Archer writes: 'Matthew is therefore combining and summarizing elements of prophetic symbolism both from Zechariah and from Jeremiah. But since Jeremiah is the more prominent of the two prophets, he mentions Jeremiah's name by preference to the minor prophet. A similar procedure is followed by Mark 1:2-3, which attributes only to Isaiah a combined quotation from Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3. In that case also, only the more famous of the two prophets is mentioned by name. Since that was the normal literary practice of the first century A.D., when the Gospels were written, the authors can scarcely be faulted for not following the modern practice of precise identification and footnoting.'