General Interpretive Question -- Typology

[CThomas]

As I continue slowly to work through Steve's lectures on the Old Testament, one of the main interpretive issues I find myself wondering about is the whole issue of typology. It is very frequent (and this is obviously common among biblical scholars, and not in any sense specific to Steve) for Steve to mention fairly off-handedly that so-and-so is a type of such-and-such other person. I think I understand the gist of what this is meant to convey, but I still have a couple of questions about it.

First, it would be easier for me to understand the idea of types in the context of a purely literary work of fiction. There, you could say that character 1 serves as a "type" (or foreshadowing or some similar literary device) of character 2 because neither character is a real person. If the characters are just literary inventions, then it may make sense to view them as bearing a sort of anticipatory relationship to each other. But it seems far less clear to me to figure out what it means for some flesh and blood historical personage to be a type of another. King David was a guy, walking around like us. He did certain things, and had certain characteristics (at least during some parts of his life) that can be seen as being shared with the later behavior or character of the Lord. But what does it mean to say that David was a "type" of Christ beyond simply the descriptive facts that the two had certain things in common? More or less every person has some characteristics or biographical similarities with nearly every other person. Perhaps David shares some particularly significant similarities with Christ, but in what sense does that make him a "type" of Christ? To try to put it a touch more concretely, you could say that (for example) Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. had certain features in common with respect to their respective methods and their roles in history. But nobody asks, "Was Gandhi a type of King?" If somebody asked that question, most people would say, "I don't know what you mean. The two were similar in some respects, and they were different in some other respects. I don't have any concrete way of knowing whether one was a type of the other beyond merely saying what the similarities and differences were. Beyond those descriptive facts of their lives, I don't see any clear meaning to the question of whether one is a type of the other or not." Since David was a real guy just like Gandhi, how is it any more sensible to say that he was (or was not) a type of some other real person? (I'm using David as an arbitrary example of the larger question here.) I'm not sure I'm being at all clear about all this, but I guess I'll leave it at that in case someone can make heads or tails of what I'm trying to get at and offer any thoughts about it.

Second, there's a somewhat related question of methodology. How do you distinguish between mere shared characteristics between two people and characteristics demonstrating a type-relationship between the two? It would be much easier to get my hands around this concept if there were a reasonably objective and practicable way to know if such a relationship exists in any case. I fear, though, that there is no such clear method, and the determination is highly subjective, but I would be happy to be corrected about this.

Thanks, best regards, and Merry Christmas.

CThomas

[backwoodsman]

If you haven't already, you might have a look at the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia's article on types. The original edition is on most of the online Bible websites.

[CThomas]

Thank you -- I had not read it but found it somewhat helpful. I'll probably need to look for something a little more in depth on this. It strikes me as potentially important, but beset by some difficult questions. My own general instincts are against expansive extra-literal interpretive approaches, but the NT's application of some of these interpretive methods probably means I should give some careful thought to exactly how to think about typology and similar principles.

[mattrose]

I recently read a well argued and passionate plea for typological reading in peter leithart's commentary on 1-2 Samuel. I believe he has written quite a bit on the subject and suspect he would be a good resource for you.

[CThomas]

Thank you, as always, Matt.

CThomas