09-21-2009, 07:08 PM
Hi friends! In researching a little for last Sunday's think tank, I found this book website that I thought might interest you all too. Though I'm not sure if I'll come to the author's conclusions(haven't read all the chapters yet), what I've read so far seems to be one more fine encouragement that the Bible is God's divinely-inspired word with much deeper significance than a light study reveals.
Five of the eight chapters are online here >
http://www.biblicalperspectives.com/book...s_2/1.html
Here's the first chapter to whet your appetite:GOD’S FESTIVALS IN SCRIPTURE AND HISTORY VOLUME II:
THE FALL FESTIVALS
Chapter 1
FESTIVAL TYPOLOGY
Samuele Bacchiocchi, Ph. D., Andrews University
Even a casual reading of the Bible reveals that God has communicated His saving knowledge not only through abstract reasoning, but also through symbolic representations. The reason is that the human mind grasps symbolic representations more readily than it does abstract reasoning. A picture is worth a thousand words. Thus, it is not surprising that God used object lessons to help His people conceptualize and experience spiritual realities.
A significant kind of symbolic representation which is pervasive in Scripture is known as "types," and the study of types is called "typology." A type is an Old Testament institution, event, ceremony, object, or person that God specifically designed to serve as predictive prefiguration (types) of His saving grace and power yet to be revealed.
In several instances, the New Testament explicitly identifies as "type" (tupos) an Old Testament person, event, or ceremony. For example, the experiences of Israel in the wilderness are types (typoi) of the experience of Christians in this world (1 Cor 10:6). Adam is a type (typos) of Christ, the second Adam "who was to come" (Rom 5:14). The salvation of Noah and his family through the Flood corresponds to its antitype (antitypon), the Christian baptism (1 Pet 3:21). The priesthood and sacrifices of the sanctuary are a "shadow" (skia) and "type" (tupon) of Christ’s sacrifice and heavenly ministry (Heb 8:5).
The annual feasts of ancient Israel are not designated explicitly as "types" in the New Testament, but their typological function is clearly shown by the use of their themes to depict the unfolding of salvation history. For example, the sacrifice of the Passover lamb is seen in the New Testament as a type of the sacrifice of Christ, our Paschal Lamb (1 Cor 5:7). The offering of the Firstfruits on the day after the eating of Passover (Nisan 16) is seen as a type of Christ who was raised from the dead at that very time, as "the first fruits of those who are asleep" (1 Cor 15:20). The Feast of Pentecost celebrated fifty days after Passover as the grain harvest ingathering is seen as a type of the ingathering of God’s people, consisting not only of Jews but of "all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him" (Acts 2:39).
Our study of the Spring and Fall Festivals of ancient Israel has shown that these feasts were more than mere ceremonies designed to meet the immediate religious needs of the people. They were divinely designed prefigurations (types) of the unfolding of the plan of salvation. We have found that the Spring Feasts of Passover, Firstfruits, Unleavened Bread, and Pentecost typify the inauguration of Christ’s redemptive ministry and the Fall Feasts of Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles represent the consummation of His redemptive ministry. An understanding of the typological meaning of the annual Feasts can help us appreciate more fully the unfolding of Christ’s redemptive ministry from its inauguration to its final consummation.
Objectives of the Chapter. This introductory chapter is divided into two parts according to its two objectives. The first part considers the nature and importance of Biblical typology in general. An attempt is made to identify some of the essential characteristics of Biblical typology in general and to relate them to Festival typology in particular.
The second part examines the typical nature of the annual feasts and offers an overview of their typological meaning and function. The overview of the Spring and Fall Festivals is, in essence, a brief summary of the study conducted in the two volumes of God’s Festivals in Scripture and History. This summary is provided out of consideration for those readers who appreciate an overview of the basic content and structure of the two volumes.
PART I: BIBLICAL TYPOLOGY
The Importance of Typology. Bible students who accept the Bible as divinely inspired, traditionally have recognized that the typology of the Old Testament provides the key to interpret much of the message of the New Testament. In recent times, even prominent liberal scholars have emphasized the importance of typology for understanding the message of the Bible. For example, respected New Testament scholar Leonard Goppelt, who produced the first comprehensive study of the New Testament typology from a modern historical perspective,1 stresses that typology "is the central and distinctive New Testament way of understanding Scripture."2
In a similar vein, Old Testament scholar G. Ernest Wright affirms that "the one word which perhaps better than any other describes the early church’s method of interpreting the Old Testament is ‘typology.’"3 The same view is expressed by New Testament scholar E. Earle Ellis, who says: "Typological interpretation expresses most clearly the basic attitude of primitive Christianity toward the Old Testament."4
Ada Habershon illustrates the importance of typology in understanding the Bible by means of a fitting analogy. She writes: "The Bible may be compared to those beautifully illustrated volumes so often published with a number of engravings of choice pictures at the beginning, followed by chapters of letterpress describing them, giving their history, or telling something of the life of the artist. We can scarcely conceive of anyone trying to understand such descriptions without referring to the pictures themselves; yet this is how the Bible is often treated."5
These recent affirmations of the importance and centrality of typology for the understanding of the message of the Bible, are remarkable in view of the previous negative assessment of typology among critical scholars. Owing to the triumph of higher criticism, the interest in the study of Biblical typology largely disappeared in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Liberal theologians came to view typology as merely "an historical curiosity, of little importance or significance to the modern reader."6 However, after World War II, liberal scholars who had largely rejected the value of typology have exuberantly embraced and defended a new, liberal view of typology.
Liberal Versus Traditional Typology. There are some basic differences between the traditional and liberal understanding of Biblical typology. The traditional view of typology (which forms the basis for our interpretation of the annual feasts) is rooted in Old Testament historical realities which are seen as divinely designed prefigurations pointing forward in specific details to their fulfillment in the redemptive accomplishments of Christ’s first and second Advents.
By contrast, liberal scholars view typology merely as a form of analogical thinking, which in the Bible involves a retrospective recognition of correspondence between similar modes of divine activity. In other words, for liberal scholars, typology involves only some general parallel situations. For them, Old Testament types are not divinely designed and have little or no predictive function. They only find some analogical correspondence to God’s activities in the New Testament. Thus, for liberal scholars no consistent principles of interpretation can be developed from the study of Biblical typology, because there is no system or order in the use of types.
These two views of typology raise the question: What is the Biblical view of typology? Are the Biblical types divinely designed prefigurations or merely analogical correspondences of divine activities perceived by Bible writers? Is Biblical typology predictive or retrospective? Does it deal with specific details or only with general parallel situations?
The answer to these questions is not difficult to find because the New Testament writers themselves provide clues in those passages which establish a clear correspondence between the Old Testament types and the New Testament antitypes. Six verses in the New Testament are identified as typological because they explicitly employ the word type (typos) or antitype (antitypon) to describe the New Testament’s interpretation of the Old Testament types. These verses are Romans 5:14; 1 Corinthians 10:6, 11; 1 Peter 3:21; Hebrews 8:5; and 9:24. A detailed exegesis of these passages has been done by Richard Davidson in his doctoral dissertation Typology in Scripture.8
Davidson’s dissertation clearly shows that "the structures of Biblical typology, as they emerge from representative scriptural passages, harmonize fully with the traditional view of typology."9 His detailed exegesis of the above-mentioned passages indicates that, contrary to the liberal view of typology, New Testament typology is "rooted in the historical reality of the Old Testament types; the correspondence consists of divinely designed prefigurations; it is basically prospective/predictive, and not simply retrospective; and it involves a correspondence of details as well as of general ‘similar situations.’"10
Davidson’s analysis of the six representative New Testament passages which use the terms "type" (tupos) and "antitype" (antitupos) to interpret the Old Testament prefigurations, suggests that Biblical typology has historical, eschatological, prophetic, Christological, and ecclesiological elements. We briefly look at these elements of Biblical typology, since they apply also to our study of the typology of the feasts.
Footnotes:
1. Leonard Goppelt, Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids, MI, 1982).
2. Leonard Goppelt, "Typos, antitypos, typikos, hypotyposis," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI, 1972), vol. 8, pp. 255-256.
3. George E. Wright, A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible (New York, 1963), p. 61.
4. E. Earle Ellis, Prophecy and Hermeneutics in Early Christianity (Tübingen, Germany, 1978), p. 165.
5. Ada R. Habershon, The Study of the Types (New York, 1952), p. 9.
6. Geoffrey W. H. Lampe, "The Reasonableness of Typology," in Geoffrey W. H. Lampe and Kenneth J. Woollcombe, Essays on Typology (Naperville, IL, 1957), p. 16.
8. Richard M. Davidson, Typology in Scripture. A Study of Hermeneutical Tupos Structure, Andrews University Seminary Doctoral Dissertation Series (Berrien Springs, MI, 1981).
9. Richard M. Davidson, "Typology and the Levitical System," Ministry (February 1984), p. 19.
10. Ibid.
Love you ALLWilla
