Typology: Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns; How Old Testament Expectations are Fulfilled in Christ
Overview
Read the Bible with Fresh Eyes as You See Scripture’s Promise-Shaped Patterns
When you read the Bible, have you ever noticed parallels between certain people, events, and institutions? Should we understand Noah as a kind of new Adam, and if so, does that somehow point us to the second Adam? How are we to interpret these similarities?
In Typology-Understanding the Bibles Promise-Shaped Patterns, author James M. Hamilton Jr. shows that the similarities we find in the Bible are based on genuine historical correspondence and demonstrates how we recognize them in the repetition of words and phrases, the parallels between patterns of events, and key thematic equivalences. When read in light of God’s promises, these historical correspondences spotlight further repetitions that snowball on one another to build escalating significance.
This book stimulates fresh thinking on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments and will help pastors, preachers, and students better understand the dynamics of inner-biblical interpretation. It explores several of the “promise-shaped patterns” we see in the Old Testament including:
- Adam and New Adam
- Prophets, Priests, and Kings
- The Righteous Sufferer
- Creation
- Exodus and New Exodus
- Marriage
Hamilton shows that the prophets and sages of Israel learned to interpret Scripture from Moses and his writings. And by tracing the organic development of subsequent biblical patterns, he explains how these patterns created expectations that are fulfilled in Christ. Jesus himself taught his followers to understand the Old Testament in this way (Luke 24:45), and the authors of the New Testament taught the earliest followers of Jesus how to read the Bible through a typological lens.
Typology-Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns equips pastors, bible teachers, students, and serious Bible readers to understand and embrace the typological interpretive perspective of the biblical authors. You will learn to read the Bible as it was intended by its original authors while cultivating a deeper love and appreciation for the Scriptures.
- Stimulates fresh thinking on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments
- Helps pastors, preachers, and students better understand the dynamics of inner-biblical interpretation
- Explores several of the “promise-shaped patterns” we see in the Old Testament
Top Highlights
“I am suggesting that the word of God has been pressed into the consciousness of those who believe it, and that impress results in reality being interpreted in light of God’s word. By this process the promises of God shape the interpretations that produce the patterns, and those patterns reflect the biblical authors’ typological understanding of both what has happened and what it indicates about the future.” (Pages 15–16)
“I would suggest that the patterns are noticed and recorded by the biblical authors for two reasons: first, they saw something significant in the patterns (repetitions of earlier patterns or similarities between events); and second, the significance they saw suggested to them that they should expect more of this kind of thing in the future.” (Page 23)
“The paralleling of these statements helps us understand the nature of the ‘desire’ and the ‘ruling’ described in both cases. The woman’s desire for her husband is like sin’s desire for Cain—a desire to influence, even control, behavior. The man’s ruling over the woman will likewise parallel what Cain’s response to sin should be.” (Page 12)
“The most important criterion for determining what a text means is determining the intent of its human author.22” (Page 18)
“I am claiming that the biblical authors intended to communicate the types that will be discussed in this book. This stands in contrast with the approach of Richard B. Hays, who writes, ‘Figural reading of the Bible need not presume that the Old Testament authors—or the characters they narrate—were conscious of predicting or anticipating Christ.’” (Page 4)
This book is an astonishingly rich exploration of the contours and textures of the overarching message of the whole Bible. Jim Hamilton painstakingly assembles a veritable mountain of evidence for the argument that the biblical writers, under God, knew exactly what they were doing, and that from the beginning, they were consciously paving the way for the Christ to come. Every page deserves careful study, for so much ground is covered in such stimulating (and sparkling) detail.
—Gary Millar, principal, Queensland Theological College
Jim Hamilton has written a clear and theologically rich work on typology, demonstrating how the scriptural story of redemption is anchored in God’s promises of the Messiah. Typology: Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns shows forth both the unity of Scripture and the beautiful layers of its truths, and best of all it provides fresh lenses for beholding the glories of our Savior.
—L. Michael Morales, professor of biblical studies, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
Hamilton continues to help readers become biblically literate by sensitizing them to the micro-level clues as to the nature of what the Bible is all about. As God’s declaratives (“let there be”) shape the created order, so God’s promises shape redemptive history. Discerning typological connections between these promises and their fulfillment in Christ, and the meaningful pattern they create, is part and parcel of coming to have a biblical worldview–seeing God, God’s world, and God’s people from the perspective of the biblical authors.
—Kevin J. Vanhoozer, research professor of systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
- Title: Typology: Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns; How Old Testament Expectations are Fulfilled in Christ
- Author: James M. Hamilton Jr.
- Publisher: Zondervan
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2022
- Pages: 405
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subjects: Jesus Christ › Biblical teaching; Bible. O.T › Criticism, interpretation, etc; Bible. O.T › Relation to the New Testament; Typology (Theology); God › Promises
- ISBNs: 9780310534440, 9780310534402, 9780310534426, 9780310136378, 0310534445, 0310534402, 0310534429, 0310136377
- Resource ID: LLS:TYPLGYNDRSTNDNG
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T03:35:35Z
Reviews
3 ratings
Jonathan Paran Aran
4/25/2023
This book just unlocks the connecting patterns found in scripture. It is a gold mine. Any book that makes you wanna read scripture is a book that should be bought.
Jamie Negus
3/5/2022
James Sant
2/23/2022
I was fortunate enough to get my hands on an advance copy. This is far and away the most useful book on this topic of typology and fulfilment. Will feel like wonderfully familiar ground to anyone that enjoys the Bible Talk podcast. What sets this book apart is Jim’s insistence on and clear explanation of authorial intent. How Moses et al, guided by the Divine author, clearly intend these types through use of grammar, and structure, and their progression throughout scripture, as further writers alluding and quoting build on these author intended types, with again explicitly intended fulfilment of them. Personally found it incredibly helpful thinking through the themes of the seed of the woman and seed of the serpent.
