Identifying Unidentified Types
In order to get the most from this article, consider first reading earlier ones on the nature of Scripture, a text’s spiritual sense, a brief introduction to typology, and whether we should imitate the hermeneutic of the apostles.
Now to the point of this article: we can identify unidentified christological types in the Old Testament. By “unidentified” I’m referring to the fact that New Testament authors didn’t identify them. These types, however, may have been identified by many uninspired interpreters after the apostolic era.
Identified types include Adam, marriage, Melchizedek, Moses, the exodus, the Passover lamb, the tabernacle, David, Solomon, the temple, the priesthood, the bronze serpent, Jerusalem, Jonah’s fish experience, and the manna in the wilderness.
Unidentified types include Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Phinehas, Joshua, Samson, Samuel, the cord of Rahab, the ark of the covenant, Boaz, Elijah, Cyrus, Job, the three friends in the fiery furnace, Daniel’s deliverance from lions, and the rebuilt temple.
In chapters 17 through 24 of 40 Questions About Typology and Allegory, I explore 100 biblical types.
The easiest way to recognize a type is if the New Testament authors identify it. Such identification is an authoritative and inerrant claim about an Old Testament person, office, place, thing, institution, or event.
What about identifying unidentified types? Ask whether what you’re considering shares parallels with an Old Testament type that is identified. When types are identified by a New Testament writer, interpreters will notice that there are correspondences and escalation between the type and the antitype. You will probably also notice some kind of covenantal significance that the potential type bears.
Here’s an example of what I mean. We can consider Noah a type of Christ. Follow G. K. Beale’s reasoning: “Nowhere in the NT, however, does it say that Noah is a type of Christ. Nevertheless, if Noah is a partial antitype of the first Adam but does not fulfill all to which the typological first Adam points, then Noah also can plausibly be considered a part of the Adamic type of Christ in the OT.”
To put it another way: since Noah has literary resonances with Adam and since Adam is an identified type of Christ, we can put forward the argument that Noah also points forward as a type of Christ.Another example: Joshua is a type of Christ. “Since the original reader/observer would have been justified in interpreting Joshua as a second Moses figure (cf. Deut. 31: Josh. 1; 3:7), and since Jesus may also be viewed as a second Moses, it is possible to correlate the significance of Joshua’s acts of salvation and conquest of the promised land to the work of Christ.”
In other words, Joshua corresponds to Moses who is identified as a type of Christ.One more: Boaz is a type of Christ. There are correspondences between Boaz and David, and these correspondences combine with Boaz’s role as a redeemer. “During the years when the judges ruled and when famine plagued the promised land, God had plans to fill the emptiness of Naomi, Ruth, and Israel. They needed a redeemer and a king. In Boaz they got the one and in David the other, but in Jesus they got both and then some. He was the last Adam, the seed of Abraham, the perfect law keeper, the redeemer of God’s people, and the promised King from David’s line.”
These examples of Noah, Joshua, and Boaz are given to demonstrate how correspondences and escalation suggest a type-antitype relationship with Christ. There are facts about these figures that parallel with identified types, and such parallels strengthen the case that these unidentified types are discernible christological types.
The above names are also integral in the covenantal stream of redemptive history. Noah is a new Adam, Joshua is a new Moses, and Boaz’s marriage to Ruth shows God’s providential provision for a line that leads to David. The names of Noah, Joshua, and Boaz are not randomly chosen from a genealogical list. These characters and the events associated with them have a forward-pointing posture. In the Scriptures, God acts toward his people in covenantal contexts. It is not surprising, therefore, that biblical types appear in covenantal contexts across the Old Testament.
In Jim Hamilton’s article on whether Joseph is a type of the Messiah, he argues that the probability of a type increases when interpreters notice linguistic correspondences, sequential event correspondences, and redemptive historical import.
Consider that Joseph was rejected by his brothers, sold for pieces of silver, suffered under false accusations, and yet God vindicated him and established him in a position of authority and through him brought deliverance.One final point. If you’re proposing a christological type, learn whether anyone in church history has suggested it before now. This engagement with the history of interpretation is valuable because we’re not the first people to interpret Scripture or, more specifically, to discern biblical types. By reading what ancient Christian interpreters have said about the Old Testament, we can see errors to avoid as well as conclusions to affirm.
To summarize what I’ve been discussing, ask yourself the following seven questions if you’re proposing an Old Testament type that wasn’t identified in the New Testament:
Does this possible type have parallels with an identified type?
What lexical or circumstantial correspondences does this possible type have with Christ?
Among the correspondences, is there a sequential element to them that matches with the antitype?
In what way is there escalation between the proposal and the antitype?
Is there a covenantal context that highlights the significance of what’s being considered as a type?
How might this possible type serve the larger redemptive-historical storyline of Scripture?
Has anyone in church history suggested this type?
G. K. Beale, Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament: Exegesis and Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 21.
G. P. Hugenberger, “Introductory Notes on Typology,” in Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts?, ed. G. K. Beale (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 341.
Mitchell L. Chase, “A True and Greater Boaz: Typology and Jesus in the Book of Ruth,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 21.1 (2017): 95.
See David Schrock’s article called “From Beelines to Plotlines: Typology That Follows the Covenantal Typography of Scripture,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 21.1 (2017): 35-56.
James M. Hamilton Jr., “Was Joseph a Type of the Messiah? Tracing the Typological Identification between Joseph, David, and Jesus,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 12.4 (2008): 54.