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III. Our Father Abraham

A. Common Assumptions About Scripture

Keep in mind that Paul, Matthew, John, Peter and the rest were all first-century Jews. What scholars started to notice is that they shared certain habits, assumptions and techniques with other first-century Jewish writers.

David Instone Brewer, in his book,Techniques and Assumptions in Jewish Exegesis Before 70 C.E., identifies three important assumptions of all Jewish interpreters:

* First, that the Scripture, read as a whole, is totally self-consistent. Jewish interpreters assumed the Scriptures were written under God’s inspiration and hence couldn’t possibly contradict each other. If they found a passage in Isaiah, for instance, that seemed to contradict something they read in Genesis, they would head back to drawing board. Even the "apparent" contradictions were assumed to point to more penetrating, deeper truths.

* Secondly, every detail in Scripture is significant. Because God was the author of Scripture, Jewish interpreters presumed there was no word or phrase that wasn’t intended to communicate divine meaning. Even minor and seemingly trivial details should be mined for further insights into the mind of God.

* Finally, and most importantly, Jewish interpreters believed Scripture is always understood according to its context. They never read a text out of context. In fact, many interpretations that we find in the writings of the scribes and rabbis don’t make any sense at all unless you know the context of the texts they’re referring to.

Scholars found all three of these assumptions at work in the New Testament.

B. Methods of Interpretation in the Bible

Scholars also found certain methods of interpretation in the New Testament that are found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and elsewhere in early Jewish interpretation. We’ll point out two:

* Pesher or "explanation." That’s taking a Scripture text and applying it to your own contemporary situation. This kind of commentary "actualizes" the Old Testament text. That means it relates the text to the here and now.

Peter is doing a sort of pesher in his great speech at Pentecost where he quotes the prophet Joel and explains that what’s going on is "what was spoken through" Joel (see Acts of the Apostles 2:14-36 and Joel 3:1-5).

* Derash is another method found in the New Testament. That’s searching out the deeper, hidden meaning of a text and applying it to present experience.

Paul does this when he describes the story of Israel’s Exodus in writing to the Corinthians about the dangers of temptations and false worship (see 1 Corinthians 10:1-22). He does this by making an interesting and telling comparison.

He likens Israel to the baptized Christian, implying that each was born by Spirit and water. Israel was under "the cloud" (that is, the shekiniah, the cloud of glory that represented God’s abiding presence), and Israel passed through the waters of the Red Sea in its Exodus. In the same way, the baptized Christian passes through water and receives the Holy Spirit in Baptism. After its "baptism," Israel was given "spiritual food" and "spiritual drink," Paul says, just as the newly baptized Christian is admitted to the Eucharistic table.

Paul explains this to get to his more critical point - that though they were given new life and new nourishment, many Israelites fell into idolatry and immorality and because of that failed to make it to the Promised Land. He refers to the golden calf incident and the worship of Bael Peor, the two great rebellions in Israel’s history (see Exodus 32, Numbers 25).

The lesson he intended the Christians at Corinth to draw from this was clear. But what’s important for our study of the Bible was that Paul seemed to be assuming that there was some deeper, more symbolic connection between Israel’s history and the experience of the Church.

He says that what happened to Israel was intended by God to be an "example" for the Christians "upon whom the end of the ages has come" (1 Corinthians 10:11).

The word Paul uses here, typikos in the Greek, implies more than a simple "lesson" to be drawn from the past. In Jewish interpretation, "a type" implies a certain symbolic, futuristic quality or meaning - as when Paul says in Romans 5:14 that Adam was "the type of the one who was to come." A "type" is a divine announcement ahead of time of things to come in the future, in the Church, when the end of the ages has comes.

C. Typology and the Biblical Worldview

The widespread use of typology - from the Greek word typos ("model" or "pattern") - is the major difference between the New Testament and other writings from first-century Jewish writing.

Everything in the Scriptures of Israel was seen as pointing to the coming of Jesus and His establishment of the Church. In fact, we have evidence to suggest that it was Jesus Himself who taught the apostolic writers to read "typologically" (see Luke 24:27-45)

While the word "typology" was coined later by scholars, it’s operation in the New Testament is unquestioned. Throughout it, the events, promises and people of the Old Testament are assumed to be patterns or "types" that prepare, prefigure and announce the realities that God brings about in Jesus and His Church.

The New Testament writers don’t deny the "actuality" or "historicity" of the Old Testament. What they assume, however, is that these moments and figures from Israel’s history were intended by God to have even greater meaning once Christ comes and shows us that meaning.

In other words: Moses was real. But he was also, as we’ll see in our next lesson, a "type" of Jesus. So was King David. The Exodus was real, as Paul assumes in writing to the Corinthians, but it was also a "type" of Baptism. The feeding of the Israelites with manna in the wilderness was also a real historical event. But it was also a "type" of the Eucharist, the true bread from heaven. (For more on typology, see Catechism, nos. 129-130, 1094).

It’s important to understand what typology is and isn’t. Typology isn’t a technique by which New Testament writers mechanically read the Old Testament like a fortune-teller.

Typology, really, is a whole new worldview, a way of seeing all of reality - past, present and future - according to the certain patterns. patterns of God’s consistent dealings with His people. Typology, as it’s practiced in the New Testament, presumes that there is a divine economy, a divine plan at work in the world (see Ephesians 1:10). It assumes, too, that God works in certain consistent ways and that we can understand what God is doing in Jesus and the Church by looking at the models and patterns of His dealings with Israel in the past.

It’s not that they believed history repeated itself. Elijah or one of the prophets doesn’t come back from the dead, as many of Jesus’ contemporaries expected (see Mark 8:28). Instead, God raises up a new and greater prophet in Jesus. What Jesus says and does evokes and builds upon the symbolic words and deeds of Elijah and the prophets, but goes way beyond them.

Elisha multiplied barley loaves to feed His followers. So did Jesus. But when Jesus does it, He not only points backward to Elisha, but points us forward to a new and even greater miracle - the giving of His flesh and blood as bread and wine in the Eucharist (see John 6:1-14; 2 Kings 4:42-44).

As we said, Jesus appears to have taught the Apostles to read the Old Testament this way. But in the Old Testament itself, we can see Israel’s prophets taking the same approach.

As scholars like Cardinal Jean Danielou, S.J., have shown, for the prophets the past was prologue and preparation. God’s great works in Israel in days gone by were seen as the foundations, the promissory notes, for new and greater works He will do in the messianic age to come. The shape of what’s to come can be seen in what’s already been (see, especially Danielou’s The Bible and the Liturgy).

Prophecy is nothing but the typological reading of history. Take a look at the later chapters of Isaiah, especially chapters 65 and 66. Isaiah is describing the future redemption the coming Messiah will bring. He describes this redemption in terms entirely drawn from the high points of history as it’s told in Israel’s Scriptures. He says what’s coming is a new creation, a new paradise, a new exodus, a new kingdom and a new temple and a new Jerusalem. Which is it? It’s all of the above.

The New Testament writers saw all these "types" being fulfilled in Jesus. He is the New Adam (see Romans 5:14), the first born of a new creation. His body is the new Temple (seeJohn 2:19-21). He leads the new Exodus (see Matthew 2:15) and His Church is the new Jerusalem and the new Kingdom (see Galatians 4:26; 1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6).

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