Richard
Schultz's recent book "Out of Context: How to Avoid Misinterpreting the
Bible" as one would infer from the title collates exegetical crimes,
and gives help on how to avoid them. One section which caught my eye was
on the abuse of typology:
"We already mentioned a fifth
approach, finding
Jesus under every textual leaf...This approach is
experiencing growing support today and is based on the twin convictions
that (1) Jesus is the central theme of the Bible and (2) all of
Scripture points to him. The former is true to a degree, although
Old
Testament scholar
Gerhard Hasel is probably more accurate in declaring
that “God is the center of the OT as its central subject.” The second
conviction is based on an overinterpretation of
Luke 24: 27—“ And
beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he [Jesus] explained to them
what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” This led a
pastor to declare in a sermon I heard recently, “If you don’t find Jesus
on the page of Scripture you are reading, keep reading it until you
find him there.”
"This goes well beyond finding Jesus in
predictive prophecy; it turns all Old Testament texts into predictions
of or, more precisely, pictures foreshadowing the coming of Jesus.
Accordingly, in Numbers 11: 8 (“ The people went around gathering it
[the manna], and then ground it in a hand mill or crushed it in a
mortar. They cooked it in a pot or made it into loaves. And it tasted
like something made with olive oil”), the manna represents Jesus. After
all, John 6: 33– 35, 48 teaches that he is the
Bread of Life. Moreover,
the grinding, crushing, and cooking in Numbers 11: 8 represent Jesus’s
sufferings on our behalf. But what does the olive oil taste represent in
the case of Jesus? And how did the people gather him up? The
book of
Hebrews and other
New Testament texts give a warrant for some degree of
christological (that is, Christ-centered) interpretation of Old
Testament texts. This is usually called typology (see chapter 5 for
further explanation). But there appear to be no limits on the creative
and speculative interpretation to which this can lead.
"What
exactly does Luke 24: 27 claim? A similar verse later in the same
chapter may help to clarify the point Jesus was making: “Everything must
be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets
and the Psalms” (Luke 24: 44). Jesus points here to the scope of the
Old Testament’s anticipation of the Messiah’s coming: all three major
subdivisions of the Hebrew canon look forward to him. In Jesus’s
postresurrection Bible study, he was not asserting that every biblical
text is “about” or “pointing to” him. Instead, he was explaining to his
disciples those passages throughout the Scriptures that spoke of him in
order to clarify the world-altering nature of the prior week’s events.
[1]
No one is of course arguing that typology has no
legitimacy. As Shultz notes however, it is easily abused. If typology is
the only exegetical tool one has, then the temptation is to see types
everywhere, and without any controls on this approach, eisegesis
results.
1. Schultz, Richard (2012-11-01). Out of Context: How
to Avoid Misinterpreting the Bible (pp. 33-34).
Baker Publishing Group.
Kindle Edition.