I begin with a proposition: The Old Testament is not so much a collection of biographies as a biography. The Old Testament is the biography of Jesus, the Son of God. And as such, the Old Testament is the biography of God.

This is what Jesus Himself says about the Old Testament in Luke 24. Moses, the Psalms, and the prophets, are about the sufferings and glory of the Christ and about the proclamation of repentance to the nations. To the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who have the whole story of the gospel but don’t understand what they know, Jesus says, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” 27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”

Then when Jesus appears among the 11 disciples, He reiterates the same point: “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” 45 And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. 46 Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to risefrom the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

But how does this work? How is the Old Testament the story of Jesus? How is the Old Testament the biography of God’s Son?

Snapshots of Jesus

It’s true in the sense that the ancestry of any great hero is part of that hero’s story. The New Testament begins with a genealogy of Jesus, which summarizes the Old Testament as the family history that culminates in Jesus. To know Jesus, and to know what He’s come to do, we need to have some background, know something about His people.

Another way that the Old Testament is the story of Jesus is that the Old Testament is filled with foreshadowings of the story of Jesus, and these foreshadowings are part of His story, part of His biography. Much traditional typological interpretation focuses on individual events or persons in the Old Testament and shows that there are analogies to Jesus. This is a perfectly legitimate, perfectly Biblical way of reading the Old Testament. The New Testament, after all, explicitly interprets most of the major persons of the Old Testament in Christological terms.

Jesus is the Last Adam (Romans 5:12-21), the greater Abel (Hebrews 12:24), the seed of Abraham (Galatians 3:28-29) and, therefore, the true Isaac (Hebrews 11:17-19), who is also the son chosen ahead of his older brother Ishmael (Galatians 4), the one who speaks a more threatening word than Moses (Hebrews 10:26-31), a new Samuel (Luke 2:40, 52), the son of David (Matthew 1:1), one greater than Solomon (Matthew 12:42), a prophet like Jeremiah (Matthew 16:14), and so on and on.

Some of these analogies are implicit, when New Testament writers quote descriptions of Old Testament persons and apply them to Jesus (1 Samuel 2:21, 26; Luke 2:40, 52). But it doesn’t take much imagination to conclude that when Luke says that “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature,” he intends to bring out analogies with Samuel. Or when Jesus calls the disciples from their nets to follow Him, He is playing the role of Elijah in relation to His disciples, which are like Elisha being called from his plow. Or when He battles Satan as the divine warrior who shares the name of the conqueror of the Canaanites.

Not only persons, but Old Testament offices and institutions are fulfilled in Jesus. He is a priest of the order of Melchizedek, which transcends the fleshly order of Aaron (Hebrews 7), He is the true prophet, He is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, the son of David who has wisdom greater than Solomon’s. He tabernacles among us (John 1:14), and He is the true living temple (John 2:18-25). He offers Himself in sacrifice, as a “sin offering” (Romans 8:1-4), and cleanses lepers and other defilements, just like the washing rites of the law.

Jesus’ ministry fulfills the great events of Old Testament history, though often in a way that reverses the original event. His obedience overturns the effects of Adam’s disobedience (Romans 5:12-21).  He passes through the water and is tempted in the wilderness, but refuses to listen to Satan’s words (Matthew 3-4). He undergoes an exodus, both in his infancy (Matthew 2:15) and later in his last days in Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). He suffers outside the gate, in exile from His own city, and as the new Cyrus He commissions His disciples to disciple the nations and build His house throughout the earth. Likewise the church, His body, relives Israel’s history, passing through the waters of baptism, feeding in the wilderness, called to listen to the voice, falling in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10:1-12).

Given these sorts of explicit statements in the New Testament, it’s not a stretch to think that we should read other Old Testament passages in the same manner. If David is a type of Christ, then we can read his entire history typologically, as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ story, as a part of Jesus’ biography. David gains the approval of Israel by his prowess as a young man; He defeats Goliath and comes into the favor of King Saul. People celebrate His authority and power. But Saul turns against him, and David’s path to the throne is a path of persecution, trial, and opposition. He is opposed by members of his own house. Absalom rebels, drives him from the city, where he walks the same path that Jesus later will walk: Out of Jerusalem to the east, across the Kidron valley, up the mount of Olives on the other side, weeping as he goes. But the Lord reverses this exile, returns him to the land, and reestablishes his kingdom.

And then it’s not too hard to say that the whole story of Joseph is typological too. Though the New Testament never says that Jesus is the greater Joseph, it’s almost impossible to avoid that conclusion when we see that Joseph was favored by his father, envied and hated by his brothers, thrown into a pit and removed, exalted but then humiliated, finally robed in glory at the right hand of Pharaoh in order to feed the world.

And then it’s comparatively easy to see that the Jehu is also a type of Christ. He is raised up to oppose a wicked royal house, one that resembles the Herodian dynasty in many particulars. He is anointed in secret and then proclaimed king among his fellows, whereupon they lay their garments (= themselves) before Him (2 Kings 9). Jehu sets his face toward the capital city, and then busies himself by destroying and defiling the temple in Jerusalem. He is the meshuggah, the madman, who destroys the idolatrous temple and leaves not one stone upon another.

Typology is often seen as a secondary mode of interpretation. We have the literal meaning, and then the typology is a little artistic flourish on the main point. That’s exactly wrong. Typological analogies are foundational for the theological conclusions that can be drawn from an Old Testament book, and thus fundamental to any Christian reading of the Old Testament. Many would agree with Walter Kaiser that typology should not be used to formulate doctrine, but this claim is not only wrong but preposterous.

The whole of New Testament Christology is built on analogies (i.e., typologies) between Jesus and Aaron, Jesus and Moses, Jesus and Melchizedek, Jesus and David, Jesus and Jeremiah, and so on and on. Even apparently more “literal” Christological titles and descriptions are fundamentally typological: To say Jesus is Son of Man is to say He is Last Adam; to say He is Son of God is to say (among other things) that He is the heir to the Davidic throne (2 Samuel 7:14); to say that he is Prince of Peace is to say that He is a new Solomon. No one with a knowledge of the Old Testament can read the gospels without realizing that virtually every line assumes the Old Testament background.

Further, Paul, that most “systematic” of New Testament writers draws not only theological but ethical conclusions from an avowedly “allegorical” reading of the story of Ishmael and Isaac (Galatians 4:21-31) and from a typological summary of Israel’s wilderness experience (1 Corinthians 10:1-10).  Arguably, the Adam-Christ typology is the backbone of Paul’s entire soteriology and ecclesiology, which is to say, of his entire theology. Far from being illegitimate grounds for theology, typology is the only ground for grasping the role of the Old Testament in Christian theology.

 Peter J. Leithart is President of Trinity House.