At 07:03 08.04.98 EDT, you wrote:
>I have an undergraduate student who wishes, for a term paper, to devise a
>typological program of Old and New Testament pairs. Can anyone recommend a
>good discussion of typology in English, with numerous examples? Most of what
>I'm aware of is in, e.g., German, or embedded in single-case studies.
>Thanks in advance,
>Elizabeth McLachlan, Art History, Rutgers University
>[log in to unmask]
>
>
Dear Elizabeth,
Arguably the best primary source for your student would be the _Biblia
Pauperum_, a late medieval work (in several in part strongly differing
redactions) where each picture representing an event of NT history is sided
by two pictures of its OT prefigurations, with additional representations
of OT prophets pronouncing word prophecies relating to the NT event in
question, and with accompanying tituli and texts giving the history of
these events. Jim Marchand has put a Latin text together with English
translation on the web, without the pictures but with brief (very brief)
descriptions of their contents:
http://www.lang.uiuc.edu/LLL/etexts/bp-lat.html
http://www.lang.uiuc.edu/LLL/etexts/bp-eng.html
The best or at least still fundamental study is Henrik Cornell, _Biblia
Pauperum_, Stockholm: Thule-tryck, 1925. I used it once, many years ago,
but I cannot remember whether it is written in English or in German. Jim
Marchand's webpages give a few references to more recent English
publications, and if your student wants to contact Jim by email
([log in to unmask]) he will probably load more bibliography down on her/him
than any reasonable person might want to know. If your student reads Latin
(very simple Latin, as it is) I recommend to look also at exegetic
compilations like Isidor's _Allegoriae quaedam scripturae sacrae_ PL 83,
97ss., and Pseudo-Hraban's _Allegoriae in universam sacram scripturam. PL
112, 849ss. (if your student can handle more difficult Latin, too, s/he
might include Sedulius, _Collatio novi et veteris testamenti_, somewhere in
PL 19).
As regards modern studies of patristic/medieval typology in general, I
recommend to be cautious against a trend in Auerbach, Charity, Chydenius
and certain neo-scholastic authors to distinguish 'typology' from
'(personification-) allegory' and to mud up the waters further by
identifying 'typology' with the exegetical principle of 'allegoria in
factis' (where the litteral sense accounts a true historical event which in
turn signifies other things). One of the problems with the term 'typology'
is that it was (re-)invented by modern art historians who normally use it
for one of the multiple layers of allegorical meanings in scriptures, the
one which links OT and NT (or OT/NT and the later history of the Church),
and who also tend to confine it to those cases where the OT signifyer is a
real historical event (allegoria in factis) and not a parable or word
prophecy (allegoria in verbis), whereas the patristic and medieval
understanding of "typus", "typice" was less determinate and included all
possible variants of allegory and allegorical senses. Personally, I think
that the modern re-definition of the term can still be useful if the
understanding is explicated in precise form, and I use 'typological' for
the variant of allegorical meaning which connects a past event or
parable/word prophecy with a future (future at least from the viewpoint of
the signifyer) inner-historical event.
I have found my own readings of studies in 'typology' to be rather a waste
of time, but your student might begin with things which I myself have not
yet read:
*ESSAYS ON TYPOLOGY
Essays on Typology. Ed. G. W. H. Lampe / K. J. Woollcombe,
Naperville (Ill.): Allenson, 1957
*LITERARY USES OF TYPOLOGY
Literary Uses of Typology from the Late Middle Ages to the
Present, ed. Earl Miner, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977
[Reviewed by J. C. Ulreich, Arizona Quarterly 34,1 (1978), p.75-86]
PAXSON James J.
A Theory of Biblical Typology in the Middle Ages. In:
Exemplaria 3,2 (1991), p.359(-384)
For Joachim of Fiore's peculiar variant(s) of typological exegesis I
recommend the various well known publications by Marjorie Reeves, and
Randolph's very good introduction to:
DANIEL E. Randolph
Abbot Joachim of Fiore, Liber de Concordia Noui ac Veteris
Testamenti. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Socie-
ty, 1983 (= Transactions of the American Philosophical So-
ciety, Volume 73, Part 8, 1983)
Regards,
Otfried
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