We're sunsetting PodQuest on 2025-07-28. Thank you for your support!
Export Podcast Subscriptions
cover of episode Typology

Typology

2025/5/15
logo of podcast In Our Time

In Our Time
AI Deep Dive AI Chapters Transcript
People
H
Harry Spillane
M
Melvyn Bragg
S
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe
Topics
Melvyn Bragg: 类型学是一种圣经解释方法，旨在有意义地连接希伯来圣经（基督教徒称之为旧约）中的人物、地点和事件与新约中基督的到来。旧约人物如摩西、约拿和大卫王被基督徒视为耶稣的“类型”或象征。这种思维方式在中世纪欧洲、文艺复兴时期的英国和维多利亚时代的英国非常流行，因为基督徒试图理解他们的犹太遗产，有时以反犹太狂热拒绝这种遗产。这是一种将人类历史视为神圣计划一部分的方式，古代事件预示着更现代的事件，它影响了关于圣经、文学和艺术中隐喻与现实之间关系的辩论，也影响了对现实、时间和历史的态度。 Miri Rubin: 类型学源于希腊语“类型”，意为“敲击”，类似于铸币或制作饼干，即从一个原始对象中产生许多副本。类型具有可重复性和理想性，饼干模具是理想的，其他的饼干都将遵循它。类型学的实践甚至在希伯来圣经中就已存在，后来的先知会回顾摩西或大卫的例子。基督教从犹太教中产生时，寻求不仅是类型，而且是预示并讲述基督教真理的类型。柏拉图主义认为世界存在由上帝创造的、理想的、永恒的形式，而我们的生活只是这些形式的实践版本。犹太评论员Philo of Alexandria运用柏拉图哲学解读希伯来圣经，试图识别其中的柏拉图形式和道德改进的理想。 Harry Spillane: 诺亚方舟的故事与吉尔伽美什史诗中的洪水故事非常相似，后者中的Utnapishtim与诺亚非常相似。两个故事都有鸟类被派出去测试陆地，特别是都有一只鸽子。吉尔伽美什史诗中的洪水持续不到一周，而诺亚的故事是40天40夜，这预示着犹太人的40年流亡或耶稣在旷野的40天40夜。保罗称亚当为“那要来的（基督）的预表”，明确表示从圣经叙述的开始，基督就存在了。希伯来书中对摩西律法的描述是“将来美事的影子，不是本物的真像”。 Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe: 基督徒使用类型学来回应非基督徒和非犹太人的批评，即他们采用的旧约故事是荒谬的、幻想的、神话上不可信的。通过类型学，基督教徒认为伊甸园中会说话的蛇或情歌中的情爱诗歌不必按字面意思阅读，而应作为指示某种隐藏真理的寓言来阅读。基督教教会内部对什么是真理存在大量辩论，并非所有基督徒都认为希伯来圣经应该成为圣经的一部分。基督教与犹太教从一开始就有着非常密切的关系，耶稣是犹太人，他的第一批追随者也是犹太人，基督教起源于犹太教。

Deep Dive

Chapters
This chapter explores the origins and definition of typology, tracing its roots in Greek literature and its adoption by early Christians as a method of interpreting the Hebrew Bible. The discussion covers the concept of 'types' as recurrent and ideal forms, and its application to biblical figures and events.
  • Typology originates from the Greek word 'type,' meaning to strike or mark a shape.
  • Early uses of typology are found in Greek writers like Aeschylus and Herodotus.
  • In Christianity, typology links figures and events in the Hebrew Bible to the coming of Christ.
  • The connection between typology and Hellenistic Jewish communities in Alexandria is highlighted.

Shownotes Transcript

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore typology, a method of biblical interpretation that aims to meaningfully link people, places, and events in the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, with the coming of Christ in the New Testament. Old Testament figures like Moses, Jonah, and King David were regarded by Christians as being ‘types’ or symbols of Jesus.

This way of thinking became hugely popular in medieval Europe, Renaissance England and Victorian Britain, as Christians sought to make sense of their Jewish inheritance - sometimes rejecting that inheritance with antisemitic fervour. It was a way of seeing human history as part of a divine plan, with ancient events prefiguring more modern ones, and it influenced debates about the relationship between metaphor and reality in the bible, in literature, and in art. It also influenced attitudes towards reality, time and history.

With

Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London

Harry Spillane, Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge and Research Fellow at Darwin College

And

Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Associate Professor in Patristics at Cambridge.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

A. C. Charity, Events and their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante (first published 1966; Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Margaret Christian, Spenserian Allegory and Elizabethan Biblical Exegesis: The Context for 'The Faerie Queene' (Manchester University Press, 2016)

Dagmar Eichberger and Shelley Perlove (eds.), Visual Typology in Early Modern Europe: Continuity and Expansion (Brepols, 2018)

Tibor Fabiny, The Lion and the Lamb: Figuralism and Fulfilment in the Bible, Art and Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 1992)

Tibor Fabiny, ‘Typology: Pros and Cons in Biblical Hermeneutics and Literary Criticism’ (Academia, 2018)

Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (first published 1982; Mariner Books, 2002)

Leonhard Goppelt (trans. Donald H. Madvig), Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New (William B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1982)

Paul J. Korshin, Typologies in England, 1650-1820 (first published in 1983; Princeton University Press, 2014)

Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (T & T Clark International, 1999)

Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible Moralisee (University of California Press, 1999)

Montague Rhodes James and Kenneth Harrison, A Guide to the Windows of King's College Chapel (first published in 1899; Cambridge University Press, 2010)

J. W. Rogerson and Judith M. Lieu (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies (Oxford University Press, 2008)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production