The various covenants of the Old Testament foreshadow the new covenant. This foreshadowing is also known as “typology.” The idea of a “type” comes from Romans 5:14 where St. Paul says “Adam was a type of the one to come.” In Biblical and theological language, a “type” is a person, place, or thing that is a kind of advance image or a foreshadowing of something greater will come later. Salvation history is filled with typology. All of the mediators — Adam, Noah, Moses, and others — are, in various ways, types or pre-images of Jesus Christ. In the Gospels, Jesus is portrayed at various times as a New Adam or as a New Moses, a new Noah, or a new David. This imagery will be explored in the next course as well.
However, it is not just Jesus who has types in the Old Testament. Other aspects of the new covenant are also typified. The Blessed Mother is typified in Moses’ sister Miriam and in many other ways. The Eucharist is typified in the manna in the wilderness, and by the Passover. The Apostles are typified by the 12 officers that David’s son Solomon establishes over the kingdom of Israel.[1]
There are many types of the new covenant in the Old Testament. This is because, as the Church Fathers said, “God writes history the way men write books.”[2] A good novelist subtly plants images and hints and foreshadowings of what’s going to happen in his narrative as he moves along.
A master of this is the movie-maker M. Night Shyamalan, and his movie Signs is a great example.[3] The elements that go into the movie’s exciting conclusion are built up throughout the movie. Shyamalan uses various kinds of foreshadowing, as well as odd and unusual things that the viewer observes and wonders “where’s that going?” Then, when the movie reaches its climax, it all comes together, leaving the viewer to think, “Oh, that’s why they needed all those elements….”
God is ‘the supreme movie-maker’ and the Bible is His ‘movie.’ The Bible, then, is filled with foreshadowing and fulfillment. We call that “typology.”
[1] 1 Kings 4.
[2] Scott W. Hahn, Scripture Matters (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2003), 2.
[3] <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286106/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1>.