Typological Reading Research Articles

«Jag är Gud och inte människa» (Hos 11:9) - Kan Guds medlidande besegra våra antropomorfa gudsbilder?

The article analyses the Bible’s most famous and debated texts which express divine repentance. Hos 11:8–9 is characterized by its strong anthropomorphic language and by its (illusory?) disassociation from it. A reference to Israel’s God as ‘not human’ motivates the unexpected change of mind and compassion for God’s Israel. The exegetical discussion habitually focuses on what is going on in YHWH’s mind and heart, but also on the alleged struggle between anger and love. This article is based on a tradition-historical oriented typological reading of the expression ‘I am God and not human’. It suggests a new interpretation of this expression which throws a new light on the notorious difficult conclusion of the passage: ‘I will not enter the city’. The author also problematizes the influence from the Lutheran tradition’s understanding of ‘God against God’ on the exegetical discussion, i.e., the passage is supposed to mirror an inner struggle within the Deity ‘for our sake’. This understanding runs the risk of transforming the pain of God to an internal transaction which is hard to sympathize with and to feel involved with. (Less)

A Typological Reading of Prevailing Legal Theories

AbstractA classic debate in the history of philosophy is that between rationalists and empiricists concerning the “true” source of human knowledge. In legal philosophy this debate has been reflected in the classic opposition between natural law and legal positivist perspectives. Even the currently predominant inclusivist perspectives on the nature of law, such as inclusive legal positivism and inclusive legal non‐positivism, are not immune to such a dichotomy. In this paper I attempt to present an understanding of specific cognitive characteristics of prevailing legal theories from the perspective of the theory of psychological types as developed by Carl G. Jung.

Il rischio irresistibile dell’allegoria

This paper analyzes from an historical point of view, the use and value of allegorical reading in ancient Christianity. In most cases, allegory is not expressly required by the text, but results necessary because of a discrepancy between what is written and what is meant. It stems from a general pre-comprehension of the whole sense of the sacred text, of which every aspect is strictly tied to the others. At times, such an approach could appear a result of a too free imagination; it is, instead, the historical result of a long cultural and ideological task, thanks to which Christianity gained its own identity in front of Judaism (about Christ’s messianicity) and Gnosis (about the unity of Ancient and New Testament). Although allegorical reading has been programmatically challenged by typological reading, the former lasted as an attempt to find out in the text the perennial cosmological and anthropological meanings of reality. In this way, it arrived to build up the inner structure of the lectio divina. As the divine gift of the word of God to humanity, allegory has to proceed in an infinity way, checking out the soundness of its own hermeneutical principles and results, firstly and foremost. Allegorical reading pertains often to the search for a temporary meaning, which is destined to fall when the “real” historical-critical sense appears. But allegory is still living en attendant Godot, because the “definitive” meaning of the sacred text results unattainable, since it moves always a step further from human comprehension. So, any critical or authoritative intervention can only falsify or redefine allegorical reading, but not stop it. The risk implied in allegory must therefore be coupled with the modesty of the hypothesis, because of its exposure to falsifiability.

The Inquisitor’s Manual at Work

This article engages with the work of Antoine Dondaine on inquisitors’ manuals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which laid the groundwork for modern scholarship on these texts. While following Dondaine’s line on the texts’ importance to the development of the inquisition of heresy, it questions the emphasis that his reading put on their literary development, and the subsequent tendency by scholars to read these texts as driven by generic concerns. The article surveys thirteen manuals from the high medieval period, produced between 1248 and 1330. The textual exchange that exists between the manuals and across different regions of inquisition and the relationship of the texts to the developing practice of the inquisition of heresy are explored. It is suggested that the typological reading of manuals be set aside, and that changes in their form are more helpfully understood in terms of their practical function.

Storytelling and Identity

Africa provided a fertile ground for Christianity during its first few centuries, and a case could be made that early Christian texts from Egypt, Ethiopia, Nubia, and North Africa are the first instances of written African literature. Under Roman rule, most of North Africa was Christian until well into the seventh century, and its literary output included gnostic treatises, the theological texts of the Alexandrian church fathers, and a series of influential saints' lives, including the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas (203 AD) and Athanasius' Life of Anthony (360 AD). Augustine of Hippo's seminal Confessions (397 AD) was, in some senses, an African text and, in a curiously circular manner that we will trace, eventually played its part in the formation of modern African literature. Christianity in Ethiopia dates from the first century, with one tradition citing the Apostle Philip's conversion of the Ethiopian traveler in Acts 8, and another holding that St. Matthew travelled to Ethiopia to preach the gospel. Regardless of the origins, Christianity was declared a state religion in Ethiopia in 330 AD, and Athanasius consecrated Frumentius as its first bishop. The first version of Ethiopia's national religious epic, the Kebra Nagast (The Glory of Kings), appeared in the sixth century and is a mythic account of the origins of Ethiopian Christianity traced to King Menelik I, the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The epic recounts how on a visit to Solomon's court, Menelik I moved the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem to Aksum and established the Ethiopians as God's new chosen people. (1) This may be the first instance of a typological reading of African history, a reading that other African writers, most notably the South African Afrikaners, would employ in the future. Before these written texts, the African continent teemed with multitudinous forms of orature that provided entertainment at communal gatherings, celebrated great rulers and warriors, instructed children and youth, preserved history and lineages, and formed cultural identity. While Western generic categories are not strictly applicable to orature (when a text is not written down and is performed by a variety of presenters, there is no clear distinction between prose and poetry), African orature contained a strong tradition of narrative. The representation of events with a beginning, a middle, and an end--narrative--is one of the most basic elements of human expression, (2) and oral storytelling played a central role in African culture from earliest human life to the present day. Many prominent twentieth-century African writers recount soaking up the magic of language and the power of narrative from a childhood immersion in nightly participatory story-telling around the fire in the family compound, and both thematic and formal influences from folk tales, myths and legends, historical chronicles, and epics continue to permeate African writing. (3) The return of Christianity to Africa during the colonial period and the impact of the nineteenth-century missionary movement had a tremendous effect on the written production of African literature. The contested legacy of the missionary movement includes the creation of indigenous language orthographies, the encouragement of literary education, and the establishment of printing presses. Consequently, by the end of the nineteenth century, the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress had been published in numerous African languages. All had a strong effect on the early writing of the continent as numerous African writers attest, and the narrative form of the Bible and Bunyan's allegory were especially influential. For example, the great Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe was raised as a Christian, attending mission schools, hearing twice-daily Bible readings during family prayers, and participating in church services, and the rhythms, images, and narratives of the Bible are prominent threads in the tapestry of his fiction. …

Typological Usage of the Old Testament in the New Testament

The typological reading and application of Hebrew texts deserve the greatest attention among the numerous ways of reading and applying the Old Covenant ideas, traditions and texts. Through the typological reading and application of the text, the text is given broad latitude for its typological application. Treating the Bible from the typological point of view is not only restricted to quoting the books of the Old Testament. Instead, numerous allusions and references to events, characters, places and descriptions are made. The interpretation of these analogies leads to the understanding of the whole truth of the Old and New Testament. “Christians therefore read the Old Testament in the light of Christ who died and rose from the dead. Such typological reading reveals an inexhaustible part of the Old Testament” (CCC 129). Therefore typological thinking is necessary in order to interpret the Bible messages appropriately.

Painting the Sacred in the Age of Romanticism (review)

Cordilla Grewe, Painting the Sacred in the Age of Romanticism. Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT:Ashgate, 2009. 418 pp., 104 illustrations. During the past decade- in essays like her interpretation of Wilhelm Schadow's oil painting Mignon as an allegory of romantic art in Goethe und das Zeitalter der Romantik (ed. Walter Hinderer [Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2002] 307-43)- Cordula Grewe has been working to counteract the all-too-common assessment of the late romantic Nazarene painters as derivative, second-rate emulators of renaissance art. In that regard, her present monograph will be instructive not only for those colleagues in art history for whom the only viable directions in European modern art are developments in France or Great Britain; this incisive, elegantly written, well organized, and handsomely illustrated study also can serve as a model of how to integrate scholarship from fields as diverse as literature, history, theology, and gender and Jewish studies in mutually illuminating ways. Grewe understands the artists associated with theLukasbriider (Brotherhood of St. Luke) founded in 1809 by Franz Pforr and Johann Friedrich Overbeck as typically romantic in that they not only regarded nature and (salvation) history as hieroglyphs in need of deciphering, but also brought into their work the same self-reflective element more commonly associated with literary romanticism. In Overbeck's Raising of Lazarus (1808; pp. 30-33), for example, the artist includes portraits of himself and Pforr as rapt witnesses to the miracle transpiring before their eyes. Both in her introduction and this first chapter, entitled The Great Code of Art: Religious Revival and the Rebirth of Pictorial Meaning, Grewe underscores the missionary impulse behind these artistic strategies; ultimately, artists like Pforr, Overbeck, Schadow, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and Ferdinand Olivier wanted to inspire in the viewer not only an informed understanding, but also an emulation of the religious revival that features in so many of their works. This proselytizing impulse led to resistance by contemporaries such as Goethe and Johann Heinrich Meyer in their polemic Neu-deutsche religios-patriotische Kunst (1817); it also has caused modern scholars uncomfortable with a discussion of religion in modern art to interpret works such as Pforr's and Maria (1811), the last painting he completed before his death in 1812 at the age of twenty-four, as an allegory of Pforr's friendship with (and repressed desire for) Overbeck. Another attempt to make und Maria more palatable for twentieth-century viewers and critics was to focus on formalistic analyses of the diptych's contrast of an Italianate landscape behind to the old German interior in the room where Maria sits and muses; this harmonious contrast then was understood as being indicative of Overbeck's and Pforr's respective idealization of the Italian and Northern Renaissance that later finds expression in the canvas by Overbeck that we have come to know as Italia and Germania (1828). While not denying the validity of such readings, Grewe also contends - convincingly, in this reviewer's judgment - that a typological reading of and Maria in the context of both medieval mystical and eighteenth-century literal readings of the Song of Songs adds immensely to the richness of Pforr's canvas. Both in Sulamith and Maria: Erotic Mariology and the Cult of Friendship (61-98) and the chapters that follow, Grewe links in-depth interpretation of one particular artistic project with a framing of the work(s) in question within a contemporary context - in this case the burgeoning fascination with the figure of Maria in the works of romantic writers such as Novalis, Tieck, and Brentano. At the same time, these chapters are not hermetically sealed off from one another. question in chapter two as to whether erotic fulfillment has a proper place in Christian women's upbringing is amplified by the succeeding chapter's analysis of an 1841 oil on canvas work by Wilhelm Schadow in the context oi Pietas and Vanitas: Gender, Moralization, and Allegory (99-148). …

Guardians, not Taskmasters: The Cultural Resonances of Paul’s Metaphor in Galatians 4.1-2

Paul’s heir analogy in Gal. 4.1-2 has traditionally been interpreted against the backdrop of Graeco-Roman guardianship laws. However, because certain conceptual and terminological incongruities in the text have not been adequately explained, a relatively new typological reading, which identifies the analogy as an allusion to the Exodus, has begun to influence many interpreters. This study will defend the traditional interpretation, first by responding to the criticisms and exegetical insights introduced by those who interpret the text typologically, and second by demonstrating that Paul’s use of έπίτροποι and οἰκονόμοι as guardians of a minor—a widely acknowledged crux interpretum—corresponds accurately to Roman legal practice.

Epistolarity in a Nahdah Climate: The Role of Mayy Ziyādah's Letter Writing

AbstractIt is the purpose of this article to study Mayy Ziyādah's (d. 1941) epistolary art as an extension of her salon in the years of its formation, 1913-1936. While her salon gathered together the most distinguished Nahdah elite, her epistolary art consolidated an enormous network that included intellectuals from all over the Arab world, Europe, and North and South America. Her epistolary art made use of the eighteenth-century French salon model, but it also drew on a solid tradition of Arabic chancery art that reached its peak between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. Her letters as well as the letters addressed to her demonstrate how central her role and function as salonnière and littérateure were to the Nahdah climate of ideas. The article also provides a typological reading of this art, placing it in the context of French and Egyptian models.

The Sign of Jonah

This essay develops a Christian understanding of Christianity's relation to Judaism and Islam based upon a typological reading of the book of Jonah.

Raw, Medium, Well Done: A Typological Reading of Australian Eating Places

AbstractTaking their cue from the culinary criteria most often applied to the cooking of a beefsteak, Rachel Hurst and Jane Lawrence develop a taxonomy of design for eating establishments in Australia. They find examples of the ‘raw’ in Melbourne's buzzing Centre Place, the ‘medium’ in a chain of Italian restaurants in Adelaide, and the ‘well done’ at The Restaurant at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

The Siege of Jerusalem and Biblical Exegesis: Writing About Romans in Fourteenth-Century England

Almost sixty years ago, the role of the Jews in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament came into question as Cecilia Cutts suggested a metaphorical reading of the play's textual characterization;1 she argued that the Croxton Jews, in rejecting Christianity, were portrayed in such a way as to represent a different group which deliberately excluded itself from ortho dox Christianity?that is, the Lollards.2 Alternatively, Steven Kruger has suggested that the Croxton Jews are representative of the specifically body, and his reassessment links corruptions of the body to Christian bodily miracles.3 In interrogating the role of identity, Elisa Narin van Court has posited a paradoxical Jewish presence in medieval English narratives as literary, theological, and visual represen tations of Jews continued long after their expulsion from England in 1290.4 Likewise, Sheila Delany has shown that the Jews continued to influ ence English writers with their absent presence.5 Critics reading the late-fourteenth-century poem The Siege of Jerusalem vary similarly in their assessment of identity.6 While Mary Hamel has suggested that the Jews portrayed in the Siege represent a homoge nized group of Jews, Saracens, and heretics,7 Ralph Hanna III and Narin van Court have argued that the Jews portrayed in the Siege occupy a posi tion particular to medieval people. Setting the Siege in its textual environment of Yorkshire, Hanna suggests a Lancastrian reception of it wherein the Jews represent those killed in the Yorkshire massacre in 1190.8 In light of her research on Augustinian historians, Narin van Court argues for parallels between first-century and medieval Jews, explaining that the Jew ^wajew must be considered when reading the Siege.9 In these critiques of the Siege, two strands of thought regarding identity emerge: that of the literal, historical reading suggested by Hanna and Narin van Court, and that of the nonliteral, typological reading put for ward by Hamel and others.

Penitent Brothellers: Grace, Sexuality, and Genre in Thomas Middleton's City Comedies by Herbert Jack Heller (review)

176 Reviews ignores the romantic mutuality of her relationship to Touchwood Junior. Neverthe? less, Martin's wide-ranging study is a provocative reconsideration of City Comedy, and although his heavy use of academic jargon is sometimes irritating,his arguments will invite serious engagement even from readers sceptical of his conclusions. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign W. David Kay Penitent Brothellers: Grace, Sexuality, and Genre in Thomas Middleton's City Come? dies. By Herbert Jack Heller. Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2000. 223 pp. ?30; $43.50. ISBN o87413 -701-2. This book fills a gap in the criticism of Middleton's city comedies by indicating the religious context of their outwardly secular concerns, offeringto correct critics' representations of Middleton as a poet of material and materialist life. Heller replaces materialist literalism with a rather precarious literalism of a theological kind. Foregroundingthe diagnosisof authorial belief, he argues that Middleton was an orthodox Calvinist. He rightlysees Middleton's espousal of theatre and theatricalityas a central issue for his dramatization of theological themes, and a determining influence on his provisional tolerance towards sins of the theatre. To substantiate Middleton's Calvinism, Heller turns to his biblical commentary The Two Gates of Salvation (1607). He nowhere reinforces or qualifies his case by making reference to Middleton's firstpublished work, The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased (1597), a poem that is at once intense, brooding, and obsessive ifnot manic in its Calvinist inflections. Perhaps these qualities do not serve Heller's argument, for he is a rational writer who urges that Middleton's religion is also rational. Chapter 2 suggests that Middleton's comedies 'usually have some moment when a character receives grace' (p. 33). This notably contradicts the usual readings of Mid? dleton, in which his comedies, in particular, are seen as aggressively secular. Heller argues for 'a binary conception of comedy as divinely and worldly' (p. 41). This inevitably privileges the divine perspective that provides the larger and defining picture. Given the secularity ofthe immediate context and the filterof Middleton's ironic lan? guage, how do we recognize divine grace ifand when it is presented to us ?Heller offers one 'paradigmatic' answer (p. 47) from A Mad World, My Masters, in which Penitent Brothel's name symptomatically changes after he reforms, it is argued, to 'Once-Ill', the name that appears in the stage directions opening iv. 1 and iv. 4. The paradigm, however, is problematic, as 'Once-Ill' does not appear in dialogue. Moreover, it has doubtful relevance to all the characters who do not change their name: the case is unique, and, if allowed, speaks of the ambiguity of all others. Heller's identification of a Calvinist sensibility seems right, but Middleton's antithetical commitment to embracing a materialist world produces a relativistic overall effectthat might better be described as post-Calvinist. Middleton's plays describe worlds in which religious belief often functions as a localized, transitory,and unstable ideology. A second sign of grace is explored in the chapter on 'Marrying the Whore'. If indeed marriage is a sign of salvatory grace, can one still infer grace from the Middletonian trope of marrying a whore? To answer this question affirmatively,Heller adduces the example ofthe prophet Hosea, who acted similarly on the instruction of God. But it is not straightforward to apply this model to cases such as the miserly usurer Hoard's marriage to the witty and relatively moral Courtesan at the end of Trick to Catch theOld One. The characterization of both figures would seem crucially to disable a typological reading that relies wholly on implied similarity. Heller's final chapter seeks to demonstrate that Middleton's attitude to sodomy is MLRy 98.1, 2003 177 tolerant?tolerant, that is, by the standards of his day rather than ours. That Middleton propounds a theological view of sodomy is not obvious. Heller's difficultand challengeable project requires that he is able to identifyparticular characters who have committed the act, and to determine their spiritual destiny. Sodomy as an act could not be presented on the stage, and could be mentioned only elliptically. Middleton insinuates without necessary commitment to narrative specificity,daring the auditor to...

The Middle English Pearl : Figuring the Unfigurable

In her 1968 British Academy lecture, Elizabeth Salter announced that Middle English Pearl invites a criticism which applies the typologi cal or figural method, one that works toward discovering in text a historiography of promise and fulfilment, most completely described and illustrated by Scriptures, but discernible as a constant rhythm in every part of Christian experience, past, present, and to come.1 But Salter's lecture was not occasion for launching a large scale typolog ical analysis, but rather a call for others to start thinking of Pearl differ ently, in line with aesthetic demands of figuralism. Salter was thereby showing a way out of notorious versus allegory debates which had dominated critical reflection on Pearl for first half of our century. The new critical orientation Salter proposed steered a course between, on one hand, historicism and autobiographicalism of elegy hypothesis and, on other hand, reductive abstractions of allegory, while partaking of insights of both approaches to text's meaning: figuralism should direct us accordingly toward an apprehension of spir itual and eternal truths incarnate in concrete, historical facts. For many earlier commentators, however, Pearl in defining instance had either a concrete historical referent (namely, poet's own or perhaps his patron's dead daughter, whom poem supposedly commemorates) or certain symbolic or metaphysical referents (for example, pearl maiden stands for virginity or transformed soul).2 Early twentieth century criticism was thus broadly polarized between an excavative criticism, centered on recovering original historical conditions of text's composition, and an exegetical criticism that was directed solely toward expounding Christian doctrine. Out of context of this criti cal stalemate, Salter attempted a kind of harmonization of elegy-alle gory theories, what amounts to an ideal rapprochement of two determinations of genre by way of Erich Auerbach's distinguished dis cussion of typology. But question needs to be asked, is a typological reading of Pearl finally defensible?

Israel Redivivus: The Eschatological Limits of Puritan Typology in New England

RITICS have long been fascinated by Puritan typology and its myth-making power as it conferred divine approval on the Puritans' Errand into the Wilderness. As the familiar argument goes, American Puritans, blending their vision of an American New Jerusalem with their own status as God's chosen people in their New English Canaan, extended their typological reading of the Old Testament prophecies beyond their New Testament abrogation and fulfillment into a new covenant theology. As the literal, spiritual, and figural heirs of Israel's blessings, the Puritans could look forward to a future, progressive fulfillment of biblical prophecies within American secular history. New England, and the American continent at large, thus would not only play a leading role in the events culminating in the Second Coming of Christ but would also become the seat of the New Jerusalem, the City of God which would descend