Submitted by Mrs Jane Wallace on Wed, 23/04/2025 - 15:29
On 17th April, BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time on the topic of ‘Typology’ featured the Divinity Faculty's Dr Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Associate Professor in Patristics, alongside fellow Cambridge academic Dr Harry Spillane (Munby Fellow in Bibliography Cambridge
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.
You can listen to the programme here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0029zmc