In the New Testament, the word “type” appears fifteen times, but only three instances are directly related to the Old Testament and the Messiah (Rom. 5:14; 1 Cor. 10:6; Heb. 8:5). Similarly, the concept of “antitype”, which is the counterpart or fulfillment of a “type,” is found only twice (Heb. 9:24; 1 Pet. 3:21).[1] The frequency of Old Testament shadows of heavenly realities foreshadowing things to come is not confined to these words. Rather, they, with a cluster of other words attached to type and antitype—typologically (typokōs), true (alēthinos), antitype (antitypos), shadow (skia), copy (hypodeigma), and parable (parabolē)—are only suggestive of the extensiveness of figural representations of the Messianic Age throughout the OT, from Genesis to Malachi.[2]
1. For typos, see Rom. 5:14; 6:17; 1 Cor. 10:6; Phil. 3:17; 1 Thess. 1:7; 2 Thess. 3:9; 1 Tim. 4:12; Titus 2:7; Acts 7:43, 44; 23:25; John 20:25 (2X); Heb. 8:5; 1 Pet. 5:3. Paul is the only one who uses the adverb typikōs (1 Cor. 10:11). The noun hypotypōsis occurs only in 1 Tim. 1:16 and 2 Tim. 1:13.
2. Concerning the breadth of Old Testament prefiguration of Christ and his domain as he counters various schools of thought, most of which are reproduced in our current era, see Patrick Fairbairn, The Typology of Scripture: Viewed in Connection with the Entire Scheme of the Divine Dispensations, vol. 1, 3rd edition (Philadelphia: Smith, English and Company, 1857), 17–58.
The letter to the Hebrews is particularly instructive for expanding our understanding of typology. By examining its use of “type” (typos) and related ideas, we discover unique yet complementary aspects of biblical typology. We see that typology entails not only a horizontal-temporal axis (i.e., redemptive history) but also a vertical-revelatory axis (i.e., divine revelation from heaven to earth). In this article, I will explain how the Bible’s types are integral to God’s revelation of himself and his redemptive plan centered on Christ Jesus. Thus, God appointed Old Testament types first to serve as revelatory shadows of heavenly things to his covenant people while at the same time functioning as revelatory foreshadows of things that would accompany the coming of the promised Messiah.
The Horizontal-Temporal Axis of Biblical Types
The Apostle Paul fills a crucial role in our understanding of types (typoi) and the adverb typologically (typokōs), especially from his temporal vantage point of Messiah’s fulfillment of Old Testament foreshadows and prophecies. He refers to the Old Testament earthly persons, institutions, events, or settings that God imbued with symbolic significance as anticipating greater things to come at the end of the ages (1 Cor. 10:6, 11).[3] Paul explains that the Israelites’ baptism into Moses by dwelling under the cloud and passing through the Red Sea, eating the same spiritual food, and drinking the same spiritual drink took place as revelatory shadows testifying to them that their daily experiences were ordered by the Lord, calling for obedient belief in their Redeemer. Likewise, because most of the Israelites wallowed in disobedient unbelief, many became idolaters, committed sexual immorality, grumbled, and subjected the Messiah to testing (1 Cor. 10:4–5, 9). The Lord punished them with death by the sword, by serpents, and by the destroying angel. Paul explains, “Now these things happened typologically to them, and they were written down for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor. 10:11).[4]
3. On this passage, see Ardel Caneday, “Biblical Types: Revelation Concealed in Plain Sight to Be Disclosed—‘These Things Occurred Typologically to Them and Were Written Down for Our Admonition,’” in God’s Glory Revealed in Christ: Essays in Biblical Theology in Honor of Thomas R. Schreiner, ed. Denny Burk, James M. Hamilton, Jr. Most contemporary discussions of biblical types focus on this temporal axis that presents Old Testament types fulfilled by New Testament antitypes.
4. Ibid., 135-55.
What does it mean that “these things happened typologically to them”? First, it means God designed Israel’s experiences in the wilderness as earthly shadows revealing himself to them. The Lord assigned Israel’s many testings and punishments to reveal to them his holy will.[5] Second, it means we need to acknowledge that the Messiah was actively present among the ancient Israelites as Paul states, “We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did” (1 Cor. 10:9).[6] Third, Paul tells us, “they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” This obligates us to recognize that everything that happened typologically to the Israelites finds fulfillment in these last days activated by Christ’s coming. Christ’s advent in the tent of human flesh displaces his former presence in the cloud, the fire, and the rock from which water gushed.[7]
5. On God’s design of his visible created order as symbolic of the invisible realm, see Richard C. Trench, Notes on the Parables of Our Lord (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd., 1906), 12-15.
6. Ardel Caneday, “We Must Not Test Christ as the Israelites Did and were Destroyed: Pastoral Significance,” presented at the Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX, November 2023.
7. See Ardel B. Caneday, “Glory Veiled in the Tabernacle of Flesh: Exodus 33-34 in the Gospel of John,” SBJT 20.1 (2016): 55-72.
Thus, God’s revelation concerning Adam, vested with God’s image and likeness, suffices for Paul to affirm, “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47). For this reason, he wrote with confidence, that Adam “was a type of the one who was to come” (Rom. 5:14) and that Christ Jesus is the Last Adam (cf. 1 Cor. 15:45). Similarly, Peter’s use of “antitype” in relation to baptismal water indicates that Noah’s family “saved through the water” functioned as a type even though the apostle does not use the actual word “type” (1 Pet. 3:21). Consequently, God’s Adamic, Noahic, and Mosaic covenants, along with his provisions and stipulations, prefigured the new covenant that would be established by the Messiah, the greater one of whom Adam, Noah, and Moses were all earthly shadows.
The sketch below illustrates how the New Testament writers (other than the writer of Hebrews) employ typos and antitypos along the temporal-horizontal axis to track foreshadows in the Old Testament that find fulfillment in the New.
The Preacher to the Hebrews depicts this same temporal axis of Old Testament persons, institutions, events, and settings foreshadowing New Testament fulfillment with the coming of the Messiah, but he employs typos and antitypos for the vertical-revelatory axis missing from many scholarly discussions. So, instead of typos and antitypos, the author of Hebrews uses shadow for what God revealed to the Israelites and image for what God revealed to Christians. Neither a shadow nor an image is identical to that which casts a shadow or reveals an image. A shadow is only a fleeting copy. Likewise, an image, though enduring, is not to be mistaken for the thing itself. Despite this, resemblances of the original are sufficiently present in both the shadow and the image to confirm their common origin. The author of Hebrews makes this point explicit concerning Melchizedek. He was no pre-incarnate appearance of the Christ. Rather, God made Melchizedek to “resemble the Son of God” (Heb. 7:3). Thus, Melchizedek, whose sudden appearance with no genealogy, was simultaneously a revelatory shadow representing the Messiah to Abraham (cf. John 8:56) and a foreshadow pointing to the coming Christ (Heb. 7:1-3).[8]
8. See Ardel B. Caneday, “The Exegetical Significance of the Old Testament’s Silence in the Case of Melchizedek’s Ancestry and Progeny in Genesis 14,” in Appropriating Hebrews’ Scriptural Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century, eds. Dana M. Harris and J. David Stark (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, forthcoming).
The Implicit Vertical-Revelatory Axis of Biblical Types
Thus, when the Preacher depicts this temporal axis in Hebrews 10:1, he states, “the law having a shadow [skia] of the good things coming and not the image itself [autēn eikōn] of those things. . . .”[9]
9. Author’s translation.
Those under the Law Covenant lacked what New Covenant believers possess. Given the Preacher’s word selection in Hebrews 10:1, more accurately, the Israelites possessed a sketch (shadow) of the good things coming whereas we Christians possess the picture (image) of those same good things which have now come with the Messiah. Therefore, properly understood, the sketch and the picture are mere revelatory representations of God, whom “no one has ever seen” (John 1:18). The heavenly reality is the veritable, the real, the true, or the original, which both the sketch (skia) and the picture (autēn eikōn) represent analogically.
The veritable one, God’s Son, cast revelatory shadows resembling himself in the form of persons, events, institutions, and settings across the entire Old Testament landscape, occurring typologically to Israel in history and written down for our admonition (1 Cor. 10:11). The illustration below represents the vertical-revelatory axis of the Old Testament shadows and the New Testament image. Both shadow and image are analogical earthly representations of the singular heavenly Word who condescended first by casting shadows and at the appointed time “became flesh” (John 1:14), who “for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9).[10]
10. This image is adapted from Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co., 1973), 56.
Many biblical scholars have adopted a prescriptive definition of biblical typology that focuses on the horizontal-temporal axis where Old Testament types (typoi) prefigure New Testament antitypes (antitypa) that arrive later and fulfill the earlier foreshadows. Consequently, how they represent Scripture’s foreshadows falls short of accounting for the vertical-revelatory axis implicitly governing every biblical type identified by the New Testament writers, but explicitly expressed by the Preacher in Hebrews 8-10.[11]
11. For example, see Paul Hoskins, That Scripture Might Be Fulfilled: Typology and the Death of Christ [N.p.: Xulon Press, 2009], 120.
It is a mistaken notion, however, that “we are not dealing with typology” when the Preacher presents the True Tabernacle [hē skēnē hē alēthinē] in heaven as the type or pattern [typos, 8:5] for the construction of the antitype [antitypos, 9:24], the earthly Copy Tabernacle.[12] Far from being out of character with biblical types, the way the Preacher to the Hebrews uses type (typos, 8:5) and antitypes (antitypa, 9:24) is corrective to and complementary with the more commonly espoused horizontal-temporal understanding concerning Old Testament types.
12. Ibid. Against Hoskins who expressly states that concerning Hebrews 8:5 and 9:24, “we are not dealing with typology.” Even Vos stumbles by committing a word fallacy, equating the vertical-revelatory axis with the use of typos and antitypos in Hebrews. He states, “This, then, is the one scheme of typology that is peculiar to this Epistle. The Epistle, however, also uses the ordinary conceptions of type and antitype as they are used by Peter and Paul” (The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 59).
Much like he states in 10:1, in 8:5, the Preacher speaks of “heavenly things” [tōn epouraniōn] casting an earthly “shadow” [skia] which he also describes as a “copy” [hypodeigmati]. As we shall see, the vertical-revelatory axis, where heavenly realities (types) cast earthly shadows (antitypes), initiates the horizontal-temporal axis that follows the Bible’s plotline. So, Old Testament earthly shadows (skia), copies (hypodeigma), or types (types) foreshadow and climax in New Testament images (eikōn), antitypes (antitypos), and the coming good things (ta mellonta agatha).
For those most familiar with the horizontal-temporal axis, this way of speaking may seem foreign or misleading. How is it possible for an antitype to be in the Old Testament? Don’t antitypes belong in the New Testament? And what does it mean when Hebrews 9:24 uses the word antitype (“copies”) to describe the earthly structures of the Tabernacle in the Old Testament? These are important questions that I will answer below, but here, it is good to remember the principle of letting Scripture renew our minds. And in this case, it means considering the unique way Hebrews identifies types on a vertical axis. As I will demonstrate, this is not an alternative typology, but a complementary typology that reinforces the fact that types are (1) revelatory and (2) prophetic. For in fact, by including the vertical axis, we can see how the Tabernacle is both a reflection (antitypos) of the true temple in heaven, the one “not made with hands” (Heb. 9:11), and also a “type,” taken in the redemptive-historical sense, of the true temple that is coming from heaven to earth in the person of Christ Jesus.
Put theologically, therefore, the temple in heaven is the archetype, of which the earthly tabernacle is a type, the earthly analogy. Only, as Hebrews puts it, this earthly representation of the pattern in heaven is called by the Preacher an antitype. Admittedly, this use of language can be confusing, especially if we have formed our understanding of typology without attention to the vertical-revelatory axis. But it is biblical, and so a proper reading of Scripture requires consideration of the source of typology (the vertical axis) and the storyline of typology (the horizontal axis).
The Harmony of the Temporal and Vertical Axes
Returning to that storyline, God assigned all Old Testament foreshadows of Christ to function first as shadows revealing God’s will and purpose for Israel’s good in their own day. In this way, God gave Israel persons, events, settings, and institutions as earthly shadows to reveal heavenly realities concerning himself calling for their belief. And those earthly shadows, written down in Scripture, also foreshadowed those same heavenly realities for us in these last days.[13]
13. This is what Paul means when he wrote, “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Cor. 10:11).
Using the Tabernacle, which holds great prominence in Hebrews, the following graphic portrays how both the vertical-revelatory and horizontal-temporal axes are essential to biblical types. By way of a shadow concerning access to God, the Lord revealed his presence to Israel in the Holy Place within the Tabernacle. All of this foreshadowed the same for us in these last days when the Messiah, who tabernacled among us (John 1:14), announced, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” referring to his body” (John 2:19, 21).
Thus, the Preacher states, “For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (Heb. 9:24). Here, by calling the wilderness Tabernacle with its appointments and functions copies or antitypes of the true things, the Preacher’s point is obvious. That Tabernacle was an imitation, a copy of “the true things” in heaven. While this language may not fit our contemporary use of the terms type and antitype, this language clearly reiterates what the Preacher expressed earlier: “We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the True Tabernacle [hē skēnē hē alēthinē] that the Lord set up, not man” (Heb. 8:1–2).
The Preacher uses the adjective “true” (alēthinos) not as a contrast to false, but to characterize the earthly tabernacle as a shadow of the real. The Preacher speaks of the real, the original, the authentic Heavenly Tabernacle in contrast to the earthly shadow copy, accenting the vertical-revelatory axis in the same way John uses true (original) versus earthly copy repeatedly in his Gospel, even concerning mundane daily things such as food and drink.[14]
14. Cf. Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 58. John’s Gospel is heavily punctuated with this use of the adjective “true,” such as “true light” (1:9), “true worshipers” (4:23), “true bread” (6:32), and “true vine” (15:1), all depicting the original versus the copy.
So, if the Old Testament Tabernacle’s Holy Place was the antitype, the earthly copy, what and where was the type, the original? Again, the answer is found in Hebrews, when the Preacher tells us that Israel’s priests “serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” Hebrews 8:5 then continues, by citing Exodus 25:40: “For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern [typos] that was shown you on the mountain.’” Exodus 25:40 (LXX) governs, therefore, the Preacher’s statement concerning the vertical-revelatory axis. The Lord God showed Moses the pattern [typos] of the Heavenly Tabernacle he was to construct on earth.
Thus, the Preacher speaks of the Wilderness Tabernacle as a copy [hypodeigmati] and shadow [skia] of the Heavenly Tabernacle (Heb. 8:5; see the illustration above). By this, it is evident that the Preacher presents the original, heavenly Tabernacle (hē skēnē hē alēthinē) as the type (typos, 8:5) that governed the form and function of the earthly Tabernacle, which was a copy [hypodeigmati] and shadow [skia] of the heavenly things [tōn epouraniōn, 9:23]. And then, to take it one more step, the earthly Tabernacle also prefigured the coming Messiah, who “has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (Heb. 9:24).
At this point, we should acknowledge that following all these angles can be dizzying. Yet, to ignore them is to see redemptive history in only two dimensions. Far better is it to engage in the trigonometry of triangulating the vertical-revelatory axis with the horizontal-temporal axis, for together, they explain how God has revealed himself in type and shadow in preparation for the substance of the Son. Or as Hebrews 1:1–2 put it, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”
Seeing Typology Along Two Axes
Putting all of this together, we may find help by comparing the typology of Hebrews to Jesus’s Parable of the Sower (Matt. 13:1–17). Just as Jesus’s kingdom parable proceeded with many elements (e.g., the seed, the sower, the soils, the fruit, etc.), the Tabernacle was also a parabolic edifice with several figurative features—curtains, chambers, furnishings, a gold-plated ark, priests, and sacred activities. All these features in the presence of the pillars of fire and cloud were appointed by God as a harmonious symbolic display to teach that access to God requires atonement. Thus, the Tabernacle, with its multiple symbols (types), was itself a parable (parabolē), the term used in Hebrews 9:9.[15]
15. The Preacher uses parable (parabolē) also in Hebrews 11:19 concerning Abraham who “reasoned that God could even raise Isaac from the dead, from which he received him back in a parable.” The whole of Abraham’s and Isaac’s mountain experience was a parable. Genesis 22 provides numerous clues that the entire episode is infused with heavenly representations. “Thus, it is reasonable to infer that the human father and son are earthly shadows engaged in a parabolic drama that foreshadows the heavenly substitution when the Heavenly Father does not spare his own Son but gives him over for us all, whose Son subsequently rises to life.” See Ardel B. Caneday, “God’s Parabolic Design for Israel’s Tabernacle: A Cluster of Earthly Shadows of Heavenly Realities,” SBJT 24.1 (2020): 111-14.
The Tabernacle’s cluster of diverse symbolic trappings and priestly functions provided Israel with a parabolic shadow-copy of God’s throne room in heaven. In history, this was given to instruct them concerning the heavenly sanctuary and the kind of sacrifice God requires for humans to access his presence (Heb. 8:1–6). At the same time—or better, at the end of time—this original copy of the heavenly tent would give way to the later and greater tabernacle service of Jesus Christ. This was always the plan, and it was a plan revealed from the beginning.
For the Israelites, the Tabernacle signified the sacrificial system’s ineffectiveness to absolve the conscience of guilt before God, for the conscience is not an earthly chamber made habitable for God by external regulations that concern food, drink, and ceremonial washings. Thus, as a parable, the Tabernacle and its functions that shadowed the sanctuary of God’s presence also foreshadowed the heavenly things that awaited full disclosure “until the time of the new order” (Heb. 9:10), inaugurated when Messiah entered the heavenly sanctuary as high priest of the good things that are now here, including the cleansing of the conscience (Heb. 9:11).
The Old Testament persons, events, settings, institutions, and Jesus’s earthly analogies (parables) do not function accidentally but according to their creational design.[16] Both the Old Testament types and Jesus’s parabolic teaching bear within themselves the revelatory imprint of heavenly things. These heavenly things can be summed up under two principal forms of self-disclosure: (1) God’s self-revelation throughout his whole created order and (2) God’s word-revelation given through his prophets.
16. On the divinely designed nature and function of biblical types and parables see Richard C. Trench, Notes on the Parables of Our Lord (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd., 1906), 12-15.
Together, these two complementary forms of revelation find their telos in Jesus Christ, who is the full and final revelation of God. Yet, along the way, there is an eschatological tension that exists and builds as the God of heaven brings to earth all of his intended plans and purposes. Hebrews, perhaps more than any other book in the Bible, explains how God revealed himself spanning both time and distance between himself and his creatures. And for this reason, we learn much about biblical typology and the way it proceeds along two-axes—the vertical-revelatory and the horizontal-temporal.
And thus, as we take measurements of the Tabernacle in Hebrews, we conclude with one final lesson related to typology. Every biblical type entails first the vertical-revelatory axis wherein God reveals aspects of his will and purpose in earthly shadows, and then the horizontal-temporal axis wherein the Old Testament type prophesies and prefigures its New Testament fulfillment. Apart from the vertical-revelatory axis there would be no horizontal-temporal axis with the earthly Old Testament shadow prefiguring and prophesying its New Testament fulfillment. Indeed, the prophetic aspect of all the types derives from their vertical-revelatory functions assigned by God who authorizes them to be earthly copies and shadows of realities he reveals. For this reason, any definition of biblical typology that does not account for the Old Testament type’s vertical-revelatory aspect, given it by virtue of its earthly shadowing of an aspect of heavenly things, falls short of doing full justice to the Scripture’s presentation of Old Testament types and will lead to other missteps, such as supposing that biblical typology is a species of interpretation instead of revelation.
