Patristic Typology

The Fathers read the Old Testament as a set of figures that find their meaning in Christ, and they did not invent the method: St Paul says the rock in the wilderness was Christ and calls Adam a type of the one to come. So the passage through the Red Sea is baptism, the manna is the Eucharist, the three days of Jonah are the tomb, the bush that burns without being consumed is the Virgin bearing God, and the ladder Jacob saw is the same. This is not allegory in the loose sense: a type is a real event that really happened and that means more than it knew. The hymnography of the Church is built almost entirely out of it, which is why a reader who does not know the types cannot follow the services.