Marc Zvi Brettler, “Israel’s Scriptures in the Hebrew Bible,” in Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Writings: The Use of the Old Testament in the New, edited by Matthias Henze and David Lincicum (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2023), 74.
Typologies in the Hebrew Bible have a variety of functions. Comparing people to Moses, for example, generates meaning: it shows that the later individual has some of Moses’s characteristics or partakes in his greatness. Other typologies highlight YHWH’s greatness – he provided an exodus for the Israelites not once, but several times. And typologies show connection to earlier texts or times and thus continuity between the present and the past. This broad function is shared between many late biblical authors and many New Testament writers, where this last purpose of highlighting continuity, that the New is not New but is a continuation of the Old, is especially significant. The main New Testament prooftext for this – “do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill (Matt 5:17) – is found in the Sermon on the Mount…as an example of Jesus-Moses typology with its allusions to Sinai/Horeb.
The Amateur Exegete 