In Romans 5, Paul says that Adam is a “type” or “pattern” of the one who was to come. Since the wider passage is about Adam and Christ, this is almost universally understood to mean that Adam is a type of Christ.
But, calling Adam a type of Jesus is odd. In Romans 5, Paul seems to present Adam as Jesus’ foil or even antithesis. His point is the sharp contrast and how far Jesus surpasses Adam, not how Adam prefigures Jesus. Even so, almost all interpreters state that this is what Paul means.
I’ve recently been convinced there’s a better reading: Adam is a type of Moses.†
I know it sounds ridiculous. Showing why it isn’t will take a bit of doing. Here are the the critical three verses:
12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned—
13 [F]or sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam, who is a pattern of the one who was to come. (Rom. 5:12–14, NRSV)
Verse 12 is an incomplete sentence that begins the “just as one man … so one man” comparison Paul is going to make between Adam and Christ. He won’t state both sides of this comparison until verse 18. First, Paul breaks off to deal with some reasons why his audience may reject it.
The objection handled by Verses 13–14 is that having sin start with Adam and spread death to all seems to treat all people the same, regardless of whether they’re God’s chosen people given the law (Jews) or the other nations (gentiles). At least part of his audience thinks Moses and the law make a fundamental difference. Rather than summing up humanity in two figures, Adam and Jesus, they would expect three figures, Adam and Moses and Jesus.
Paul doubles down, summarizing what he already argued in chapters 1–3: “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin” (3:9). Death reigns over those before Moses who are without the law just as it reigns over Moses and all who received the law with him.‡
But what about Adam? He’s before Moses, but he also transgressed a command from God. Paul explains that this is because Adam is patterned on Moses: Adam received God’s law and was responsible for obeying it. Adam is the template for both Jews (as a type of Moses) and gentiles (as one before Moses).
Because Adam represents both, Paul is now free to dispense with Moses and from now on just speak of the two men, Adam and Jesus. That is what the rest of the paragraph after verse 14 does.
There are two main objections to this reading:
The passage is about Adam and Jesus, not Adam and Moses! This is true, and this reading doesn’t dispute this. In fact, it clears the way for it. But the statement “Adam, a type of the one to come” is not a summary of the section. It’s the end of a sentence that clinches Paul’s argument that Moses is not a necessary middleman between Adam and Christ. These verses prepare the way for the Adam–Christ comparison.
“The one to come” is a messianic phrase that must refer to Jesus. In English, this is a strong objection. Elsewhere, Paul speaks of when “the Lord comes” (1 Cor. 4:5; 11:26; 2 Thess. 1:10) or how God sent his Son “when the fullness of time had come” (Gal. 4:4). The gospels are full of references to “the one who is to come” or “the coming of the Son of Man” or Jesus saying why “I have come.” All these references use the Greek verb erchomai. This verb can simply refer to coming or going, but it’s often freighted with messianic meaning.
In Romans 5:14, Paul instead uses mellow, a less common verb that can also mean “to come,” but tends to be more generic in simply pointing to the future. Paul went out of his way to use a less common word for “to come” that didn’t have messianic baggage. This is baffling if Paul meant to identify Jesus. But if he’s pointing to Moses, the shift to a word without messianic echoes makes sense.
Anyway, has anyone heard or read anyone else who understands Romans 5:14 this way? Do you see other major problems? Does this interpretation help at all?
Notes
† In modern times, this reading seems to have been first proposed by John A. T. Robinson, The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology, page 35. Since Robinson is a famous liberal scholar, this association may be one reason the reading is quickly dismissed by more conservative scholars (e.g. Robert Jewett’s Hermeneia commentary on Romans (p. 378) and C. E. B. Cranfield’s ICC commentary on Romans (vol. 1, p. 283).
‡ Romans 5:12–14 is shorthand for what Paul has already said in more detail before. In 1:18–25 people in general reject God’s light from the beginning of creation and turn from the Creator to serving other creatures; now, he speaks of sin coming into the world through “one man.” In 3:1–2 the Jews in general are entrusted with the oracles of God; now, the law comes to “Moses.” Paul encapsulates all the first people (whether just a couple or everyone in Romans 1) into “one man” and all the Israelites to receive God’s law into “Moses” because he is working towards a comparison which has “one man” on both sides. This is not much different than when Paul portrays the church as one woman to call her Christ’s bride, or when he portrays believers as body parts to show how they connect to Christ as the head.
I see it as Jesus and Adam are both a type. The type whose single individual actions brought about a different relationship between man and God. Adam’s one choice brought sin into the world. Christ’s one choice brought salvation into the world. I don’t think Jesus is an Adam, or that Adam is a Jesus, but that they are the beginning snd the end of a story. The one who brought death and the once who brought life.
My initial thought was given the Adam/Christ stuff was widespread in early Christian thought (outside Paul), the wide expectation of a new Moses and the belief that Jesus was the new and greater Moses, and even Jesus seemingly embracing this, I am not sure how that interpretation helps or why it is needed? Though Paul is not bound to that interpretation but he must surely know of it and how others perceive Jesus (in John 6 they think he is the prophet to come (for me that mans the new Moses of Deuteronomy) and try to make him king). Paul is all over the place at times it seems. As you noted, Paul breaks off to deal with a number of things. I consulted a few commentaries and they all mention it and honestly, the meandering back and forth is quite ridiculous:
Fitzmyer (Anchor): “Except for the formulaic ending in 5:21, Paul does not use the first person plural in 5:12-21, as he does in 5:1-11 and 6:1-8. This fact, plus the unified impression that this paragraph makes in Paul’s treatment of Adam and Christ, suggests to some interpreters that Paul may be incorporating here part of a writing composed for another occasion.” He takes the standard view though:
who is a type of the one who was to come. The sentence ends in anacoluthon, as Paul tries to bring his comparison, begun in 5: 1 2, to an end. He sees the first Adam as foreshadowing the future Adam, i.e., Christ, the “last Adam” ( l Cor 1 5:45), or the Adam of the eschaton. Paul calls Adam the typos of Christ, who is thus the anti typos, i.e.,what corresponds to the “type.” Ontypos, see the NOTE on 6:17. Here Paul uses it in a specific sense, “pattern, model” (as in Exod 25:40; Acts 7:44; Heb 8:5; Diodorus Siculus 14.41.4). Although Adam prefigures Christ as the head of humanity, the resemblance between type and antitype is not perfect; it is antithetical. Differences exist, and the rest of the paragraph brings them out; the antitype reproduces the type in a sense, but in a more perfect way. Without the Adam-Christ typology, Paul expresses the same idea in 2 Cor 5 : 1 4: “He died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” See Muddiman, “Adam”; Byrne, " ‘The Type.’ " It is hardly likely that tou mellontos is to be taken as neut., pace Biju-Duval (“La traduzione”).
Harvey (Exegetical Guide to Greek NT) also notes the cumbersome nature of the discourse: "The second paragraph of chapter 5 is complicated by the fact that Paul twice interrupts his train of thought to clarify what he has just written. The result is five parts (5:12; 5:13–14; 5:15–17; 5:18–19; 5:20–21), with the fourth part resuming the thought begun in the first. Paul begins a comparison intended to provide the reason Christ’s death was necessary for God to impute his righteousness to us: Adam’s sin (5:12). He breaks off the comparison, however, in order to explain the situation that existed between Adam’s sin and the giving of the Mosaic law (5:13–14). He then identifies the ways in which the comparison between Adam and Christ does not apply (5:15–17) before setting out the way in which it does (5:18–19). Finally, he explains how the law fits into this understanding of human history (5:20–21).
Harvey seems to take the traditional view: “Paul uses a relative pronoun (ὅς) with Adam (the “one man” of v. 12a) as its antecedent to return to his primary line of thought. Τύπος, -ου, ὁ (“type”) refers to a person or thing that prefigures another person or thing related to future redemption (Cranfield 283; cf. TDNT 8.246–47). The substantival participle τοῦ μέλλοντος (gen. sg. masc. of pres. act. ptc. from μέλλω, “be about to”) is a descriptive genitive (“of the one who was to come”) and connects Adam to Christ. See Dunn for a discussion of the history of the Adam/Christ parallel (277–79).”
Jewett (Hermeniea) also notes the disjointed nature: "The logical development is somewhat difficult to follow because the initial comparison between Adam and Christ in v. 12 is interrupted by historical and theological clarifications before it is resumed.4 The organization of this pericope has appeared to be quite complicated, with parallel lines in vv. 12-14b being interrupted in v. 14c, with v. 15a corresponding to v. 16a, v. 15b corresponding with v. 17b, and v. 15c corresponding with v. 17c. In the case of v. 13, there is a chiastic structure: law . . . sin; sin . . . law. Ian Thomson has proposed a much more elaborate chiastic structure encompassing the entire pericope,6 but his proposal is difficult to support in every detail.7
But Jewitt notes the view you propose in passing and rejects it (as you noted in your footnote):
That Adam constitutes “a type of the one to come” has occasioned much debate over Christ as the “second” or “last” Adam,98 with minor disputes over the unlikely suggestions that the “one to come” (tou` mevllonto~) might be Moses99 or that it might be taken as a neuter and refers to an event yet to come.100
Here is the footnote. where this view is found: : Robinson, Body, 35; Scroggs, Adam, 81; Haacker, “Probleme,” 16–19.
So those are some sources to dig up. I think the other two followed Robinson’s lead. Dunn mention them as well (below). Jewitt again:
The basic meaning of tuvpo~ is the hollow impression made by a f low or a form, with a wide range of subsequent meanings such as a mold for producing a shape, a seal to make engrav- ings, or a model for subsequent copies.101 Paul employs this term in a similar manner in 1 Cor 10:6 and in the context of moral example in 1 Thess 1:7; 2 Thess 3:9; Phil 3:17. In the context of OT characters or events pro- viding the tuvpo~ for characters and events in the new age, some have proposed the temporal sense of “an advance presentation” or a prefiguring of future events,102 while others suggest that Adam provided a kind of outline, a preliminary sketch,103 or a model104 of Christ. The translation “type” has been proposed to cap- ture this sense,105 but its scope needs to be delimited by the argument of the passage. In view of the contrast developed later in the passage, Adam has been viewed as the “antithetical correspondent” to the coming Christ,106 but such an antithesis does not seem inherent in the term itself.
Since the exact expression o{~ ejstin tuvpo~ (“who is a type”) does not appear elsewhere in the entirety of Greek literature, the exegetical question is how Paul delimits the typology. His primary interest appears to be in the idea of dominion:107 both Adam and Christ deter- mine the fate of their subjects (basileuvw in vv. 14, 17 [twice], 21 [twice]). In other regards, as the pericope goes on to show, Adam and Christ are more antithetical than similar. The historical-religious background of this comparison between Adam and Christ remains problem- atic. Despite claims that Paul’s view develops primarily on Judaic soil,108 there is no credible evidence that Jew- ish thinkers ever viewed the Messiah as a kind of second Adam.109 The idea of the original man as a redeemer figure surfaces in later Gnosticism and is a controversial issue in 1 Cor 15:45-47, which sustains the likelihood that Paul derived this comparison from Gnostic110 or proto-gnostic111 sources close to early Christianity. How- ever, no trace of polemic against an original spiritual Adam is visible in Romans,112 and Paul appears to employ the idea solely as a means to elaborate the dominion of Christ over believers.
Dunn (Word Biblical) rejects the view you are espousing:
Matera (Paideia):
Dunn (New Perspective):
I have no stake in this game and this was the first time I saw your view, but at the moment I find Dunn ( bold above) the most convincing.
Vinnie, thanks for digging all that up. I had looked at most of those, but I hadn’t checked Dunn’s Word commentary yet. He appears to be the only commentator to both mention the possibility that 5:14 means “Adam is a type of Moses” and offer something more substantive than calling it an “unlikely suggestion” (Jewett). Yet he’s still pretty thin on reasons:
“The one to come” is clearly Christ (not Moses, or “man under the law” as Robinson, Body, 35 n. 1, followed by Scroggs, Adam, 81, similarly Haacker, quite inappropriately suggested): Christ is the eschatological counterpart of primeval Adam; Adam is the pattern, or “prototype” (Käsemann) of Christ in that each begins an epoch and the character of each epoch is established by their action. That the actions are very different and the outcomes markedly disproportionate (vv 15–19) does not alter that basic similarity. Conceivably Paul has in mind the fact that the mark made by a stamp is precisely the converse of the pattern on the stamp itself. (p. 277)
The “clearly” and “quite inappropriately” is just bombast. The only substance is that “Christ is the eschatological counterpart of primeval Adam.” I agree, yet this doesn’t in any way mean that Paul must here be calling Adam a type of Christ instead of Moses. That Christ is the counterpart to Adam is common ground for both readings.
The problem is that Dunn assumes that at the end of verse 14, Paul steps out of his discussion about the time between Adam and Moses and inserts a phrase that sums up his whole coming argument. So “Adam is a type of Christ” is Paul’s major point that he’ll then go on to talk about. But instead, I think Paul is using “Adam is a type of Moses” to close off his discussion of the time between Adam and Moses so that he can return to his major point, which is comparing and contrasting Adam and Christ. The key disagreement between these two readings isn’t over whether Paul is more focused on juxtaposing Christ to Adam or Moses to Adam, but instead about whether his comment about Adam being a type of someone is a summary of his entire argument or a conclusion to a digression.
Because Dunn takes the “type” phrase as a summary, he (and practically all other commentators) is left trying to explain how Adam being a type of Christ fits with all the ways Paul contrasts and differentiates the two. That leads him to say that that Adam might be a type of Christ in the sense of “the converse of the pattern on the stamp itself”! That is an astounding reach to try to save an interpretation. That simply isn’t how Paul uses “type.” He next uses the word in Romans 6:17 to say that they “have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted.” Paul doesn’t mean they became obedient to an inverted image of the teaching!
Paul’s argument in 5:12–21 is not about Adam being a type of Christ – it is about the two men, Adam and Christ. As Dunn says,“each begins an epoch and the character of each epoch is established by their action.” This is a contest, one man vs. one man. That is the language Paul begins with in verse 12, and that is the language he consistently uses in 15–19. Turning this mano a mano contest into a comparison of a stamp with its imprint, a reality with its reflection, weakens and muddies Paul’s sharp contrast.
If Paul is saying that Adam is a type of Moses, that doesn’t similarly undermine his larger point. He’s speaking to Jews who grew up thinking that a contest like what Paul is describing could only be between Adam who brought sin and death and Moses who brought law and life. They’ve now accepted Jesus as Messiah, but how does Jesus fit in to what they already know? Is he just another addition, similar to Moses? No, Paul takes pains to show that Jesus is in an entirely different category. It is Moses who is relegated to being typefied by Adam. The two-man battle isn’t between Adam and Moses, because these two are truly reflections of each other, like a stamp and an imprint. As such, they blend into the single figure, Adam. With Moses removed as the other contestant by the end of verse 14, Paul is ready to focus entirely on the contest between the two men, Adam and Jesus.
Anyway, there’s more to say, especially on how he sees mellow as eschatalogical, but I have to run now. Thanks for engaging. I was hoping you’d jump in.
Adam (symbolically represents humanity that fails to live in the divinely intended communion and keep living in it. Jesus as Second Adam is a new start for humanity to become what we were intended to be. His obedience where humanity has failed opens up the possibility of a new potential of a reformed humanity, who will be as we were intended to be in all our human society and ecological relations to the world.
I think it is wrong to assume that “type =/= foil or antithesis”.
The meaning of words (especially of an ancient language), is determined by its textual and historical context.
What does it mean in this text (and other works of the same author)? What did this word mean during that time?
"Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples [tupos, plural] to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.
Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.” We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did — and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. We should not test Christ, as some of them did — and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel.
These things happened to them as examples [tupos, plural] and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come."
1 Corinthians 10:5-6, NIV
So the word “tupos” can be used as a foil or antitype.
Bad act → negative consequence
In that way, they are a “tupos” to us. So:
Good act → positive consequence
As Paul explains:
“For if, by the trespass of the one man [bad act], death reigned through that one man [bad result], how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life [good result] through the one man, Jesus Christ [good act]!”
Ever since moving to a more old earth/evolutionary creationist position, I have thought of Adam as being someone who would have fulfilled some of the roles that both Jesus and Moses played if he had not sinned. In my view, if Adam was a real historical figure (for example, the first man to have a covenant relationship with God) and he had not sinned, he may have revealed God to the people in the surrounding region and have founded a new civilization centered around the worship of Yahweh. In Christian tradition there is a strong theme that Adam was a priest-king over Eden, kind of like Jesus is also described as priest-king in the book of Hebrews. My unsubstantiated theory is that if Adam was a real historical figure and hadn’t sinned, he would have acted as a sort of intercessor between humanity and God until Christ came, whereafter he would concede his reign to Jesus the true priest-king. This would make Adam both like Jesus and like Moses to some degree. This is based on the idea that the incarnation would have happened regardless the fall. Some may object that it assumes Adam was a real historical figure, but it is a fun idea.
Thank you for bringing up 1 Corinthians 10. That passage does show that tupos can be a negative example. However, I don’t think it shows tupos referring to a negative contrasted by a positive image, as in a foil. In that passage, both sides are negative, just as normally both sides are positive (Rom. 6:17–18; Phil. 3:7; 2 Thess. 1:7; 3:9; 1 Tim. 4:12; Titus 2:7; 1 Pet. 5:3). A tupos can be positive or negative, but what’s critical is that both sides match.
In 1 Corinthians 10, we need to establish what both sides of the tupos are in order to see if they match or are inverted. The first side is easy. “God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples [tupoi] for us” (vv. 5–6, and similarly in 8–11). So, on one side we have God’s anger resulting in judgement. It’s not just the people’s disobedience, but the result of that disobedience that provides the type or example.
And how does that relate to the Corinthians, the other side of the type? Paul doesn’t say that the Israelites were judged as an example of how in Christ there is no condemnation. That would be an inverted example, but that’s not what we get. The Corinthians, like those in Moses’ day, have indulged in sexual immorality and idolatry while eating spiritual food (vv. 8–11, 14–22). As Paul will go on to describe, this is again resulting in God’s wrath and judgement (11:27–30). The judgement they are receiving is typefied by the judgement Israel received in Moses’ day. Both sides of the typology are negative.
In Romans 5:14, the type is again negative – on both sides. Both Adam and Moses received God’s law and brought sin into the world. Paul will confirm this point at the conclusion to this paragraph: “But the law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (v. 20). The law and Moses are associated with multiplying sin, typefied by Adam. Jesus is not in that same category. This passage links Moses to Adam so that it can contrast Adam and Jesus.
Yeah, 100% God, but it does change the 100% human.
Perhaps the error here is thinking of God as a type, …which would not be same as the human type. But the teaching Jesus is 100% human and 100% God means this must be incorrect. God is not a type, certainly not meaning He is not any of these other types. We are defined by limits but God has no limits. God can be anything according to His will.
I think the OP is a good demonstration of the trouble you get into when you enslave God to human definitions and theology to say what God cannot do because it is contrary to some human definition or dogma.
How about we consider the question, "If God could just become 100% human as He did with Jesus, then why didn’t He do that with Adam to begin with. It is because God seeks a relationship with others who are not God – an eternal parental relationship where there is no end to what God can give or to what we can receive from Him. Becoming human to begin with would not accomplish this (to be sure, this can be discussed in more detail). He did it with Jesus in order to restore us to His original intention. But why doesn’t this make Jesus a different “type?” Because that would defeat His purpose. The type of Jesus is human, the same as Adam. That Jesus is God is not about His “type” at all.
Of course this is not just speaking of Adam being human but also given the role as the source of an inheritance from God to all mankind. But I don’t think that role is what you are questioning. Or are you taking this too far to make this role the totality of Jesus, because of course Jesus was more than just a second Adam. This was only one of His roles.
No. Adam receive a warning – a parental commandment. To call this receiving God’s law isn’t right. It would negate the law God gave later, because it would mean all of that is extraneous. Adam did not require the law because he had the guidance of the living God as a direct participant in his life. The law is a poor substitute for this participation of God, and Paul demonstrates its rather severe flaws. This idea that there was some law of God from the beginning and it was all about obedience to that law is a distortion and completely WRONG!
how do you biblically support this view given that Paul explicitly says in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death and we are also told in Romans 5:12 that through one man sin enterred this world?
If sin only enterred the world because of Adams transgression, and the “gospel” is directly related to the atonement made by the messiah which was to be “spread to all the world” (Mark 16:15) after Christs ministry. Why do “other hominids” need the gospel, because under TEisms theology, they hadnt the mental capacity to sin?
If hominids evolved into us…how do you reconcile that evolution introduced sin (so to speak). That has huge problems for the idea that we evolve to become more spiritual and are capable of becomming closer to God. In any case, the bible says the wickedness of mankind will increase (so theres that).
It still doesnt answer the dilemma that we are only judged according to our knowledge…so hominids dont need the gospel…God has already written his laws on their hearts and in their minds. They would follow by instinct and thus not need salvation…same as animals. (or are you claiming there is no salvation for the “other hominids” and animals?)
Your claim there theologically is not so simple as you think it is.
I realize it is not what is meant by comparing Adam and Jesus, but if you consider Adam’s history as literal, he and Jesus would be the only two men with DNA directly synthesized and sequenced by God, so were a kind of type in that respect. and Eve would have XY genes carried over from the rib, and might cause a controversy at the Olympics should she try to compete.
Yes, and there are other ways the two are compared, sometimes pointing out similarities and sometimes differences. My point with this topic isn’t to deny all positive comparisons, but to show why I don’t think Paul is making a positive comparison in Romans 5:12–21. As such, I think the “type” language of verse 14, which is often connected to Jesus, ends up muddying what Paul is saying there.
But in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul does have more to say about similarities between Adam and Christ. Even here, though, he focuses more on the differences, and he doesn’t link them as Adam being Jesus’ type. Jesus is the “second man” (in the sense of human, not male) and the “last Adam,” terms that get across both their similarities and the way Jesus exceeds Adam on every measure.
Sure, I agree. But I don’t think that’s what Paul is trying to convey in Romans 5:14 (for one thing, who’s a type of whom is in the wrong order to mean that). What you’ve said seems closer to Paul’s thought in 1 Corinthians 15 and Philippians 2.
It’s an interpretation based on the common recognition that Adam’s story is a universalizing preview to Israel’s story. Adam is formed by God, dropped into a land of plenty, given commands to follow (both to eat and what not to eat), then exiled from that land after disobeying. Whole books have been written to show the parallels in painstaking detail.
1 Corinthians 15 has has the same contrast we see in Roimans 5: a man of dust v.s. a man of heaven. In Philippians 2 the contrast can only be by implication, while A&E were tempted to make themselves like God, Jesus made Himself like man.
But as I said above the type Paul is talking about is certainly more than just being human but is about being the seed/foundation from which humanity derived life and being thereafter. That certainly isn’t Moses who along with the law is only relevant to the nation of Israel (and those devoted to the study of the OT).
But I don’t think Paul sees it this way (and neither do I). For Paul it is clearly about all of mankind and not just Israel. I frankly think that was the revelation which opened His eyes to see so much more in Christ than He had in with the rabbis.
Paul’s argument about the two men is about that, yes. And you’re in good company in thinking the type must be about the same thing. Most commentators assume the type is Jesus. In that case, in verse 14 Paul must switch mid-sentence from talking about the time between Adam and Moses to summarizing the whole one man vs. one man contrast he is about to make. And further, he must be using tupos in an unconventional way that can be more focused on differences than similarities.
Only after accumulating this interpretive baggage do some commentators consider whether the type could be of Moses instead. Rather than seeing how “Adam is Moses’ type” allows them to let go of that baggage and read tupos in its usual sense and read the sentence as all about the same thing, they only consider it with that baggage firmly in place. And so the alternate reading is easily dismissed because Paul’s main point isn’t to compare Adam and Moses.
Yes, it is about all of mankind. That’s what I mean by a “universalizing preview.” The beginning of Genesis takes Israel’s story and says this is also the human story. We can’t read Israel’s history and say, “those crazy, rebellious people,” because we’re the same people. By starting with Adam (better, Human) telling Israel’s story in miniature, we’re also able to find ourselves in Israel’s story.
Paul is treating Adam as both type and antitype§, which can be confusing. Adam is a type of Christ in that the actions of the one implicated the many, but is an antitype in that his actions brought death whereas those of Christ brought life.
That’s where Paul links the two deaths: the transgression brought death, and the later death did away with transgressions. One went from life to death, the other from death to life.
It’s worth mentioning that “type” and “antitype” don’t really fit here; “pattern” is a better rendition for the Greek, and Paul is in good company when he “flips” the pattern in his comparison.
I’ve heard Moses mentioned as an “inter-type”, but not just with Adam, also with Abraham. The broader concept was that since Adam was the “first man” and thus a type of the “true man” to come, and since all the great OT figures are types of Christ, then Adam can be a type of everyone in between. Adam in that context functions as a type of David as well, and of course David is a premier type of Christ. I think that the point was sort of that all these figures showed a bit more about the coming Messiah, so they’re all wrapped up in a group between Adam and Jesus.
§ I note that “anti-type” and “antitype” are not the same; the anti-type is the one who/which corresponds to the prior type, while the antitype is a type but in reverse or opposing contrast.
Interesting idea, but I don’t think anyone here holds to it.
Actually there have been theologians who pretty much went there; I remember one who held that Jesus looked exactly like Adam as part of a sort of theo-biology.
týpos as a Hermeneutical Term.
a. Events in the wilderness are týpoi in 1 Cor. 10:6 (cf. typikṓs in v. 11). The apostle has the events and not just the OT texts in mind. God caused these events both to happen and to be recorded because of their essential similarity to his end-time acts. The likeness is not just external, nor does it rule out difference in view of the eschatological nature of God‘s present work. But Paul here stresses the basic likeness so as to relate baptism and the Lord‘s Supper, which the Corinthians misunderstand, to the saving acts of the God who personally met Israel in salvation and judgment. The word týpoi might, of course, mean “examples”, but the context suggests that it has here the force of “advance presentations” intimating eschatological events. “Types”, then, is the best translation.
b. Rom. 5:14 demands the same rendering. In the havoc he wrought, Adam is for Paul a týpos through which God intimates the future Adam (Christ) in his work of salvation. Christ corresponds antithetically to Adam and also emulates him. The týpos here is the advance presentation, but with a suggestion of the hollow form which makes an opposite impression. The “shadow of what is to come” in Col. 2:17 stands in close analogy.
from the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, single volume edition
Normally, a type is used to show how in certain respects two things are the same. To use your term, one corresponds to the pattern of the other. It doesn’t mean the two are identical on all fronts, but they match on the details raised.
When Paul says Adam is a type/pattern of the one who was to come, the only details he’s mentioned about Adam to this point are that “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin.” This is not the pattern of Jesus! That’s why interpreters add a new category of meaning to tupos to allow it to be a contrast rather than a pattern. This seems to be the only way to make sense of how Paul could call Adam Jesus’ tupos. (Either that, or read in similarities that Paul doesn’t bother to point out.) Every other New Testament use of the word works as a pattern or an example, but here it must mean an antithesis, the “hollow form which makes an opposite impression.”
By allowing tupos to also mean its opposite, the word ceases to be useful. There are other ways of simply comparing two things, dealing with similarities and/or differences. A tupos is more rigid. It’s similar, especially for Paul, to “image” language. Just as it doesn’t work to say that because an image is a reflection, it’s backwards, it also doesn’t work to say that a stamp is a hollow form that makes an opposite impression. That may be the case when the word is used for an actual stamped imprint (John 20:25), but not everywhere else where it’s a metaphor. Both “image” and tupos are metaphors for how things match, not how they differ.
Who do you have in mind for Paul’s good company? I don’t think it could be other New Testament writers who use tupos the same way; I don’t see any. Certainly it’s possible to establish a pattern between two, then point out differences, but the problem is that here Paul starts with what is different and uses this to establish a tupos.
Sure, they’re all human, and once tupos has been watered down to mean any comparison or contrast, anything can be a type of anything else. Adam is a type of carrots because both come from the ground. Or Adam is a type of carrots because carrots are orange and Adam isn’t. It all works!
A key reason I’ve come to appreciate the alternate reading that Adam is Moses’ type is that it reclaims tupos as a meaningful term. Paul is showing that Adam truly matches the pattern of Moses on the specific details he mentioned. Adam brought sin and death, just like Moses’ receiving of the law brought sin and death (Romans 5:20–21). As for Adam and Jesus, that isn’t a matter of one being a tupos of the other, but of two contestants, one man vs. one man. That language, rather than tupos language, is more than adequate to draw out both their similarities and differences.
Of course. Much in Christianity is unprecedented. Only a complete unbeliever would be surprised by this.
I don’t think that quite captures the meaning, especially when the later one is seen as setting the pattern of the earlier one – it is not the later one following the earlier one but the earlier one foreshadowing the later one. In fact it seems strikingly similar to the difference between the view of the believer (who sees God working towards something) and the unbeliever (who simply sees people imitating others in the past).
Frankly, if I was going to take the skeptical unbeliever POV I would suggest that religious people simply suffer from an overactive faculty for seeing patterns in events (like shapes in the clouds). But I guess we can also see some of this in scholars trying to come up with things to write about whether they are religious or not.
Strongly disagree! It is a role not a factory production. Just because you say how one ruler is a good king and another is a bad king doesn’t mean the word “king” doesn’t apply to both. Them being the same “tupos” is the basis for comparison. Otherwise how can you compare them at all?