Mercy, why does he do a particularly “catholic” job on this one, seeing we have very little typology in the Catholic church historically, and recent burst of a few of the simpler types (which are also mentioned in the New Testament, which makes them a bit safer as far as interpretation).
Wrong. Typology goes pretty far back in the Catholic Church. Some writing from the Church Fathers:
Letter of Barnabas (AD 70/79)
Moses, therefore, said to Jesus, the son of Nave, after giving him this name, when he sent him to spy out the land: “Take a book in your hands and write what the Lord says, that in the last days the Son of God will tear out by the roots the whole house of Amalec.” Behold, here is Jesus, again, not a son of man but the Son of God, revealed in the flesh by a type.
St. Justin the Martyr (AD155)
Sine it is written of Him in the Memoirs of the Apostles that He is the Son of God, and since we call Him Son, we have understood that before all creatures He proceeded from the Father by His will and power - for in the words of the Prophets He is addressed in one way or another as Wisdom and Day and East and Sword and Stone and Rod and Jacob and Israel - and that He became Man by the Virgin so that the course which was taken by disobedience in the beginning through the agency of the serpent, might be also the very course by which it would be put down. For Eve, a virgin and undefiled, conceived the word of the serpent, and bore disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy when the angel Gabriel announced to her the glad tidings that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her, for which reason the Holy one being born of her is the Son of God. And she replied: “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”
Tertullian (AD 200)
There is, however, a rule of faith; and so that we may acknowledge at this point what it is we defend, it is this precisely that we believe: There is one only God, and none other besides Him; the Creator of the world who brought forth all things out of nothing through his Word, first of all sent forth. This Word is called His Son; and in the name of God he was seen at various times by the patriarchs, and has always been heard in the Prophets; and at last He was brought down from the Spirit and Power of God the Father into the Virgin Mary, and was made flesh in her womb; and having been born from her, came forth as Jesus Christ.
St. Hippolytus of Rome (AD 204) Commentary on Daniel
And she said to her maids, “Bring me oil.” Indeed, faith and love prepare oil and cleansing unguents for those who are washed. But what were these unguents if not the commands of the Holy Word? What what the oil, if not the power of the Holy Spirit? It is with these, after the washing, that believers are anointed as with a sweet-smelling oil. All these things were prefigured through the blessed Susanna for our sakes, so that we of the present time who believe in God, might not regard as strange the things hwich now are done in the Church, and that we might believe that all of them have been set forth in figures by the patriarchs.
Lactantius (AD 304)
It is no wonder that you, who are far removed from the Wisdom of God, understand nothing of the things you have read; for not even the Jews, who were well-read in the Prophets from the beginning, and to whom the mystery of God was consigned, knew what they were reading. Learn, then, if you have any sense at all, that it is not because He worked miracles that we believe in Christ and that He is God, but because we have seen that in Him were fulfilled all the things which were announded to us beforehand by the predictions of the prophets.
St. Augustine (AD 400)
In regard to the sacrifices of animals, who among us does not know that they were enjoined more because they suited a perverse people than because God had any desire for such sacrifices? But even in these sacrifices there were figures of ours; for our being cleansed and God’s being propitiated are as naught to us if there be no blood. Christ, but whose blood were are redeemed and cleansed, is the truth of those figures.
There are lots more.
The Nicene Creed says the Holy Spirit has “spoken through the prophets” and that Jesus Christ “rose again in fulfillment of the scriptures.”
It’s really pretty silly to think that the Catholic Church for 2,000 years never noticed that the Old Testament is all about Christ and that it’s something that you just figured out yourself.
I think Christendom as a whole is guilty in that regard, except the one pure Holy Roman Catholic Church. She’s infallible. (sarcasm).
The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic is infallibly guided by the successor of Peter in matters of faith and morals when he speaks ex cathedra, from the Chair of Peter.
Anything else on Joseph (I kind of like this stone soup approach)?.
Joseph redeemed his people. He was thought to be dead and then was discovered not to be dead. He was his father’s beloved son. He was sold into slavery (died), and then rose to a high position (ascended into heaven) and called his people to follow him into the land of salvation from starvation.
I never knew being smart took so much work!!! 