Written by Kate McPhail
Typology as it is understood in a theological context refers to the study of the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible. More specifically typology seeks to identify people, symbols or events from the Old Testament as types that prefigure the arrival of Christ on earth which occurs in the New Testament. The antitypes that appear in the New Testament can thus be seen as a completion or fulfillment of the corresponding Old Testament types to which they are linked. The poem “A Paraphrase on Simeons Song” was written by the jurist Sir Matthew Hale and transcribed by Elizabeth Newell. Both Hale and Newell lived in the seventeenth-century when the practice and study of typology was quite widespread. “A Paraphrase on Simeons Song” is a poem that is based on a canticle found in Luke that is known as the Song of Simeon. The poem is rich with Biblical allusion and is informed by a broad typological understanding of time.
In both the Biblical passage from Luke and Hale’s poem, time is understood as the means by which everything is joined and redeemed through the figure of Christ. This perception of time is indicative of typological thinking. In his book “Christ Revealed: The History of the Neotypological Lyric in the English Renaissance,” Ira Clark describes typology as “that form of biblical interpretation which reads a faded Old Testament through the enhancing lens of the New, sees in Old Testament persons, events, and things imperfect predictions of New Testament persons, events and things. Both covenants reveal and are revealed by Christ: the Law and the Prophets and the Writings show God’s dispensations to mankind in Christ” (1). Typology can be viewed as a sort of framework for understanding not only specific events and figures in the Bible but also broader passages of time and history.
Technically speaking there are two important components which are the basis for typological structure, the type and the antitype. In “Typology and Seventeenth-Century Literature” Joseph A. Galdon explains that “in typological exegesis, the ‘type’ is usually applied to the Old Testament ‘shadow’ and the ‘antitype’ to the New Testament fulfillment” (20). He goes on to say that “the type is a model, a pattern which is fulfilled and perfected in the completed work of art, the antitype. It is this basic meaning of type and antitype, as pattern and impression, which is at the basis of all scriptural typology” (21). Hale’s poem makes direct reference to this typological convention in the lines reading “Visions, Types and prophesies as we/ Things at a distance in perspective see.” This reference to types is one of the strongest links Hale makes to the subject of typology within the poem because he uses the word ‘Types.’ In the context of the poem types can also mean symbols. The Oxford English Dictionary defines typology as “the study of symbolic representation, esp. of the origin and meaning of Scripture types; also transf. symbolic significance, representation, or treatment; symbolism.” The line that follows in the poem, “things at a distance in perspective see” conjures an understanding of time that couches it nicely within the typological framework of perspective. Time brings fulfillment just as Christ brings salvation and understanding.
Matthew Hale lived in the seventeenth-century, an era in which, according to Barbara Kiefer Lewalski “the typological mode of interpretation was alive and well” (79). Joseph A. Galdon confirms this, adding “it is obvious that men of the seventeenth-century read the Bible. It is equally obvious that they read the Bible in a special way, for the seventeenth-century reader invariably read the Bible typologically” (14). The prevalence of typological thinking in this time period serves as a good basis for understanding how and why Matthew Hale composed this particular poem. “A Paraphrase on Simeons Song” does more than just recount a story from the Bible, it also reframes the narrative into a contemporary perspective so that there are two points of reference for a typological framework–the past and the present. Hale places himself within the poem and in doing so creates a dual point of view. The speaker represents not only Simeon but Hale himself and working within both of these voices and spanning across all time is God himself, the “Blessed Creator” appealed to in the opening line and represented physically through Christ.
Hale’s composition of the poem and Newell’s act of copying it are both examples of neotypological reasoning put into action. Neotypology is similar to the traditional typology that has been discussed but goes one step further by making a personal link to the self. Ira Clark writes that “the characterizing features of the neotypological lyric are first, the poets’ strict definition of types, and second, their personal application of typology” (4). “A Paraphrase on Simeons Song” fits this description perfectly. The poem is ostensibly a re-telling of the story of Simeon that is found in Luke 2:25-35 but it also a personal poem that presents Hale himself as a type who is saved and redeemed through Christ. There is a parallel narrative in which both Simeon and Hale are reflected through and delivered by the omnipotent and all encompassing love of God, “the Joy of Israel/ The worlds Redeemer, blest Emmanuel” (Hale). The fact that Elizabeth Newell included this poem in her commonplace book adds further life and dimension to the poem, she takes Hale’s paraphrase and adds her own echo and voice to it through the act of copying.
Hale and Newell are thus both participants in varying degrees to a larger trend of neotypological lyricism that was practiced by Metaphysical poets such as John Donne and George Herbert. The trend included “a new, primary focus upon the individual Christian, whose life is incorporated within, and in whom may be located, God’s vast typological patterns of recapitulations and fulfillments operating throughout history” (Lewalski 82). In other words, the focus in religious poems began to turn inward, towards the individual. “Typological symbolism became in the early seventeenth century an important literary means to explore the personal spiritual life with profundity and psychological complexity,” poetry was used as a means through which to explore “the new Protestant emphasis upon the application of Scripture to the self, that is, the discovery of scriptural paradigms and the workings of Divine Providence, in one’s own life” (Lewalski 81). Understood in this light, Hale’s poem can be viewed as a personal exercise in celebrating Christ’s presence in his own life.
In the 1611 version of the King James Bible, Luke 2:25 reads “Simeon, and the same man was iust and deuout, waiting for the consolation of Israel.” Simeon is presumably an old man to whom God has made a promise that he shall see the coming of Christ before he dies. By twining the narrative voice to include both Simeon and himself, Hale’s poem carries the implication that Hale himself is also a “just and devout” man. The mirroring of Simeon and Hale’s voices carries throughout the poem. Maurice Farbridge states that “religion depends for its inexhaustible power upon symbols of its life and as soon as these symbols are performed they help to emphasize its existence” (10). Hale transposes himself over the symbolic figure of Simeon as a means to access a typological structure that will support him across the barriers of time and history to find and express union with his Creator. The poem implies that like Simeon, Hale recognizes that Jesus is the messiah who is prophesized in the Old Testament and also like Simeon, Hale celebrates the fulfillment of this prophecy in the figure of Christ. Thus “A Paraphrase on Simeons Song” is an excellent example of the use of typology in the seventeenth-century.
Works Cited
Clark, Ira. Christ Revealed: The History of the Neotypological Lyric in the English Renaissance. Gainsville, FL: University Presses of Florida, 1982.
Farbridge, Maurice H. Studies in Biblical and Semitic Symbolism. New York: Ktav Pub. House, 1970.
Galdon, Joseph A. Typology and Seventeenth-Century Literature. The Hague: Mouton, 1975.
The King James Version Bible: 1611 Edition. Online. Accessed 11/9/2015.
Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. “Typological Symbolism and the “Progress of the Soul” in Seventeenth-Century Literature.” Literary Uses of Typology: From the Late Middle Ages to the Present. Ed. Earl Roy. Miner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1977.
Oxford English Dictionary. Online. Accessed 11/12/2015.