The Bible's Use of Foreshadowing Shows That Its Author Is God
By Joel Settecase / March 14, 2021
What Are You About To Read?
Earlier this week I had Prof. Michael Jahosky back on the Think Institute to talk about the Bible’s use of foreshadowing and typology (watch it here or listen here), and how these literary elements make sense if one affirms the Bible’s divine authorship (it was “breathed out” by God) and make no sense if one denies it.
I’ve articulated my Argument From Biblical Foreshadowing before (here and here). And what follows is basically a combination of those two articulations. In this iteration of the argument, I home in on three examples of foreshadowing related to the atoning, sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.
I wanted to present my notes which I brought to the episode with Jahosky, in order to convey the Argument in a way that is thoroughly succinct and . Some time I will formally write this up (perhaps in my forthcoming book), but for now this will have to suffice.
N. B. These are my notes (slightly edited and adapted for this blog) and may therefore contain typos or other oversights. This isn’t a scholarly article per se, but I think the argument stands nonetheless. I think this is a really fascinating area of study, and as far as I know this argument is original to Yours Truly. I love studying the Bible as God’s word and as a masterpiece of literature authored by God. The idea of uncovering and revealing the literary techniques God used in the writing (and editing) of Scripture is an idea I found exciting. Maybe the same is true for you. In that case, I hope this is helpful.
—JS
What Is Foreshadowing?
Foreshadowing - to, “show or indicate beforehand” or “prefigure” (Dictionary.com). When an author uses foreshadowing by incorporating elements that ominously allude to events that will happen later, we readers admire their ingenuity.
My Argument from Biblical Foreshadowing
Preamble:
It works like this:
An Old Testament prophet living in, say, the year 800 B.C. will have proclaimed something purportedly from God or else have had some sort of extraordinary life experience.
Eight centuries later, an event in Jesus’ life will happen that displays an eerie similarity to the Old Testament occurrence.
One or two instances of this could be written off, but it happens over and over.
Premise 1: Any use of foreshadowing in a work of literature is attributable to its author.
An adept reader or literary critic can spot foreshadowing. The use of foreshadowing is a sign of a skilled author and a well-told story.
Now, he concept of foreshadowing only makes sense in terms of literature with an author guiding the story.
It wouldn’t make sense to look for foreshadowing in a newspaper or scientific journal.
Without an author shaping the narrative, there might be interesting coincidences, but we couldn’t rightly call it foreshadowing.
Premise 2: If the Bible contains foreshadowing, that foreshadowing is attributable to its Divine Author (i.e. God).
Here’s the point: we can recognize foreshadowing when we read it in literature, and we give credit to the author responsible for it.
When we find foreshadowing in the Bible, it only makes sense to attribute it to the author for it as well.
But who is that?
Not the prophets who wrote hundreds of years before Christ—they were long gone by the time the events were fulfilled.
And not the authors of the Gospels—they recorded eyewitness testimony, but they weren’t responsible for the original Old Testament allusions. Who, then, gets the credit?
The Bible claims to be written by God (2 Tim 3:16)
This means God is its author
Literary techniques like foreshadowing are exactly what we'd expect to see in a book written by a skilled author.
If there are indisputable examples of foreshadowing in the Bible, then the author of the Bible is God. If the Bible exhibits foreshadowing—especially in a way that isn't attributable to the human author—then this corroborates the belief that the Bible is authored by God.
Premise 3: The Bible does contain the indisputable use of foreshadowing.
This is what makes the Bible so fascinating: it is rife with apparent foreshadowing.
A few (really cool) examples (cited in the podcast episode with Jahosky):
He would be betrayed by a friend who ate his bread.Foreshadowed: Psalm 41:9 – “Even my friend in whom I trusted, one who ate my bread, has raised his heel against me.”Fulfilled: Mark 14:10, 32-42 – “Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them… “Jesus said, ‘…one of you will betray me – one who is eating with me… the one who is dipping bread in the bowl with me.”
The Lord would be valued at just 30 pieces of silver.Foreshadowed: Zechariah 11:12-13 – “Then I said to them, ‘If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.’ So they weighed my wages, thirty pieces of silver’ …the Lord said to me–this magnificent price I was valued by them.’”Fulfilled: Matthew 26:15 – “‘What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?’ So they weighed out thirty pieces of silver for him.”
The coins would be thrown into the temple and would go to a potter.
Foreshadowed: Zechariah 11:13 – “‘Throw it to the potter,’ the Lord said to me… so I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw it into the house of the LORD, to the potter.”
Fulfilled: Matthew 27:5, 7 – “So he threw the silver into the temple and departed… They conferred together and bought the potter’s field with it….”
Side note: What are we dealing with here? Is this like prophecy?
Now, I have not been referring to these examples as prophecies, because I wanted to avoid misconception.
Sometimes, when people hear prophecy, they think of a plain statement that clearly predicts a future event.
Some of these just don’t fit that description. Yet doesn’t it take much more skill for an author to seamlessly weave clues into the narrative, rather than blatantly announcing what is going to happen later?
Conclusion: Therefore the foreshadowing of the Bible is attributable to God (and God is its author).
There is just no plausible way that Jesus or his disciples (much less his accusers and executors!) could have, or would have, manipulated the circumstances surrounding his death in order to so closely parallel so many Old Testament passages.
The accumulation of all these various allusions, predictions, and eerily specific similarities between Old Testament passages and the details of Jesus’ death (the three cited above along with all the rest in the Bible—and there are myriad!) is proof of the Bible’s divine authorship, to the extent that to deny it would be to give up literary criticism altogether.
Implications (1): What if we deny the Bible’s foreshadowing?
Denial of the Bible’s use of foreshadowing, which is extremely plain to see, after one has seen the evidence, is at least a willful denial rooted in bias and at most tantamount to the denial of the possibility of any author using foreshadowing in any literature at all.
Even if one wanted to be hyper-skeptical and deny a few of these examples, there is just no reasonable way to deny all 20, or even the majority of them.
To do so, one would have to abandon all recognition of foreshadowing in any literature.
Someone bent on disbelieving the Bible’s divine authorship might be willing to go that far, but that’s a high price to pay.
Implications (2): What if we recognize the Bible’s foreshadowing?
If we recognize the obvious use of foreshadowing in Scripture, and that this only makes sense given the Bible’s divine authorship, what does this entail about what else we should believe—and what we should do next—regarding God?
It means God is real.
And he really is behind the authorship of the Bible.
And he really did foreshadow and fulfill the death of his Son, Jesus Christ. If the death and resurrection of Jesus is an event that God Almighty would spend so much time (literally centuries) crafting and pointing us toward (and it is), then it must really be important.
Don’t you think you really ought to find out more about why God did that?
Learn more about this subject:
Podcast episode: “What is the Gospel?”
Podcast episode: “Why God killed Jesus” (with Stephen Wellum)