τύπος

From the study of 1 Corinthians 10:11

Range of meaning

τύπος starts with the mark left by a blow (from τύπτω, 'strike'). From there it came to mean an impression, a stamped image, an outline, a model or pattern to copy, an example to follow or avoid, and a pattern that points ahead to something later. The adverb τυπικῶς means 'in the manner of a τύπος': as a pattern, as an example.

Against the English

BSB, NIV and ESV say 'as examples' (ESV 'as an example'), WEB 'by way of example', KJV 'for ensamples', YLT 'as types'. 'Example' catches the moral-warning side. 'Types' keeps the sense of a pattern that God built into the events themselves.

How it drifted

Later Christian teaching made 'typology' a technical system in which Old Testament persons and things are 'types' that point to Christ, the 'antitype'. That system grew partly out of verses like this one, but Paul's adverb is not yet a technical term. Here it means the events were patterned so that they warn the later people of God.

Used elsewhere in the period

In Exod 25:40 LXX Moses is to build by the τύπος (pattern) shown on the mountain, a passage quoted in Acts 7:44 and Heb 8:5. Paul calls Adam a τύπος of the one to come (Rom 5:14) and speaks of leaders as a τύπος for believers to copy (Phil 3:17; 1 Thess 1:7). BDAG lists τυπικῶς here as 'typologically, as an example or warning'. 1 Cor 10:11 is the earliest known use of the adverb; later Christian writers took it up.