R. Meynet, Jesus Christ accomplit les Écritures, RBSem 44, Peeters, Leuven 2024 (234 p.)
The portrait of Jesus drawn by the first three Gospels, throughout the story of his passion and resurrection, reveals a whole series of figures from the First Testament: ‘the figures of origin’, Adam, Abel, Noah, Abraham and Joseph; ‘the figures of history’, from Moses to Jeremiah, via Joshua, David above all, and Elijah; ‘the figure of the end’ with the Suffering Servant who represents the end of figures.
A renewed reading of the Passover of Jesus is thus proposed, which gives pride of place to the ‘typological’, or ‘figurative’, reading of the Fathers of the Church. It is the evangelists themselves who present the central and founding event of the Christian faith as having occurred ‘according to the Scriptures’. The ancient figures that punctuate all of history from the beginning are assumed, recapitulated and brought to fulfillment in Christ.
This central section is framed by two complementary chapters which show how the Cross of Christ fulfills the fundamental institutions of Israel: circumcision, Sabbath, kashrut and temple; then how consecrated life continues the work of Christ in the Church and the world.
The first chapter deals with the current resurgence of typological reading.The final chapter is a kind of photo of the time when the abundant river of typology was lost, continuing its underground course. At the birth of critical exegesis, typology was expressed in the images of the Biblia pauperum, which reached its apogee in the sixteenth century in the tapestries of La Chaise-Dieu.
