Fearless symmetry: A reformed recouping of Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism with special reference to the New Testament's use of the Old Testament

There have been many works in the last two decades dealing with literary criticism of the Bible and the Bible as literature. Much work has already been done in the areas of typology and Old Testament quotation in the New Testament. However, there has been little research combining the fields of archetypal criticism with an approach to the New Testament's use of the Old Testament. The present work seeks to identify and critique Frye's archetypal criticism and then to recoup certain aspects of it as a tool to nuance the understanding of the use of typology by New Testament writers in some of their quotations and allusions to the Old Testament.;This is accomplished through a review of the personal and historical context in which Frye produced his archetypal criticism. Next is a summary of the specific presuppositions, methods, and principles of Frye's criticism through an examination of Frye's key writings on criticism and on the Bible. A critical evaluation of his criticism from a Reformed perspective reveals that Frye's archetypal criticism, while helpful, follows an anthropocentric radically metaphorical ahistorical bent which leads to a counterfeit on the truth of the legitimate archetypal patterns found in the Bible. A positive recouping of his insights for Biblical studies and for the New Testament's use of the Old Testament is achieved by subsuming his theory under a Biblical worldview that stresses the sovereignty of God. This sanctified version of Frye's typological approach is dubbed "archetypology" which includes typical typological patterns but extends these patterns to include narrative structural patterns. This demonstrates that the monomyth of Jesus can be seen as the center of the Bible with Israel and the Church as analogically reflective of Jesus as displaced myths. Finally, three New Testament test cases (Matt 2:15; 1 Cor 10:1-11; 1 Pet 3:18-22) are examined to demonstrate the fruitfulness of archetypology as a valuable tool for extending and deepening the use of typology for understanding some uses of the Old Testament in the New Testament.