Teaching Christianity
was to be given.[74]
35, 50. Tychonius lays down a fifth rule, which he calls "about times." By it much can be discovered or inferred that is hidden in the holy scriptures about the length of times. Now he says that this rule works in two ways, either by the figure of speech called "synecdoche," or by proper numbers. [75] The figure of synecdoche leads one to understand either the whole from the part or the part from the whole; thus one evangelist says something happened after eight days, which another says happened after six, when in the presence of only three disciples on the mountain, the Lord's face shone like the sun and his clothes like snow (Mk 9:1–3; Lk 9:28–29). Each of the things said about the number of days, after all, could not be true, unless the one who said after eight days is understood to have included the last part of the day on which Christ foretold it would happen, and the first part of the day on which he shows it was fulfilled, as two whole and complete days, while the one who said after six days is taken to have counted only the whole and complete days in between.
It is by this manner of speech, in which the whole is signified by the part, that that problem about the resurrection of Christ is solved. After all, unless the last part of the day on which he suffered is taken for a whole day, that is to say with the previous night joined to it, and unless the night in the last part of which he rose again is taken as a whole day, namely with the Lord's day that was dawning joined onto it, you cannot get the three days and three nights during which he foretold he would be in the heart of the earth (Mt 12:40).
51. By proper numbers, though, he means those which divine scripture gives pride of place to, like seven or ten or twelve and any others there may be, which careful readers will be happy to recognize. Often enough, you see, such numbers stand for the whole time; thus Seven times a day will I praise you (Ps 119:164) means exactly the same as His praise is always in my mouth (Ps 34:1). They have the same value too when they are multiplied, either by ten like seventy and seven hundred—thus Jeremiah's seventy years (Jer 25:11) can also be taken spiritually for the whole time in which the Church finds itself among foreign nations; or by themselves, like ten times ten making a hundred, and twelve times twelve a hundred and forty-four, the number that signifies the total company of the saints in the Apocalypse. [76] Thus it is clear that it is not only problems about times that are soluble by these numbers, but that their meanings spread much more widely, and worm their way into many places. This number in the Apocalypse, after all, does not refer to times but to people.
36, 52. Tychonius calls the sixth rule "about recapitulation," which he discovered by being particularly wide awake in his attention to the obscurities of scripture. There are some things, you see, that are said in such a way that they seem to follow in the order of time, or to be told in continuation of some narrative, while in fact the narrative is being imperceptibly turned back to earlier events that had been left out; and unless they are understood by this rule, mistakes can be made. Thus in Genesis, The Lord God, it says, planted a paradise in Eden to the east, and placed there the man whom he had fashioned; and God further produced from the earth every tree that was beautiful and good for food (Gn 2:8–9). This seems to be saying that this was done after he had placed the man he had made in paradise, though in fact after briefly mentioning each thing, that is that God planted paradise, and placed there the man whom he had fashioned, the writer goes back by way of recapitulation, and adds what he had left out—how, that is to say, paradise had been planted: that God further produced from the earth every tree that was beautiful and good for food.
Next he went on to add, And the tree of life in mid-