Typology has been the typical way of understanding Jesus' presence in the Old Testament. Building on the ideas of Time in the Hebrew Bible, we can see that the types/patterns available to us are not necessarily pointing forward in a prediction-fulfilment formula, but pointing upward to a type/pattern/reality that always exists. Therefore we can claim, instead that these stories are patterns of Jesus, that they are patterns of the true reality in heaven, and in Jesus that true reality has come down to us in physical form. A small but important distinction from traditional typology.