The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan Volume 7: Solomon's Temple Spiritualized, The House of the Forest of Lebanon, The Water of Life

These treatises, written in the year of Bunyan's death, 1688, are edited from the first editions: one of which was published in his lifetime, the others posthumously. Variations in the traditional typological method of biblical interpretation, they concentrate on Old Testament events as prophecies that eventually found fulfillment in the New Testament. Solomon's Temple, his House of the Forest of Lebanon, and the water flowing from beneath the altar of the Temple, help to demonstrate how these are all shadows of the true reality to come in the life and faith of Christ. In a wider context, the book provides examples of another kind of "similitude"--the creative techniques by which Bunyan sought to capture the imagination, and which encompasses simile, metaphor, emblem, symbol, analogy, and above all, allegory.