Literal and typological interpretation

This is a reality to which modern biblical scholarship has sometimes been blind, insisting on an atomistic style of reading that frequently proceeds as if the parts of any particular biblical book had little to do with the whole, and as if whole biblical books had little to do with others in the same canonical collection…This language emphasizes not just that there are "resemblances" in various prats of the Great Story, but that the Story itself moves ever onward…The literal and the typological (figurative) are best understood not as two different ways of reading, but as two aspects of the same way of reading. The latter comes into its own not so much at the level of a sentence or a paragraph, but at the same level of larger entities like whole books and even collections of books…We are not dealing in OT narrative with isolated texts, or even with isolated books. We are dealing with texts and books transmitted together by people who were already reflecting upon them together, as sections of a larger, unfolding Story–one reality, described in individual segments. I. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Baylor 2017), 94,99-101.

i) That's a very insightful explanation of typology. It breaks new ground, demonstrating the essential continuity–indeed, identity–between "literal" interpretation and typological interpretation. They aren't different in kind but degree. Typology operates with the same principle, but extends it to large blocs of material. 

ii) That said, it would be easy for secularized Bible scholars to accommodate typology in the sense of claiming that the narrative books of Scripture were redacted and combined to generate a sense of thematic or messianic diachronic progression, but that's editorial legerdemain. It's just manipulating stories or texts. To take a supernatural view of typology requires a higher view of inspiration and providence than Provan's own position.