Figural reading therefore is always a matter of “reading backwards,” discovering previously unanticipated correspondences between a later event and an earlier text. An example may clarify the point. The story of Jesus’s raising the dead son of a widow at Nain (Luke 7:11–17) strikingly recalls the account of Elijah’s raising the son of the widow at Zarephath (1 Kgs 17:17–24). But the narrative in 1 Kings is hardly a “prediction” of a future event. And the evangelist Luke offers no indication that