Customer Reviews

The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God

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I found this book from a footnote of another book I was reading. Since then I've bought all her books. The Great Angel is perhaps her best written work and best argued. Her hypothesis is that Elohim refers to the Most High God and that Jehovah (Yahweh) was one of his sons. There were 70 Sons that ruled the 70 nations and Jehovah was the God of Israel. After Jerusalem fell in 600 BC, the Jews had problems reconciling their God of Israel as being superior to the other Gods while being held captive in Babylon. Over the centuries, one brand of Judaism had confusion between the Most High and Jehovah and eventually Jehovah was elevated to the position of the Most High in their minds and superior to all others. The Angel of Yahweh is seen as a second God that would eventually lead to threatening a form of monotheism that was growing more and more exclusively strict. Another brand of Judism (Enochic Judaism)in contrast tried to preserve the ancient beliefs of the Davidic Temple Cult. It was this brand from which Essenes and Christians sprang. By the second Century CE the other Jews would put a label on this heresy as the TWO POWERS in Heaven. Sound far fetched? Not after you read her documentation and reasoning. It's a very convincing argument especially when you read the works of Philo and others. I would have given this a higher rating but some arguments she assumes the audience understands without building them. ...

This is an excellent book by a talented scholar. Margaret Barker provides an insightful look of Israel's Second God in this impressive, small book.

One of my favourite sections is her discussion of Deut. 6:4 (the "Shema") and 1 Corinthians 8, where she argues Paul, and contemporaries, understood the Shema as a verse supporting the unity of Yahweh (henotheism), as opposed to the Trinitarian eisegetical interpretation by mainstream Christians or the ultra-strict monotheistic interpretaion in modern Judaism. As a student of theology in Ireland, and an active Latter-day Saint, I have a great appreciation for this book.

This is wonderful book with lots of groundbreaking ideas that every Christian should read to understand the New Testament. Barker posits (based on extensive textual and historical evidence) that Israelite theology placed two powers in heaven, Elohim and his representative Jehovah (Yahweh). She shows that the first christians could accept christ as God because he was Jehovah, and Elohim was his father. While it may challenge some preconceived ideas, this book sheds lots of bright non-secular light on the Bible.

While I do not agree with Barker's main conclusion - that El/Elyon was exclusively equivalent of the Christian "Father in Heaven" and Yahweh was the preexisting Jesus (I think "Yahweh" covers both) - this book is a great reference into the primary sources. A must-have for any serious theological library.

Those unacquainted with the work of English independent scholar Margaret Barker are in for a rare treat. It's always an intellectual thrill to encounter an author who makes one rethink and re-evaluate an historical proposition the reader has always held or accepted as a given. Such is Ms. Barker's accomplishment, one she performs with intellect, elegance, and an undeniable mastery of her subject matter, a vast corpus of ancient writings representing over a thousand years of religious history.
In "The Great Angel," Ms. Barker asks and resolves a fundamental question: Just who were the deities whom ancient Israelites worshiped? As other reviewers have mentioned, Ms. Barker determines that the pre-exile Israelites were either henotheists or polytheists, depending on how one defines these terms. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "henotheism" as "the belief in one god as the deity of the individual family, or tribe, without asserting that he is the only God; considered as a stage of religious belief between polytheism and monotheism." Polytheism presupposes a pantheon of gods, each with its own sphere of influence or authority; usually there is one ruling god, and the lower gods are more or less equal in their powers and dominions. Monotheism, of course, is the belief in only one God; this belief is normative for almost all modern Christians, Muslims and Jews. Among Christian or post-Christian religions, only the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ("Mormons") can be said to have henotheistic elements of its theology. (I leave aside the vexing debate about whether the Mormon religion is truly "Christian," although I will point out that if Ms. Barker is right, then that Church's truth claims have found significant support from an unexpected source, an English Methodist lay preacher!)
In particular, in this book Ms. Barker argues that pre-exile Israelites worshiped both El or Elyon (roughly equivalent to the Christian identification of God the Father), and Elyon's son Yahweh--called Jehovah in the English language (roughly equivalent to the Son or Son of Man, Jesus Christ); and worshiped both as distinct personages. Only as a result of Judean king Josiah's "reforms" and the Babylonian Captivity was the worship of Yahweh as Elyon's Son--the Great Angel--suppressed and collapsed into the worship of Elyon. These two gods thereafter became the one God of Jewish ethical monotheism, epitomized in the writings of the Second Isaiah. As I mentioned, I am only aware of the Mormon Church's doctrine that the Jesus Christ of the New Testament is the same as Jehovah in the Old Testament as being somewhat equivalent to the religion that Ms. Barker posits as normative for ancient Israel.
What makes Ms. Barker's work so distinctive is her command of a vast array of primary source material; not only the Old and New Testaments, but pseudepigraphic literature (particularly I Enoch), Gnostic materials from Nag Hammadi and elsewhere, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Fathers of the Church, as well as Jewish and Christian apocryphal and eschatological literature written from before the Babylonian exile (roughly 600 B.C.E.) until 450 C.E. That's a thousand years. Ms. Barker wears her scholarship lightly; she writes as much for the educated layperson as she does for her fellow scholars. A reader may honestly disagree with her conclusions, but cannot due so on the grounds that our author is ignorant. Ms. Barker seems not to have any particular theological axes to grind, only seeking a fair hearing of her hypotheses in the public arena. Nor can the reader complain that Ms. Barker's hypotheses and supporting arguments are couched in dense prose comprehensible only by experts in the field. On the contrary, she writes with great clarity. The reader may be overwhelmed by the vast amount of material she presents, but will not be required to have the aforementioned Oxford English Dictionary at hand to unpack Ms. Barker's prose.
(As an aside, I mention that many published scholars of religion could take writing lessons from Ms. Barker. In this regard, her writing resembles that of Bart Ehrman, a much-published professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Not only do these folks have something interesting and important to say, they also perform this task with maximum clarity and minimal obfuscation. Quite simply, they're a joy to read.)
If I have any criticism of "The Great Angel," it is that the author is rather skimpy in her citations to her sources. I like my scholarly books with lots of footnotes--perusing and unpacking them is half the fun, a great way to find other relevant publications and unknown authors. Rather, Ms. Barker too often cites her own body of published work as the source to which the inquiring reader should turn. But I'm already a convert; it would be nice to have a more complete list of other experts who've weighed in on the topic under consideration.
On the other hand, the dearth of citations may not be as bad as it seems, for once you've begun reading one of Margaret Barker's books you'll want another one, so fascinating and compelling are her ideas. I've read three others ("The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom of God," "The Lost Prophet: The Book of Enoch and its Influence on Christianity," and "Temple Themes in Christian Worship"), and have others on my "to read" list. Each book stands on its own, but taken together they represent a solid and coherent revisionist history of Ancient Israelite religion, as well as Early Christianity. Thankfully, most of her books are in print.
Just be prepared to dedicate a large portion of your book budget over the next few months to Ms. Barker's books. If Judeo-Christian religious history is an area of interest, you won't be disappointed by Margaret Barker's writings; you might disagree with her, but this won't happen out of boredom.
"The Great Angel" has it all: A great author, clear and informative prose, fascinating subject matter, and serious implications should her hypotheses prove correct. What more could you want in a book?

I found Margaret Barker to be an excellent Biblical Scholar and she has confirmed the God of the Christian and Judaic religion has no understanding about the First Born of the Father, Yahweh who amongst the first Christians was understood to be Jesus Christ. Therefore the Monotheists are wrong and the Deuteronomists were wrong and merely misunderstanding the nature of the Godhead and the Hosts of Heaven. She has confirmed the beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) were taught correctly on many levels from Joseph Smith jnr. to Our Modern President. Yahweh aka Jehovah is Jesus Christ and a separate individual The Son of God literally The Son of El... So Monotheism is false. I seriously recommend anyone curious about the early Church to read Margaret Barker.The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God

Mrs Barker presents both a very interesting theory that is potentially profoundly important, and many fascinating outlooks historically held about matters pertaining to her arguement. However, she only seems to present these facts in order to demonstrate that such a theory(which is summed up pretty satisfactorally on the back cover)is historically possible, whereas the reader, who is left ignorant of this, ends up spending a lot of time struggling to discern which facts she is meaning to use to present the details of the mechanics of her arguement, and which ones she is presenting for contrast or merely because they are entertaining, when there doesn't appear to be a concise detailed elaboration on the main theory being presented, only(again) support that it is historically possible.

As someone who has had trouble equating some of the behavior of the God of the Old Testimate(which seems to be more the behaivior of a finite, but very Great Angle, which is why I bought this book) with that of the all-knowing Creator and sustainer of the universe, who knows all men's hearts and is sad when even an obscure sparrow falls from the sky, I believe a theory something like Mrs. Barker's is very helpful to consider.

I think a much simpler book describing her theory and explaining it a little with a lot of space devoted to describing exactly Who she believes did what where in the Bible would be very eye-opening and helpful to a lot of people.