Customer Reviews

Temple Theology

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book gets four stars because Margaret Barker manages to provide, in one place, some illuminating material related to the first (the Solomonic) Temple, its liturgical worship, and the theology informing it. We should be grateful to her for her hard work in seeking out and publishing this material!

However, although I agree with much (not all) of what she writes, and though she retrieves some things that are far more than helpful to have retrieved, she makes first Temple high-priest Liturgies (or rather, her attempted _reconstruction_ of them - that's the key) Absolute, and she interrogates the Deuteronomic redaction from that Absolute, along with everything else that comes after the Babylonian Exile in the history of Jewish/Christian thought. Everything else that follows in history after the first Temple is merely, to Barker, a crater from its impact on the minds of the ancient Israelites.

OVERALL, IN SUM it is as if both the present form of the Christian and Jewish Liturgies and the traditions (spiritually and historically) of each are treated as both derivative and void of value (or at least interest) if they do not consciously lay hold of, and allow themselves to be informed by, Barker's retrieval. I felt dislodged from authentic time as a result. One must live in the present, with the existential options available now. Margaret Barker does not do this.

However, she must be read, because despite her errors, she does pave the way for OT scholarship to really retrieve what was going on in the Temple (it was not magic, and it was not appeasing an angry God), because Temple worship is where almost _all_ OT theology emerges from - maybe all of it (if you disagree, read Fletcher-Louis' article, below, first). I would read at least 3 essays to help move past this book.

First, I would read another article by Barker (available online) called "Atonement: the Rite of Healing." It's much better than this book. You can find it for free on the internet. I read this article before this book, and it's why I bought the book to begin with. The book may be lacking, but the article is quite good, even if it could be summarized in 5 or 6 pages.

Second, an _amazing_ text, a scriptural analysis of these themes, available for free on the internet, is provided by Crispin H.T. Fletcher-Louis (from the University of Nottingham) in an article called "The Cosmology of P and Theological Anthropology in the Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sira," where he goes through Genesis 1-3 and Exodus 25-40, as well as Proverbs and Job, and shows how they're all related to the worship of Israel in the Temple Liturgy. This is the best article in biblical studies that I've read in years, and it might be the _best_ place to start. In connection to Fletcher-Louis' work, I would strongly recommend reading at least the appendices to Alexander Schmemann's work, "For the Life of the World," which deal with liturgical worship and the epiphanic nature of symbols, contrasting the original understanding and experience of liturgical symbols and their roles in disclosing and manifesting God with how they're handled within medieval Roman Catholic and subsequent Protestant Christianity (as well as Masonic rituals, and Mormonism), where "symbolic" means "not real." The section in Fletcher-Louis where he mentions the Temple's theophanic cloud of incense is wonderful, and reading Schmemann's comments about symbols and sacraments in connection to this and many other points of Temple practice (and others, such as the sprinkling of the blood/life of the lamb as the giving of YHWH's blood/life because of the Tetragrammation placed on the goat, which Barker brings up - see Lev.17:11) is very helpful.

Third, I would read Jon Levenson's book "Sinai and Zion," and if you have the time, his book "Creation and the Persistence of Evil."

After reading these, I would begin reading St. Maximus the Confessor, especially his _Mystagogy_, Andrew Louth's book on Denys the Areopagite, as well as texts from before the Council of Nicea, particularly the early liturgies, some of which are contained in the _Ante-Nicene_Fathers_ series, edited by Roberts and Donaldson, published by Hendrickson. _Springtime_of_the_Liturgy_ by Lucien Deiss is also a helpful source. Liturgy, it is quite clear from the evidence of history, was not something dreamed up as time went on and the Church became "corrupted," but rather, was present in the Church from her beginning, since she understood herself, after the revelation and gift of her head, Christ Jesus, as the fulfillment of the Temple, which same Temple was liturgically rich (see my future review of Steven Bigham's book on the matter of iconography in the early Church).

AS A FINAL NOTE, lest these "correctives" give the impression that Barker is not worth reading - there are less than ten authors whom I have been so impressed by on the first read that afterwards, I went out and bought almost everything they wrote in English. Margaret Barker is one of them, and she is worthy of a good stretch of my bookshelves, and more. God grant her many years!

This reviewer comes to Margaret Barker's "Temple Theology" after nearly a decade of reading her great corpus of Biblical studies, including The Gate of Heaven: The History and Symbolism of the Temple in Jerusalem, The Older Testament: The Survival of Themes from the Ancient Royal Cult in Sectarian Judaism and Early Christianity, The Lost Prophet: The Book of Enoch and Its influence on Christianity, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God, The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy and The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy. This vast and prodigious output is unparalleled in the field of Biblical criticism of the past century. However, it will be admitted that much of her work is so dense in its scholarship and explication, that it becomes exceedingly difficult to the specialist, let alone the lay person.

Now we come to the present work, "Temple Theology," which is no more nor less than the reprint of a series of lectures given by Barker at the University of London in 2003, and reprinted in book form by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 2004. This plainly written text with a minimum of footnotes provides an excellent introduction to and a summary of the Barker corpus of scholarship.

As is shown by the attacks made in companion reviews on this site, Barker's honest and courageous reexamination and reworking of centuries of Biblical scholarship--mostly German and chiefly Protestant--is not an easy task. Barker's chief thesis is as deeply disconcerting to the traditional Biblical scholar as it is to the devoted Evangelical worshipper. Her central thesis--that Jesus Christ was essentially a restorer of a lost hierocentric religion rather than an inventor of something new--has successfully shaken the very foundations of Old Testament and early Christian scholarship.

Barker is much like the lone voice crying in the wilderness, facing an army of dead and living German Protestant scholars whose researches laid the foundation for a century and more of intertestamental scholarship, and whose life labors are now called into serious question by Barker's stunning and groundbreaking labors. She also faces a vast multitude of Christians of every possible denomination who have been taught to believe in a strict trinitarian monothesism--a tenet which Barker devastatingly shows is inconsistent with both ancient Jewish religion centered on the First Temple and the Temple-centered religion which Jesus restored and revitalized. Nevertheless, Barker is not entirely alone in the wilderness. Her work is now admiringly and diligently studied by courageous Catholics, German scholars of the Protestant tradition, Russian Orthodox, Mormons and others. More than sixty careful reviews of Barker's work have been published, including a lead review in the Times Literary Supplement in 2003.

That being said, Western academia is not yet sold on Barker, with complaints that while her work is remarkably convincing, it leaves too many unanswered questions. To this reviewer, that is to be expected in the groundbreaking work of any pioneer scholar--as the circle of knowledge grows, so does its outside edge of ignorance.

I am not much of a reviewer of books. My reviews can be summed up basically with the line, "It was good!", or, "It wasn't good!" Margaret Barker was an unfamiliar author before I decided to pick this small introduction up. From the first lines to the last, she captivated me. I don't know too much about Old Testament or Judaical Temple Theology, so when I say I learned a lot, keep that in context. This book made me want more on the subject and more from the author. Quite a fun experience reading this and getting my feet wet with this side of Judaism and Christian background.

There are a few books one picks up that one finds difficult to put down and fewer of them are non fiction. In this little gem one finds a glimpse into a distant past which any reader of Old or New Testament would find familiar, but not so clearly revealed. New documents of the last century but more recently come to light again reveal to us a view of this sacred place and its theology. Professor Barker has done a masterful work of bringing these works together to paint us a picture of Solomonic temple worship and its impact upon Christianity. I just finished reading this little book and have begun to read another of her wonderful works on the ancient temple and its symbolism.

In this book Professor Barker shows to us that the Gospel of the New Testament and indeed its theology and rites have roots in the distant past and that Christianity was not a radical departure from, but a logical outgrowth from and fulfillment of Judaism. The rites of the first temple are clearly shown to us and, as pointed out clearly, since they were given to Israel as a means to bring them into the presence of God by Yahweh, who is shown to us by the good professor to be none other than Christ himself, (not in the trinitarian sense) a means to bring them to their Messiah, even Christ the Lord. Also that Jesus was the son of the ineffable God is also demonstrated, a clear representation of the distinctness of their persons.

It would appear from this treatise that not only Judaism, but also Christianity may morn the loss of the temple in their worship, a means to bring them closer yet to God and give them a more clear and beautiful picture of that God they worship. Temple worship is much to be desired, not the sacrifice of animals, which was done away in Christ, but those things which bring one into the presence of God while yet on earth.

To anyone desiring to understand the continuity of God's work and word from beginning to end, this work will go a long way toward fulfilling that desire.

I first read Margaret Barker's book, THE GREAT ANGEL, and have been reading everything she has written since then. The crux of almost all her books is to find the OT symbolism or in NT Christianity. This becomes very fascinating for the Christians who lost their Hebrew perspective under Greek influence. While this book is mainly on the Jewish Temple, undertanding the original meaning helps in seeing parallels in what Jesus also taught. I highly recommend this author and her easy to read style written more for the lay person than in a stuffy scholarly format.

Margaret Barker has another direct "hit" with her Temple Theology. It was most interesting to read and provides a real insight into the temple roots of early Christanity.

The ideas presented by Barker are interesting and worthy of closer study, but this particular book is filled with unsubstantiated assertion. The idea that the narrative of the exile from Eden might be symbolic of the exile of the old priesthood from the new (Second) Temple--this offered with no footnote what so ever. The idea that Islam correctly ascertained that Abraham followed a religion other than Judaism. The idea that melchezidek represents the older religion. That's just a few of many examples. I'm not saying that nothing in the book is worthwhile, but about once every other page I find myself saying, "Says who!?"

This book is labeled as an introduction, and it is quite slim, but to make such bold statements with no corroboration, even in an intro, is just amateur.

I enjoyed this book very much. Although the analysis and information are scholarly and a bit erudite, the details and connections the author makes are very interesting and insightful.