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The Kingdom of God has been a major concern of New Testament scholars for many years. What did it mean to Jesus? What does it mean for Christian belief and practice today? 'To understand what was meant by the Kingdom of God' writes Margaret Barker in the Introduction, 'it is necessary to recover what remains of that hidden tradition of the holy of holies and the high priesthood... Recovering the original Kingdom... enables us to glimpse again the original vision. We see... the complexities of the Kingdom that explain what it became in later Christian teaching.' The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom of God shows how the variety of beliefs about the Kingdom, and the related problems of eshatology, all derive from Temple traditions about the holy of holies. This inner sanctum was the Kingdom in the midst, the Unity beyond all change and decay. It was the state whence the Lord came forth, and where the faithful would go, to see him in his glory. 'We live in a time when politics, and also geopolitics, are enormously affected by passionate arguements over ehat it would mean to establish the "Kingdom of God" on earth. Anybody with an interest in the outcome of those arguements should pay close attention to Margaret Barker's insightful and thought-provoking investigation of the background and context in which the first Christians spoke of the Kingdom.' Bruce Clark, Religious Affairs Correspondent, The Economist
About the Author
Margaret Barker is a well-known and high-selling author and former president of the Society for Old Testament study. She is a member of the ecumenical Patriarch's Symposium on Religion, Science and the Environment and a Methodist Local Preacher.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
What did the Kingdom of God mean to the first Christians.
Margaret Barker has been attempting for many years to reconstruct the world view of the first Christians - Jews who were waiting for the Messiah, the Anointed One. This work she calls Temple Theology. At the heart of this is the belief, widespread at the time of Christ, that the temple in Jerusalem was an impure, apostate temple. The Messiah would restore the original temple, the temple of Solomon.
This is Barker's twelth book, out of fourteen to date (2011). At 128 pages of text, it is relatively short. In this book she points out that to understand the Kingdom of God, we must understand temple traditions about the Holy of Holies, the place where the High Priest entered and became an angel, shining with the glory - the presence - of God. It is the Kingdom not in Heaven, nor in the future, but "in the midst".
As ever, Barker draws on a wide range of sources, not limiting herself to canonical works. Whilst her language is simple, the text is packed with ideas, making the book a slow but compelling read. An essential read for anyone interested in what Christianity meant to the first Christians.
Margaret Barker has been attempting for many years to reconstruct the world view of the first Christians - Jews who were waiting for the Messiah, the Anointed One. This work she calls Temple Theology. At the heart of this is the belief, widespread at the time of Christ, that the temple in Jerusalem was an impure, apostate temple. The Messiah would restore the original temple, the temple of Solomon.
This is Barker's twelth book, out of fourteen to date (2011). At 128 pages of text, it is relatively short. In this book she points out that to understand the Kingdom of God, we must understand temple traditions about the Holy of Holies, the place where the High Priest entered and became an angel, shining with the glory - the presence - of God. It is the Kingdom not in Heaven, nor in the future, but "in the midst".
As ever, Barker draws on a wide range of sources, not limiting herself to canonical works. Whilst her language is simple, the text is packed with ideas, making the book a slow but compelling read. An essential read for anyone interested in what Christianity meant to the first Christians.
6 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Having some familiarity with Meg Barker's work on the Old Testament, I was intrigued by the ideas behind this work (and her other works on a similar theme). And the central idea - that there is a suppressed tradition describing the Kingdom of God in which the Jewish temple and Holy of Holies were symbolic of wider, deeper realities - comes through clearly enough. But I found Barker's style overly dense, and quite disorganised. This typically means that a chapter's core idea is only articulated three-quarters of the way through, being preceded by an assumption that the reader is already fully acquainted with the writer's scheme of thought. This gives one an unnerving sense of stumbling into a conversation part-way through. And whilst Barker's schema explains well some otherwise obscure New Testament phrases, I can't help feeling that an argument resting on abstractions from long-vanished architectural features of the temple is far too recherché to find much resonance with `Kingdom' talk among Jesus' followers today, whatever the book's back-cover `blurb' may claim.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Not Much New ... Still Loads of Fun
19 Mar 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom of God
I just finished "Hidden Tradition" and I would say that there's not a whole lot new in it that you haven't read in some of her other works. But, this is the gist of the book:
The Holy of Holies (and what happens in it) is the Kingdom in the midst. When the High Priest enters the Holy of Holies, he sees the Kingdom and is transformed into the Angel-priest or the LORD and emerges from the Holy of Holies as the embodiment of the Kingdom. He is empowered to then restore the Kingdom in the land and among his people. Margaret Barker spends a lot of time talking about Enoch/Melchizedek traditions and how they shaped the first century understanding of Jesus.
What I found most interesting were her speculations on what Jesus experienced in his Baptism and what he saw when he was driven into the desert by the Spirit. (Mark's description of Jesus' temptation by Satan in the wilderness ends with: "And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him." She claims that having overcome Satan's temptations, Jesus was granted an Enoch-like throne vision in which he experienced himself enthroned upon the cherubic-beasts of Ezekiel and being worshipped by angels.)
She spends a little bit of time interpreting the parables of the Kingdom in terms of temple theology ... I wish she had expanded this a bit.
At the very end of the book she discusses the relationship between the Book of Revelation and the Fourth Gospel ... and ends with a nice, uncharacteristically straightforward discussion of the Temple themes in John. I've not read her "Revelation of Jesus Christ" ... so I don't know if this last part of her book is a condensed form of what she says in that or not.
Despite everything which frustrates me about her (for example her tendency to suggest a tenuous link between two obscure sources and then proceed as if the link were firmly established ... "Could Jesus have known of the visions of Enoch? ... Since Jesus clearly knew of the visions of Enoch etc...) despite all that and her frustrating inability to stay on topic ... it's still a fun read and she kept me up well past midnight on a few occasions with my Bible open trying to follow her argument.
Have you read "Temple Themes in Christian Worship"? So far, that's been my favorite of her work.
When all is said and done ... I've not regretted buying any of her books. And this one was no different.
I just finished "Hidden Tradition" and I would say that there's not a whole lot new in it that you haven't read in some of her other works. But, this is the gist of the book:
The Holy of Holies (and what happens in it) is the Kingdom in the midst. When the High Priest enters the Holy of Holies, he sees the Kingdom and is transformed into the Angel-priest or the LORD and emerges from the Holy of Holies as the embodiment of the Kingdom. He is empowered to then restore the Kingdom in the land and among his people. Margaret Barker spends a lot of time talking about Enoch/Melchizedek traditions and how they shaped the first century understanding of Jesus.
What I found most interesting were her speculations on what Jesus experienced in his Baptism and what he saw when he was driven into the desert by the Spirit. (Mark's description of Jesus' temptation by Satan in the wilderness ends with: "And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him." She claims that having overcome Satan's temptations, Jesus was granted an Enoch-like throne vision in which he experienced himself enthroned upon the cherubic-beasts of Ezekiel and being worshipped by angels.)
She spends a little bit of time interpreting the parables of the Kingdom in terms of temple theology ... I wish she had expanded this a bit.
At the very end of the book she discusses the relationship between the Book of Revelation and the Fourth Gospel ... and ends with a nice, uncharacteristically straightforward discussion of the Temple themes in John. I've not read her "Revelation of Jesus Christ" ... so I don't know if this last part of her book is a condensed form of what she says in that or not.
Despite everything which frustrates me about her (for example her tendency to suggest a tenuous link between two obscure sources and then proceed as if the link were firmly established ... "Could Jesus have known of the visions of Enoch? ... Since Jesus clearly knew of the visions of Enoch etc...) despite all that and her frustrating inability to stay on topic ... it's still a fun read and she kept me up well past midnight on a few occasions with my Bible open trying to follow her argument.
Have you read "Temple Themes in Christian Worship"? So far, that's been my favorite of her work.
When all is said and done ... I've not regretted buying any of her books. And this one was no different.
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