- Paperback: 176 pages
- Publisher: T.& T.Clark Ltd (1 Oct 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0567085376
- ISBN-13: 978-0567085375
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.8 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 679,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Redraws the map of the New Testament and Christian origins confronting much of the scepticism of recent New Testament scholarship to offer a new understanding of Resurrection, Christology, atonement and parousia.>
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a densely written pilot study and review with nine pages of bibliography. There are detailed indices of modern authors, and separate schedules of biblical, deutero-canonical, pseudepigraphal, Jewish and Gnostic references (in all an additional 14 pages), but there is no general themed index which makes the work hard to use as a reference tool. Yet this is hardly surprising since a third of the text is in the form of footnotes. Hopefully the publishers might consider supplying one should the work run to a second edition.
Normally academics draw a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, but Barker avoids the docetic bias that often arises in works of this nature since she refrains from arguing from a priori assumptions. She does this by working both exegetically and then drawing historical assumptions from her analyses. Her intention is to thereby establish a link between the historical Jesus and the Church's Christ of faith. Using pseudepigraphical and extra canonical literature to establish the mise en scene she reviews who the historical Jesus may have believed himself to be and in the process she offers a new understanding of Christian origins, the resurrection and the Book of Revelation.
Her opinion is that Christianity has its origins in the first Temple cult that predates King Josiah. She explains that much of the tanakh and many of the books of the current New Testament canon were not used by the early Christians who instead were familiar with versions of the Books of Enoch and similar pseudepigraphical and intertestamental apocolypses, and especially with a proto Book of Revelation, the core of which probably represented an original apocalyptic vision of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry.
Consequently, we have in Jesus and in the traditions that originated with (or through) him, not a second Temple but a first Temple apocalyptic theology drawn from the time of the Davidic Kingdom, when the king-priest acted as YHWH's representative on earth. In this theology the cultic terminology of kings, angels and shepherds were interchangeable, but the cult is only a partial monotheistic one since YHWH was the eldest of the elohim, and one of the angelic sons of El-Elyon, the Most High. By a mystical tradition of ascent (the Merkavah) experienced by priestly cultic leaders such as Enoch and Melchizedek, the high priest or priest-king actually became YHWH during the ascent. By an annual act of ritual atonement, the priest, as the representative of YHWH offered himself to El-Elyon in a sacrificial renewal of the covenant with the kingdom, and which was intended as a healing of creation.
This sacrifice was achieved in surrogacy by a ritual act of atonement. However, with the advent of the 10th jubilee or `a year of weeks of days' (490 years) Barker suggests that rather than perform the usual atonement by surrogacy Jesus came to understand that he would need to offer his own life blood rather than that of the usual unblemished sacrificial animal.
Barker's thesis is therefore that `Christology' predates Jesus in its origins and is the source of both the primitive church and of later Christianity, rather than the normally held view that a hellenized neo-Platonic philosophy was adopted and slowly developed to explain the Christian faith.
Barker further provides strong arguments to conclude that Jesus' resurrection is identical with his baptism and that the ressurection was not a physical post death experience. She refers to Bernard's comments in his introduction to the Odes of Solomon upon the significant correlates between this baptism and the descent to Hell. The baptism was the only point at which Jesus was declared to be the Son of God. Pre- and post- resurrection events should therefore not be conflated with those that are post-crucifixion. Therefore the verse in the gnostic Gospel of Philip `he rose up first and then he died' must be taken seriously and not rejected as a gnostic phantasy. Jesus' cultic and salvific self-sacrifice commencing with the cleansing of the Temple and concluding with his death would have allowed the new Christian community to recognise that God now lived with them in a renewal of the kingdom through this final act of sacrifice.
What Barker has presented is a historical Jesus with a developed Christology, one that his followers understood and embraced and that as a consequence there is no hiatus between the Christology of Jesus and that of the early Christian Church.
Normally academics draw a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, but Barker avoids the docetic bias that often arises in works of this nature since she refrains from arguing from a priori assumptions. She does this by working both exegetically and then drawing historical assumptions from her analyses. Her intention is to thereby establish a link between the historical Jesus and the Church's Christ of faith. Using pseudepigraphical and extra canonical literature to establish the mise en scene she reviews who the historical Jesus may have believed himself to be and in the process she offers a new understanding of Christian origins, the resurrection and the Book of Revelation.
Her opinion is that Christianity has its origins in the first Temple cult that predates King Josiah. She explains that much of the tanakh and many of the books of the current New Testament canon were not used by the early Christians who instead were familiar with versions of the Books of Enoch and similar pseudepigraphical and intertestamental apocolypses, and especially with a proto Book of Revelation, the core of which probably represented an original apocalyptic vision of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry.
Consequently, we have in Jesus and in the traditions that originated with (or through) him, not a second Temple but a first Temple apocalyptic theology drawn from the time of the Davidic Kingdom, when the king-priest acted as YHWH's representative on earth. In this theology the cultic terminology of kings, angels and shepherds were interchangeable, but the cult is only a partial monotheistic one since YHWH was the eldest of the elohim, and one of the angelic sons of El-Elyon, the Most High. By a mystical tradition of ascent (the Merkavah) experienced by priestly cultic leaders such as Enoch and Melchizedek, the high priest or priest-king actually became YHWH during the ascent. By an annual act of ritual atonement, the priest, as the representative of YHWH offered himself to El-Elyon in a sacrificial renewal of the covenant with the kingdom, and which was intended as a healing of creation.
This sacrifice was achieved in surrogacy by a ritual act of atonement. However, with the advent of the 10th jubilee or `a year of weeks of days' (490 years) Barker suggests that rather than perform the usual atonement by surrogacy Jesus came to understand that he would need to offer his own life blood rather than that of the usual unblemished sacrificial animal.
Barker's thesis is therefore that `Christology' predates Jesus in its origins and is the source of both the primitive church and of later Christianity, rather than the normally held view that a hellenized neo-Platonic philosophy was adopted and slowly developed to explain the Christian faith.
Barker further provides strong arguments to conclude that Jesus' resurrection is identical with his baptism and that the ressurection was not a physical post death experience. She refers to Bernard's comments in his introduction to the Odes of Solomon upon the significant correlates between this baptism and the descent to Hell. The baptism was the only point at which Jesus was declared to be the Son of God. Pre- and post- resurrection events should therefore not be conflated with those that are post-crucifixion. Therefore the verse in the gnostic Gospel of Philip `he rose up first and then he died' must be taken seriously and not rejected as a gnostic phantasy. Jesus' cultic and salvific self-sacrifice commencing with the cleansing of the Temple and concluding with his death would have allowed the new Christian community to recognise that God now lived with them in a renewal of the kingdom through this final act of sacrifice.
What Barker has presented is a historical Jesus with a developed Christology, one that his followers understood and embraced and that as a consequence there is no hiatus between the Christology of Jesus and that of the early Christian Church.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
The Best Book about Jesus Written in Modern Times
1 July 2003
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book shatters all the modern "historical Jesus" myths without trying to preach or inspire. Rather than trying to dissect the minute details of Jesus' early life or what sect he may have belonged to, Barker concentrates on who Jesus believed himself to be and what great role he carried out. Barker uses the Bible and Jewish Apocryphal literature as the primary reference point in understanding Jesus. Anything else is either mere speculation or wasn't important enough for Jesus to convey to his followers.
The belief of Jesus is Lord is the oldest and most important belief in Christianity which goes back to Jesus himself. It was not some pagan or neo-Platonic belief that was added later. The belief that Yahweh, the first-born of creation, and the God of Israel (not to be mistaken for Elohim or Almighty God), could manifest himself through certain extraordinary individuals after they experienced a mystical ascent to Heaven was a key element of a more ancient Judaism of the First Temple period. Such ascents became part of the Merkavah mystical tradition in Judaism
and was experienced by Enoch, Melchizedek, Moses, Elijah, and Ezekiel who "put on" the spirit of the Lord (Yahweh) during their ascent. These ideas were alluded to in the Old Testament, especially in Daniel and Ezekiel and were clearly illustrated in the Enochian literature which was later suppressed by both Jews and Christians.
Barker claims that Jesus' baptism was the pivotal moment of his life in which he experienced such an ascent and received the Spirit of the Lord. It was then that Jesus became the Son of God, the Lord, or the Word. Jesus later revealed this to a select group of disciples during the Transfiguration and later to a wider group during the Resurrection.
Barker explains the importance of the ancient Temple symbology of the High Priest representing The Lord on the Day of Atonement in which he enters the Holy of Holies, representing Heaven to offer his own life to blot out the sins of Israel. The sacrificial blood was a substitute for the life of the Priest and the Priests eating the flesh of the sacrifice explains how Jesus used bread to symbolize his own flesh which he imparted to his disciples to become a new priesthood.
Jesus understood that his primary role as The Son of God, or The Lord, was to become the Servant of God or High Priest who would offer his own blood (through martyrdom) as an atonement. Later, Jesus, like the Lamb in Revelation, would be enthroned as The Lord in Heaven to pass judgement on the wicked and to establish His Kingdom.
Barker claims that the New Testament, especially Hebrews and Revelation, can only be understood in light of a more ancient form of First Temple Judaism which survived in certain apocalyptic circles in the first century C.E. The belief that "Jesus is Lord" is the most oldest and most fundamental belief of Christianity which Jesus believed of himself and which he imparted to his disciples.
The belief of Jesus is Lord is the oldest and most important belief in Christianity which goes back to Jesus himself. It was not some pagan or neo-Platonic belief that was added later. The belief that Yahweh, the first-born of creation, and the God of Israel (not to be mistaken for Elohim or Almighty God), could manifest himself through certain extraordinary individuals after they experienced a mystical ascent to Heaven was a key element of a more ancient Judaism of the First Temple period. Such ascents became part of the Merkavah mystical tradition in Judaism
and was experienced by Enoch, Melchizedek, Moses, Elijah, and Ezekiel who "put on" the spirit of the Lord (Yahweh) during their ascent. These ideas were alluded to in the Old Testament, especially in Daniel and Ezekiel and were clearly illustrated in the Enochian literature which was later suppressed by both Jews and Christians.
Barker claims that Jesus' baptism was the pivotal moment of his life in which he experienced such an ascent and received the Spirit of the Lord. It was then that Jesus became the Son of God, the Lord, or the Word. Jesus later revealed this to a select group of disciples during the Transfiguration and later to a wider group during the Resurrection.
Barker explains the importance of the ancient Temple symbology of the High Priest representing The Lord on the Day of Atonement in which he enters the Holy of Holies, representing Heaven to offer his own life to blot out the sins of Israel. The sacrificial blood was a substitute for the life of the Priest and the Priests eating the flesh of the sacrifice explains how Jesus used bread to symbolize his own flesh which he imparted to his disciples to become a new priesthood.
Jesus understood that his primary role as The Son of God, or The Lord, was to become the Servant of God or High Priest who would offer his own blood (through martyrdom) as an atonement. Later, Jesus, like the Lamb in Revelation, would be enthroned as The Lord in Heaven to pass judgement on the wicked and to establish His Kingdom.
Barker claims that the New Testament, especially Hebrews and Revelation, can only be understood in light of a more ancient form of First Temple Judaism which survived in certain apocalyptic circles in the first century C.E. The belief that "Jesus is Lord" is the most oldest and most fundamental belief of Christianity which Jesus believed of himself and which he imparted to his disciples.
8 of 28 people found the following review helpful
1.5 stars, ultimately very silly
2 April 2004
Format:Paperback
There have been no shortage of silly books written about Jesus, but this one is unusual for a number of reasons. For a start, this looks like a legitimate monograph; it is fulsomely annotated and there are many discussions of the arcana of Greek and Hebrew. This book started out of a series of lectures at a serious university (Aberdeen) and Barker has served as the President of the Society for Old Testament Study. This book contains an endorsement from an Anglican bishop. Barker argues that there is no conflict between the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith. This will no doubt come as a relief to the many Christians who are alarmed by the fact that many scholars do not believe Jesus saw himself as God, Son of God, or even the Messiah. But Barker is not simply defending orthodoxy. Instead she has produced a very elaborate exegesis and has discovered a strange collection of esoteric traditions. The book consists of five chapters. The first starts with the concept of resurrection. Scholars have noted a tension within early Christian thought between resurrection as a physical or as a spiritual experience. Barker builds on this idea to argue that Jesus and the early Christians viewed resurrection as experiences of mystical ascent, "which are the record of a real experience, and not just a literary fiction." Moreover, these ascents were part of a process of exaltation, in which the resurrected became like angels, like priest-kings, like partly divine persons themselves. The second chapter deals with baptism which Barker argues was Jesus' actual resurrection experience. This is part of an intense mystical experience that made Jesus the Son of God. This was the resurrection that is referred to in Gnostic texts. What happens at and after Jesus' crucifixion is not clear, but the next chapter deals with atonement. Here we see one of Barker's key hobby-horses. Working on the idea that pre-Exilic Judaism was not monotheistic she argues that we can see part of the polytheistic tradition in which Yahweh was originally the second God, the son of the supreme God. This polytheism is tied to traditions of the pre-Exilic priest cults, in which both the high priest and the king are divine, in which they can become angels and vice versa. In looking at Day of Atonement rituals, one of the goats is actually the Lord himself, and the Eucharist may be traced back to Yom Kippur liturgy. The fourth chapter seeks to apply these ideas back to Jesus' mission, with the baptism and the transfiguration serving as key events whose true significance was limited to a few disciples. The fifth chapter is rather technical, and links the Suffering Servant of Isaiah to the Lamb in Revelation (Barker believes Revelation was not written as a series of visions written decades after Jesus' death, but incorporates material known and revealed to him and also to John the Baptist!)
All very strange and certainly it would turn our understanding of Christianity inside out. Moreover it manages to give Jesus a messianic consciousness without having to invoke the stale rhetoric of fundamentalists and within a thoroughly Jewish context. But ultimately this is a book which is designed for Occam's Razor to slash to ribbons. Let's look for a start at the nebulous quasi-polytheistic/temple tradition/divine king and priest beliefs that Jesus is supposedly using. Suppose there was a tradition of a divine king in the seventh and eighth centuries BCE. Whatever echoes this might leave in the following centuries of Hebrew literature, the bible is quite clear that kings and prophets are NOT divine in any meaningful sense. Moses is condemned to die outside Israel, David is punished for murdering Uriah by the death of his son, Isaiah is martyred, Josiah dies in battle while Jeremiah dies in exile. Surely this would mean more to first century Jews than the mystical speculation Barker has compiled. Likewise Jesus was clearly not a priest (he was not a Levite) so it is hard to imagine that he viewed himself as one. Then there is Barker's use of sources. It is one thing to argue that the gospels are historically unreliable and one thing to argue that the epistle of the Hebrews and the book of Revelation contain historically accurate material. But to argue that Hebrews and Revelation are MORE accurate than the Gospels requires some discussion of sources and historical ground rules that Barker never gives. Moreover, Barker quotes a whole range of sources indiscriminately, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, the Gnostic Gospels and the Pseudigraphia without making any clear distinction between what these different authors agreed or disagreed on. It is sort of like trying to understand Israeli foreign policy from reading Freud, Trotsky and watching several Marx Brothers films. Nor is she all too scrupulous in her use of sources. She invokes 3 Enoch even though it is not clear that this book existed at the time of Jesus. She attempts to force Hebrews 2:14-17 to fit her thesis. None of the Gnostic traditions of secret knowledge she cites can be linked back to the first century, let alone to Jesus. She quotes writers who see baptism as a triumph over death, but this can be better read as praise for the value of a sacrament, not that they believed it was "really" the resurrection. One would be better off reading James Dunn' "Jesus Remembered" to understand how Jesus viewed himself as the Suffering Servant (answer: not very much). Moreover baptism was a fairly common experience within the early church. It seems difficult to believe that people would confuse it with resurrection. Ultimately, all this research has just become very silly.
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