Margaret Barker believes that Christianity developed so quickly because it was a return to far older faith—far older than the Greek culture that is long-held to have influenced Christianity. Temple Theology explains that the preaching of the gospel and the early Christian faith grew out of the centuries' old Hebrew longing for God's original Temple.

According to Margaret Barker's groundbreaking theory, temple mysticism underpins much of the Bible. Rooted in the cult of the first temple in ancient Judaism, it helps us to understand the origins of Christianity. Temple mysticism was received and taught as oral tradition, and many texts were changed or suppressed or kept from public access. Barker first examines biblical texts: Isaiah, the prophet whom Jesus quoted more than any other in Scripture, and John. Then she proposes a more detailed picture, drawing on a wide variety of non-biblical texts. The resulting book presents some remarkable results.

The writers and chief actors of the Old Testament expressed a deep longing for the presence of God. This longing is symbolized through history in the Garden of Eden, the ark of the covenant and the tabernacle that housed it, the temple, and the ruins of the temple. In response to this longing, God shares his ultimate mission, in which his people play a part: the expansion of Eden - the temple of God's presence - to all peoples throughout the earth. The temple has always been a source of rich scholarship and theological reflection - but what does it mean for the church's ongoing mission in the world? Beale and Kim build a bridge from the world of biblical theology to our modern-day life. They help us to see clearly that the themes of Eden, the temple, God's glorious presence, new creation, and the mission of the church are ultimately facets of the same reality. Hence, from Eden to the New Jerusalem, God's people are his temple on the earth, the first-fruits of the new creation. God has always desired to dwell among us; now the church needs to follow its calling to extend the borders of God's kingdom and take his presence to the ends of the earth.

The book starts with background chapters on the Jews, Moses, the King in the Old Testament, and moves on to the King in the New Testament (apart from John) and then reaches its main focus on the Gospel of John. Only John's Gospel says that Jesus was crucified as Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews. Jesus was the keeper of the ways of the first temple in Jerusalem. These had almost been lost when the Moses traditions came to dominate in the second-temple period. Jesus' mission was to restore the ways of the original temple. He entrusted his visions to John the Elder, a priestly disciple in Jerusalem, and John compiled them into the Book of Revelation. Later, John wrote his Gospel to show how the visions had been fulfilled. The background to the Fourth Gospel is temple tradition. John shows how Jesus' debates with the Jews centred on the great difference between the world of the second temple and the world of the priest-kings of the first temple from which Christianity emerged. The Johannine community were the Hebrew disciples of Jesus who saw themselves as the true high priesthood restored. "Those at Qumran who worshipped as/with the angels in heaven cannot have been very different from those who wrote and read John's gospel and the Book of Revelation. The latter were the Hebrew-Christian community who saw themselves as the heavenly throng ... "Their Lamb on the throne opened a sealed book - secret teaching - and they were originally people chosen from all the twelve tribes of Israel to receive the Name of the Lord on their foreheads (Rev.7.3-4). This vision was set in the early days of the first temple, before the kingdom divided, and it had become the hope for the future." Taken from the Introduction.

Margaret Barker has been researching and writing about the Jerusalem temple for over twenty years. Many of her studies have remained unpublished. Here for the first time her work on the roots of Christian liturgy has been brought together.Whereas most scholarship has concentrated upon the synagogue, Margaret Barker's work on the Jerusalem temple contributes significantly to our understanding of the meaning and importance of many elements of Christian liturgy which have hitherto remained obscure. This book opens up a new field of research.The many subjects addressed include the roots of the Eucharist in various temple rituals and offerings other than Passover, the meaning of the holy of holies and the Christian sanctuary, the cosmology of temple and church, the significance of the Veil of the Temple for understanding priesthood and Incarnation, the Holy Wisdom and the Mother of God, angels and priesthood, the concept of unity, the high priestly tradition in the early church and evidence that Christianity was a conscious continuation of the temple.All scholars and students whose interest encompasses the origins of Christian (and Orthodox) liturgy, the Old Testament, early Christianity, Jewish Christian relations, Platonism and the origins of Islam will find this book a hugely rewarding source of information and new ideas.

This is the fourth annual volume of the remarkably popular journal of biblical theology edited by Scott Hahn and his St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. This volume features important new works by Hahn, Gary Anderson, John Cavadini, Brant Pitre, among others. Inspired by the ground-breaking work of Yves Congar and Jean Danielou, this volume includes original and thought-provoking contributions on such topics as: the Tabernacle and the origins of Christian mysticism; Jesus self-consciousness of being the new Temple and the new High Priest; and the doctrine of the indwelling of the Trinity in the soul; Hahn contributes a new perspective on the Gospel of John, showing how Israel's Temple and feasts are fulfilled in Christ and the sacraments of the Church. As the editors write in their introduction to this volume: The Temple theme is perhaps the richest in all of biblical theology, embracing the mysteries of Christ, Church, and Kingdom; liturgy, sacraments, and priesthood; salvation, sanctification, and divine filiation. These are the beautiful mysteries we contemplate in this volume of Letter & Spirit.

When thinking of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem, one often conjures up images of animal sacrifice, pilgrimages to the Holy City on religious festivals, and the High Priest solemnly entering the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur. Indeed, each of these observances was a staple of Temple ritual, but it is easy to lose sight of the Temple as it impacted, and impacts, upon the daily life of Jews and their physical and spiritual responsibilities. Building the Temple is not merely one commandment of many; it cannot be examined in isolation. This volume shows how the Temple relates to the notions of Shabbat, the land of Israel, monarchy, Jewish independence and sovereignty, education, justice, covenant, Sinai, the garden of Eden, the Jewish relationship to the gentile world, and the very way the Jew relates to God. From a biblical viewpoint, the Temple is not only the central institution of the ideal Jewish society but also the central concept that binds and organizes all others. The minutiae of the Temple as portrayed in the liturgy and in the Bible often seem tedious and overritualistic. Classical sources of all genres abound to explain a particular passage or a particular rite. This book identifies broad themes that animate the meaning of the Temple, its rites, and the biblical passages that describe it. Details are probed as a larger conceptual whole. Animal sacrifice, particularly problematic to many on moral grounds, is examined in a new and revealing light. Many Torah commandments stand unchanged for all time regardless of historical events. Not so the commandment to erect the Temple. Social, economic, political, and religious currents were integral to the Temple's construction, destruction, and reconstruction. By probing these currents from the Bible's perspective, one can gain insight into the meaning of the times in which we live; we are in a process of rebuilding, even though we are far from redemption.