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.

Are there Old Testament roots of the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Margaret Barker traces the roots of the devotion to Mary as Mother of the Lord back to the Old Testament and the first temple in Jerusalem. The evidence is consistent over more than a millennium: there had been a female deity in Israel, the Mother figure in the Royal cult, who had been abandoned about 600BCE. She was almost written out of the Hebrew text, almost excluded from the canon. This first of two volumes traces the history of the Lady in the Temple, and looks forward to the second volume in which Barker will show how the Lady of the Temple is reclaimed in the advent of Christianity, and becomes the Lady in the Church. The result is breathtaking, and like all Barker's work, is impossible to put down.

stolen moments ER doctor Liz Prudhomme is stunned that nomadic ex-army doc Cort Smith is her hospital’s new trauma surgeon. Instantly, she’s transported back to that amazing night when he showed her unimaginable pleasure. Their passion is quickly reignited, and Cort realigns Liz’s career-focused world. Before he moves on again, can she help this doc realise they have something worth staying for? • Sparks fly between playboy neurosurgeon Alastair North and his trainee surgeon Claire Mitchell. He’s on a mission to help über-serious Claire relax, but his cavalier approach is driving her crazy. Alistair is off-limits – even if he is gorgeous, he’s her boss! But after a difficult surgery, desire overcomes reason. With secrets holding them both back, can they find a way to turn their forbidden passion into forever? • Ambitious doctor Julia Montgomery is thrilled by the opportunity to train in France under top surgeon Bernard Cappelle. The only challenge is the great man himself! She can handle his gruff arrogance, but she’s finding it almost impossible to resist her attraction to this gorgeous single dad…

This collection of articles confirms Norman Whybray's place as one of the foremost contributors to scholarship on wisdom literature in the last three decades of the twentieth century. A former President of the Society for Old Testament Study, and winner of the British Academy's Burkitt Medal, Whybray wrote extensively on Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and his interests extended to Job, Ben Sira, and wider areas of concern such as the relationship of wisdom to other Old Testament books and genres. Including a Foreword by David Clines and an Introduction by Katharine J. Dell, this collection brings together for the first time all of Norman Whybray's articles in this subject, thus not only inspiring afresh, but also providing a useful resource for scholars interested in that enigmatic group of writings that make up the wisdom literature of the Old Testament.

Margaret Barker contributes a characteristically Christian voice to contemporary theological debates on the environment. Most of the issues we face today were not those that faced the early Christian community and so there are often no directly relevant biblical teachings. Barker's starting point is the question of what Jesus himself would have believed about the Creation? What could the early Church have believed about the Creation? She then shows how much of this belief is embedded, often unrecognized, in the New Testament and early Christian texts. It was what people assumed as the norm, the world view within which they lived and expressed their faith. Barker deals with such arguments as, 'But the New Testament says nothing about this', and establishes the general principles of a Christian view of Creation. Starting with how the Bible was understood by early Christians, Barker looks briefly at the history of a text or symbol, before examining what later Christian teachers did with that text or symbol. The idea that Adam was the steward of the creation, for example, is entirely unbiblical, and was imported into the text with disastrous results. Some of what she says will show how current teaching would have been unfamiliar to the first Christians, not just in application but in basic principles.

This final book published in the Ashgate SOTS monograph series collects together for the first time in English translation a selection of important essays on central themes and texts in Old Testament criticism and exegesis by Rudolf Smend, one of the world's most eminent senior scholars in the field. The essays focus on key topics such as Moses, covenant, history, Old Testament theology, the state, Elijah, Amos, and major movements in the history of the discipline over the past three centuries. All are marked by penetrating exegetical and critical insight as well as by an unrivalled knowledge of the history of Old Testament scholarship, and many of them have already made highly-respected and influential contributions. Their publication will serve to make the range and vitality of Smend's work more widely known to English-speaking readers.

This collection of articles confirms Norman Whybray's place as one of the foremost contributors to scholarship on wisdom literature in the last three decades of the twentieth century. A former President of the Society for Old Testament Study, and winner of the British Academy's Burkitt Medal, Whybray wrote extensively on Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and his interests extended to Job, Ben Sira, and wider areas of concern such as the relationship of wisdom to other Old Testament books and genres. Including a Foreword by David Clines and an Introduction by Katharine J. Dell, this collection brings together for the first time all of Norman Whybray's articles in this subject, thus not only inspiring afresh, but also providing a useful resource for scholars interested in that enigmatic group of writings that make up the wisdom literature of the Old Testament.

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.

The Older Testament is a radically new approach to many problems of both Old and New Testaments. It takes as a basis the theology of the book of Enoch, lost to western Christendom for many centuries, but here recognized as providing the most consistent set of clues to the nature of Israel's pre-exilic religion. Reformers and editors of the Second Temple period sought to remove from the biblical texts all traces of the older ways, which now survive only in the apparently bizarre themes and imagery of certain Pseudepigrapha. Margaret Barker traces some of the ways in which the Deuteronomic standpoint came to dominate future readings of the Hebrew Bible as well as scholarly conceptions of Israel's religious development. Her reconstruction of the pre-Deuteronomic religion throws a startling light on much of the imagery of the New Testament and shows how closely the earlier Christian expectations were based upon the ancient royal cult in Jerusalem. This book represents an important and original contribution to our understanding of Judaism and early Christianity.

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

Are there Old Testament roots of the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Margaret Barker traces the roots of the devotion to Mary as Mother of the Lord back to the Old Testament and the first temple in Jerusalem. The evidence is consistent over more than a millennium: there had been a female deity in Israel, the Mother figure in the Royal cult, who had been abandoned about 600BCE. She was almost written out of the Hebrew text, almost excluded from the canon. This first of two volumes traces the history of the Lady in the Temple, and looks forward to the second volume in which Barker will show how the Lady of the Temple is reclaimed in the advent of Christianity, and becomes the Lady in the Church. The result is breathtaking, and like all Barker's work, is impossible to put down.

As more and more is being discovered about the beginnings of Christianity, a whole new understanding of the context of Christian origins is emerging. Any serious student now needs a knowledge of the traditions of the temple. This book, a supplement to Margaret Barker's The Gate of Heaven: The History and Symbolism of the Temple in Jerusalem, breaks further new ground, showing how the symbols and rituals of the temple shaped the lives of the early Christians, and illustrates the striking relevance of temple theology to the New Testament. The influence of the temple cult has to be reconstructed by drawing on the increasing number of non-biblical texts now available. These include those written in the early churches; fragments from among the Dead Sea Scrolls; and Jewish texts written in the early Christian period. Piece by piece the world of the temple is emerging from this material. Through this close study of the Pseudepigrapha and other non-canonical writings, Margaret Barker examines four symbols of temple theology: Light, Life, Blood, and the Robes of Glory. She shows how details missing from the Old Testament descriptions can be recovered from other ancient texts to throw new light upon many significant passages of the Bible. This is a reprint of the volume published by T. & T. Clark in 1995.

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. These longings form the basis of the Old Testament exile theology and cause us reassess the relationship between Christianity and the Hebrew tradition. This is no fundamentalist work harking back to the idea that 'the oldest is the purest' Rather it is recognition that the Old Testament has a complex heritage and that those who shared this heritage did not share the same beliefs or scriptures - amongst these people were the first Christians. In her exploration of temple theology, Margaret Barker finds clear references and beliefs in fundamental Christian concepts such as atonement, creation and covenant. This is a thorough and fascinating exploration of the theology of the original Jewish Temple.

Margaret Barker contributes a characteristically Christian voice to contemporary theological debates on the environment. Most of the issues we face today were not those that faced the early Christian community and so there are often no directly relevant biblical teachings. Barker's starting point is the question of what Jesus himself would have believed about the Creation? What could the early Church have believed about the Creation? She then shows how much of this belief is embedded, often unrecognized, in the New Testament and early Christian texts. It was what people assumed as the norm, the world view within which they lived and expressed their faith. Barker deals with such arguments as, 'But the New Testament says nothing about this', and establishes the general principles of a Christian view of Creation. Starting with how the Bible was understood by early Christians, Barker looks briefly at the history of a text or symbol, before examining what later Christian teachers did with that text or symbol. The idea that Adam was the steward of the creation, for example, is entirely unbiblical, and was imported into the text with disastrous results. Some of what she says will show how current teaching would have been unfamiliar to the first Christians, not just in application but in basic principles.

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.>

What did "Son of God," "Messiah," and "Lord," mean to the first Christians when they used these words to describe their beliefs about Jesus? In this book Margaret Barker explores the possibility that, in the expectations and traditions of first-century Palestine, these titles belonged together, and that the first Christians fit Jesus' identity into an existing pattern of belief. She claims that pre-Christian Judaism was not monotheistic and that the roots of Christian Trinitarian theology lie in a pre-Christian Palestinian belief about angels--a belief derived from the ancient religion of Israel, in which there was a "High God" and several "Sons of God." Yahweh was a son of God, manifested on earth in human form as an angel or in the Davidic King. Jesus was a manifestation of Yahweh, and was acknowledged as Son of God, Messiah, and Lord. Barker relies on canonical and deutero-canonical works and literature from Qumran and rabbinic sources to present her thoughtful investigation.

In Christmas the Original Story Margaret Barker explores the nature of the Christmas stories and the nature and use of Old Testament prophecy. Beginning with John's account, it then goes on to include Luke and Matthew, the apocryphal gospels, and the traditions of the Coptic Church, to throw light upon wise men and their gifts, the character of Herod, Matthew's use of prophecy, the holy family in Egypt. This book also discusses the stories we get from the Infancy Gospel of Jesus and the development of the Orthodox Christmas icon, as well as the Christmas story and the Mary material in the Koran.