What I do want to share with you is from something I’ve been reading (not necessarily Christmas-related, but not far off). Then I’d like to share some links to some good articles that are more Christmas-themed.

As part of my research for my dissertation, I’ve been looking at a book by British scholar Crispin Fletcher-Louis entitled All the Glory of Adam: Liturgical Anthropology in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Fletcher-Louis, who seems to have some connections to Margaret Barker, has done some great research here, and although his ideas are not accepted by all, he presents a lot of exciting and insightful material.

I just wanted to share a couple of excerpts from my “Christmas” reading. All the Glory of Adam attempts to make sense of the Qumran community’s concept of “divine humanity.” There is much language in the Dead Sea Scrolls that indicates that the community who produced (or at least used) those texts believed that humans could become either angelic or divine (I don’t believe there was much of a difference between angelic or divine, but there is language of humans both becoming angels and becoming gods).

Fletcher-Louis notes that in these texts:

…there seems to be a claim which is usually implicit, but…at other times explicit, that true humanity, as it is restored among the elect, is both angelomorphic and divine (All the Glory of Adam, p. 12, emphasis in original).

The author discusses at length the Qumran and other Second Temple literature that describe what he terms “angelomorphic humanity.” It is quite well established that in this period, at least some Jews (who felt that their belief was orthodox), believed that humans, especially kings, prophets, and priests, were considered to have an angelic status, at least in ritual/cultic settings. He notes, however, that humans are also often described as “gods.” He says:

More startling [than the angelomorphic language] are those statements to the effect that the transformed humanity are “gods”. This is a more persistent and widespread feature of the texts than would permit us to conclude such language is merely an accommodation to Hellenism in which some Jews on the periphery of “orthodoxy” indulged. Already in the biblical texts Moses is “as God [elohim, theos] to Pharaoh” (Exo. 7:1) and the king is hailed as (a) god in Psalm 45:6 (cf. Zech 12:8). Exodus is probably behind Sirach’s ascription of the [elohim] status to Moses in Sirach 45:2. In Jubilees Joseph is acclaimed “god, god, mighty one of God” and in Joseph and Aseneth Jacob is “a god [theos]” to Aseneth.

The existence of god language for humanity within Jewish texts is more remarkable than angel language because of the way in which in the Second Temple period angelology replaced the polytheism of the pre-exilic period. However, just as many biblical and post biblical texts continued to speak of many “gods” (elim, elohim, theoi) with the understanding that these were “angelic” beings on a distinctly lower level of reality than God himself, so it seems there remained the freedom to speak of human as “divine” in similar terms and in certain circumstances. In texts such as those gathered around Moses and Exodus 7:1 there is stressed the fact that Moses’ “divinity” is no independent of that of God himself but is strictly bestowed by the creator of all. This may offend traditional Jewish and Christian views of divinity as a strictly independent, uncreated reality, but it should be remembered that in the ancient world the begetting and creating of gods (theogony) was a much more acceptable notion then than it is now.

The presence of “god” language for humanity in texts as far apart as Sirach, Jubilees, Philo and the rabbis testifies to the degree to which such language was widely spread and accepted in late Second Temple Judaism. (pp. 85-86)

While all of these are very interesting and important statements, I was even more pleased to find that Fletcher-Louis locates the root of all these beliefs in the correct life setting: the Temple and its rituals. He states:

...the principal socio-religious life setting for a Jewish divine anthropology, particularly in its earlier formative stages of development, was the Jewish Temple, its sacred space and priesthood…(p. 5, emphasis in original).

In other words, the proper setting for and origin of this language of humans becoming angels and/or gods, is in the rituals and liturgy of the Temple of Jerusalem.  Very interesting…

So I guess that’s the message I wanted to leave you with this Christmas. As St. Athanasius once wrote (and as is written in the Catechism of the Catholic Church): “For the Son of God became man so that man could become God.” Just as there are many who believe that God came down to earth and became man, so there have also been many that believed that the true destiny and potential of mankind is to become like God.  That is why Christ came down to us — to provide a way for us to, following his example, become like his Father.

As I promised, some great Christmas themed reads:

Jeffrey M. Bradshaw has a great series of articles at Meridian Magazine:

Adam and Christ, Eve and Mary at Christmas Time

Temple Themes in Luke’s Account of the Angels and the Shepherds

Also, check out a similar post at www.templestudy.com, by Bryce Haymond:

Who Were the Shepherds in the Christmas Story?

I’m sure there are lots of others, and if you know of any good ones, please let me know! Above all, I wish you a Merry Christmas from bonnie (and currently snow-covered) Scotland!  May this New Year be full of abundant blessings and new wisdom from God!

Warmest wishes,

David Larsen

In this post, I would like to go into a few more of the specific details of the Christmas story that Barker so skillfully illuminates for us.  Of course I won’t be able to cover everything that she provides, nor all that I feel is especially noteworthy, but hopefully I can present some especially enlightening details.

Dating

There were many groups at the time (of the birth of Christ) who were watching the calendar for a significant event. The angel Gabriel had told Daniel:

Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy (Dan. 9:24).

This was understood as a messianic prophecy, and it was interpreted to mean that the Messiah would come to free his people in 70 weeks of years (490 years) from the beginning of the “age of wrath” or the destruction of the first temple. Remember that there were many groups that felt that the Second Temple was corrupt and felt that they would remain oppressed under this corrupt system until the Messiah came to destroy the apostate temple and restore the true one.  However, the dating given in the prophecy appears to have no relation to the coming of Jesus Christ if we date the destruction of the temple to 586 BC.  Barker argues that this date is not correct. She says that the date should be calculated according to a calendar based on jubilees (periods of 49 years), which she states would put the destruction of Solomon’s temple at 422 BC, the building of the Second Temple at 352 BC and its destruction by the Romans at 68-69 AD.¹ Barker comes to the following conclusion regarding this prophecy of Gabriel to Daniel:

The prophecy was describing the restoration at the end of the age of wrath, the great day of atonement which required the great high priest. Reckoning 490 years from 422 BCE gives the date 68 CE, when the Jews began the war against Rome.²

The Mother of the LORD

Margaret Barker is very interested in the idea of the Mother of the LORD, the Queen of Heaven. Discussions of this figure come up repeatedly in this book.  Barker notes that the early Christians seemed to believe that while Mary was a precious vessel, chosen to be the earthly mother of Jesus, she also had a heavenly counterpart.  Jesus had not only a Father in heaven, but also a Mother.  There was considerable speculation as to who the Heavenly Mother of Jesus was.  Because the word “Spirit” is a feminine known in Hebrew, many concluded that the Holy Spirit was Jesus’ mother.  Personally, I believe that such a conclusion was based (at least partially) on the attribution of Old Testament “Wisdom” imagery to the person of the Holy Ghost.  I see the Wisdom passages as a remnant of a more ancient belief in a Mother Goddess in Israel, referred to cursorily as Asherah in the OT.  Barker explores this imagery of “the Lady,” who is variously called the Virgin, the Daughter of Zion, and other names. This Lady was the mother of Yahweh.  In the book of Revelation, she is the Queen of Heaven, crowned with stars and clothed with the sun, and is the mother of the Messiah. She gives birth to him in the Holy of Holies (heaven).³

The Stable

In Luke’s account, Joseph is not able to find room in the inn, so Jesus is born in a nearby stable (which was really not much more than a specially outfitted cave).⁴ The Greek word for inn, kataluma (also used for the room where the Last Supper took place), is rare and is possibly an approximation of the Hebrew ta’alumah, the “hidden or secret (place).”⁵ Barker sees this as an allusion to the Holy of Holies, the place where the Messiah would be expected to be born.  ”No place in the inn,” where place is the Greek topos (Hebrew maqom), could refer to the fact that the Messiah was not actually born in the temple’s holy of holies, as topos was known as a codename for the Logos.  As Barker put it:

The Firstborn and the Glory, the Logos, was not “born” in the holy of holies and did not appear in his garments of Glory in Jerusalem. He was swaddled in a manger elsewhere.  The expected in the unexpected.

Orthodox icon of the Nativity depicting Jesus born in cave

Swaddling Clothes

Barker notes that “she wrapped him in swaddling clothes” is literally “she wrapped him around.” The important aspect of the inclusion of this detail in Luke’s story, for Barker, is that the newly born baby was clothed.  The “clothing” of the “newly born” high priest was an important part of the temple ritual where he became the son of God.  When Enoch was taken up to the heavenly temple, his earthly clothing was removed and he was clothed with garments of Glory.  Jesus, having descended from heaven and being born of a mortal mother, is given earthly garments, reversing the process.  This symbol of the Incarnation is derived from temple imagery.

The Manger

The detail that Jesus was laid in a manger is not an unimportant one. The early Christians saw this as the fulfillment of a prophecy of Isaiah: “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider (Isa. 1:3).” The ox and the ass are the two animals that are traditionally depicted as looking into the manger at the baby Jesus. Barker states that Isaiah’s prophecy was a political statement. The word ox, sor, is very similar to the word for prince, sar, and the word for ass, hamor, is like a word for priest, komer. Barker interprets this as Isaiah saying that while the humble animals recognize their master, the rulers of Jerusalem did not understand.⁶

Although the ox and ass are not specifically mentioned in Matthew or Luke, they are part of the tradition from the beginning and are frequently portrayed in Christian art depicting the Nativity. The do appear in the later Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. It is interesting that it was usually only these two animals depicted as being near the manger.  This tradition seems to draw on the prophecy in Habakkuk, “Be known in the midst of the two creatures, be recognized in the drawing near of years…” (Hab. 3:2, LXX).  In the ancient temple, it was the LORD who dwelled between the two “creatures” or cherubim. It was the place where the king/high priest was “newly born” and recognized as the son of God.

The Star

Anciently, rulers and heavenly beings were often equated with or symbolized by stars.  Many watched the heavens for a sign in the stars, both as a sign of the end of the reign of Herod (a fallen star) and the coming of the Messiah (a new star).  ((Amos 5:7 and 6:12; Num. 24:17–18. See discussion, pp. 108-15.)) One star prophecy that most Jews were pondering was the one in Num. 24:17–18.  In Barker’s own translation, it reads:

I see him, but not now;

I behold him, but not near:

A star shall go out from Jacob

and a sceptre shall rise from Israel

…

Edom shall be dispossessed

and Seir also, his enemies,

while Israel acts in strength.

Later Jewish tradition was quite clear that the star referred to the Messiah⁷ The expected star was the Messianic star.  We know that Herod was an Edomite, not a Jew. Other star prophecies have been found at Qumran⁸ and elsewhere.  While popular opinion would indicate that Jews of the time weren’t much into star-gazing, some sources indicate that they knew astronomy well and were watching the heavens for signs.⁹

I have always wondered (as have most of us, I’m sure), what the nature of the star of Bethlehem really was. Barker gives a good explanation of what it could have been.  She notes that in 7 BCE (again, this is the year she thinks Jesus was born), there were “extraordinary movements in the stars.” She explains:

Jupiter and Saturn were in a triple conjunction in the sign of Pisces, the sign for the Hebrews. A triple conjunction means that the two appeared so close together that they appeared as one, and this happended three times in 7 BCE. ‘A triple conjunction is…an extremely rare event involving a particularly intricate set of movements of two planets. Instead of one planet making a single pass close to another, in the sky, the two bodies pass, separate, pass a second time, separate again, and then pass a third time before separating for good.’  The threee conjunctions are usually spread over some seven months. In 7 BCE the conjunctions occurred on 29 May, on 3 October during the autumn festivals when there was a full moon and the conjunction appeared slightly east of south when seen from Jerusalem, that is, over Bethlehem, and on 4 December. In later Hebrew, Jupiter was known as sedek, righteousness, and Gentiles identified Saturn as the God of the Jews.¹⁰

So the star of Bethlehem was possibly the conjunction of two planets, Jupiter and Saturn, which would appear as one big star for a brief period.  After seeing this sign in the heavens, no wonder Herod “was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.”  Everyone saw the sign and many believed that it represented the coming of the Messiah and the downfall of the wicked King Herod.

The Wise Men

What Margaret Barker has come up with in her research on the wise men turns my previous notions of them on their head.  The way the wise men are generally depicted are as three kings who come from afar in the East–from places such as Persia and India.  Sometimes they are even named: Caspar, Melchior, and Belthazar.  Before they were kings of foreign peoples, they were known as Persian philosophers, or magi.  Barker says that most of these tales are “the product of…fertile imaginations.”¹¹

Barker notes that “from the East” can also mean “from ancient times.” The coming of the magi could have been a sign that the ancient ways were being restored.  The gold, frankincense, and myrrh they brought were symbolic of the temple (all have important uses in the temple). According to early Christian tradition¹² Adam took these same items from the Garden of Eden, which was the first temple, when he was expelled from there. When Adam was buried in the Cave of Treasures (also dedicated as a temple), his body was sealed up with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  When the wise men brought these same items to Jesus, it was so, in effect, he could restore the original temple.  Some traditions even considered the wise men to be three angels who had brought Adam these gifts from Eden and who were restoring them to Jesus. As Barker puts it: “Jesus was the new Adam, the new creation, opening the way back to Eden and restoring the true temple.”¹³

Barker believes that the wise men came from Arabia, and not from Persia or further east. The people who would have seen in the new star a sign of the Jewish Messiah would logically be Jews themselves, not Gentiles. Barker gives evidence for the presence of groups of Jews in Arabia (not necessarily today’s Saudi Arabia, but the more proximate Arabia of the time).  It was believed that many priests of the first temple had fled and settled in “Arabia” after Josiah’s purges in the late 7th century BCE.  This, together with other good evidence, suggested to Barker that the wise men were Jewish priests, possibly even Essenes, who knew the ancient temple traditions, and who were in Arabia awaiting the sign of the coming Messiah.¹⁴ She notes that in some early Christian depictions, the wise men are depicted as three high priests.

The magi saw the star at their home in Arabia (presumably the May 29 occurence), travelled to Jerusalem, and then saw it again in there (October). From Jerusalem, the star would have appeared to be over Bethlehem, guiding them to the baby Jesus. Legend has it that they saw the star again on their way home (December).  If Jesus was born in April (as per popular LDS belief), the sign of the star would have come over a month later.

The three magi as depicted in a 7th-century mosaic, from the basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna.

These are just some of the many treasures that Dr. Barker shares with us in this wonderful book.  If I had more time, I would share more.  There is much more about the temple, unfamiliar prophecies, Mary, and other traditions, including Christmas stories from gospels not found in the New Testament, and also the Qur’an.  At 174 pgs., the book is a joy to read (and re-read) and easy to get through.  Because the book is not specifically about temple traditions, Barker necessarily has to summarize much of her research on temple theology, which serves to break down some big concepts into digestible tidbits that are easy to understand and make this volume very valuable for those desiring to comprehend her theories.  Finally, it is all the more fun because Christmas is such a beloved topic for all of us, and Barker really shows her mastery of the temple tradition by applying it to, or finding it in, the Christmas story.

1. See her reasoning on p. 24
2. p. 25)

   There was, however, another similar prophecy recorded in what is known as the Melchizedek Text (11Q 13) found at Qumran. Instead of declaring the wait to be 490 years, it is ten jubilees. Although the document doesn’t define exactly when the first jubilee began, another relevant text, the Damascus Document, seems to indicate that it started at the beginning of the “age of wrath.” From this, Barker reasons that the beginning of the tenth jubilee began about 20 CE. The Qumran text says that the great high priest “Melchizedek” was expected to reappear during the first seven years of the tenth jubilee, which would be between 20 and 27 CE.  Barker sees Jesus as having been born about 7 BCE, so he would have been commencing his ministry at just the right time, according to the prophecy. ((pp. 25-26

3. Rev. 11-12; see Barker, pp. 39-44, 67. Barker also notes that in the Qumran version of Isa. 7:11, it reads: “Ask a sign from the mother of the LORD your God.”
4. In the Infancy Gospel of James, and other similar texts, Jesus is born in a cave which was portrayed as having the essential characteristics of the holy of holies. So, in these accounts Jesus is born in the holy of holies as expected. See Barker, p. 145-47.
5. p. 78
6. p. 76
7. See Targum P-Jonathan Num. 24:17.
8. Damascus Document CD VII and War Scroll 1QM XI
9. See Barker’s discussion on p. 113
10. pp. 114-15
11. p. 116
12. see The Testament of Adam and The Book of the Cave of Treasures
13. p. 119
14. pp. 115-122

I recently received a copy of Margaret Barker’s newest book, Christmas: The Original Story (SPCK, 2008), from a dear friend. As the book generally only ships from England, it is quite difficult yet to get a copy–some I am extra grateful to have had the opportunity to receive it and give it a thorough read. I had originally intended to write a post on it by Christmas, naturally, but the busy nature of the holidays has kept me from finishing. If you are willing to bypass the fact that Christmas has now come and gone, I hope that this post will be a nice addition to your desire to contemplate the true meaning of Christmas at this time of year. (And because Jesus was almost certainly not born on December 25th, perhaps that fact can afford me some flexibility regarding the date of this post)  :)

For those familiar with Margaret Barker’s previous works, you will be amazed (but not necessarily surprised) at how she is able to find in the traditional Christmas stories all the main points of her “temple theology.”¹ She provides ample evidence that the early Christian stories of the birth of Christ were based on a temple worldview and that an understanding of the ancient traditions of Solomon’s Temple are necessary to understand the “original story” of Christmas. In the process of explaining to us how her theory plays out, she answers many important questions about how the Christians understood the birth of Christ and why they chose to pass the story on in the manner they did.

This book comes to us at a very appropriate time, when the “original story” of Christmas is all but forgotten, and the true “reason for the season”–Jesus–is discounted (“trampled under foot” 1 Nephi 19:7), and his name counted offensive.  

From her preface, Barker explains one of the reasons she wanted to write this book:

 The great festivals of the Church have been almost taken over by supermarkets and sporting events. Easter is a time for bonnets and bunnies and chocolate eggs; Christmas, which starts at the end of October, is for reindeer and mistletoe and mince pies. Nativity plays have come a long way since St. Francis first set up his crib. Either they are banned to satisfy the politically correct, or they are odern and have the birth in a bus shelter, or they are sentimental and have squirrels and even sea creatures at the crib.

The original story is so much better. It has suffered from over-familiarity, and the words are sometimes lost in a flurry of domestic distraction.  Reread and repondered, the original story of the incarnation is one of the greatest treasures in the Bible.²

Reading Barker’s passionate exploration of the earliest Christmas stories has given me greater appreciation for these precious tales that we have heard repeated so many times and, furthermore, given me greater insight into the meaning of many of the details that so often get overlooked as unimportant.  Finally, her masterful ability to find temple imagery in places most would never look for it has opened my eyes to an even greater understanding of how important the temple truly was to the early Christians and helped me remember how grateful I am for our own temple tradition as LDS.

The Temple Setting of the Nativity

After discussing briefly what Christmas has become, Barker makes this important note for our understanding of the original Christmas stories:

The real “setting” for the Christmas stories, however, is the world in which they were first written. For the Jewish people of Palestine in the first century CE, the world was shaped by the temple. Their culture was shaped by its calendar and its taxes, its purity rules and and its sacrifices, and especially by the holy books and prophecies that were preserved there…There were, however, many who thought the temple impure and longed to see it replaced –but this was as much a political aspiration as it was religious. The promised Messiah would destroy the temple and rebuild it, they said.³

Those who knew the prophecies and the ancient temple traditions knew what to expect in a Messiah. For these, the role of the Messiah was inextricably bound to the temple.  Many Jews at the time of Christ felt that they were living through an extended spiritual “exile” that had continued long after the return from Babylon.  Many, such as the inhabitants of Qumran, saw the Second Temple and its priesthood as corrupt and longed for the day when the Anointed One would come and destroy the corrupt temple and restore the ancient holy order.  Ezekiel, and also (second) Isaiah, had prophesied of a future temple and a time when the Glory of the Lord would return.⁴ The Christians saw this glory as being present in Jesus (John 1:14). 

The Christians also saw the ancient temple rituals as prefiguring the coming of Jesus Christ.  When the high priest performed the holy rites on the Day of Atonement, he wore only white linen robes in the Holy of Holies, representing the clothing of celestial beings. When they emerged from the holy place, which represented heaven, they passed through the veil into the “material world” and were clothed in colored robes that represented the elements of this mortal realm.  The high priest (or king) was, in a sense, “incarnated” as they re-emerged into the mortal world. Barker further explains:

The high priests and kings of ancient Jerusalem entered the holy of holies and then emerged as messengers, angels, of the Lord. They had been raised up, that is, resurrected; they were sons of God, that is, angels; and they were anointed ones, that is, messiahs. The robes of the high priest in these two parts of the temple symbolized his passing from the angel state into the material world,. He came from the glory, and by putting on a vestment that symbolized matter, he veiled that glory when he was in the world. The first Christians used these images to describe the incarnation. The writer of Hebrews could say, without any explanation, that the curtain of the temple was the flesh of Jesus, the great high priest (Heb. 10:20), and the Gospels record that the temple veil tore when Jesus died ( Matt. 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45). ‘Veiled in flesh the Godhead see’ is one of Charles Wesley’s best-known lines, familiar to anyone who has sung Christmas carols.⁵

Jesus was understood to have been begotten in heaven before his earthly birth–an event that also had been ritually depicted in the ancient temple. Speaking of the Davidic kings (while prefiguring Christ), Psalm 89 declares:

I have exalted one chosen from the people…With my holy oil I have anointed him….He shall cry to me “Thou art my Father”…And I will make him the firstborn… (Ps. 89:19–20, 26–27).

Barker notes that Ps. 2:7 contains further words that appear to pertain to this same temple ritual:

I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, “You are my son, today I have begotten you.

Thus, in a ritual that apparently took place in the Holy of Holies, also known as the “Bridal Chamber”⁶, the Israelite king was “begotten” as a “son of God” and emerged as the mortal representative of Yahweh. 

The oldest parts of the Old Testament distinguish God Most High (El Elyon) and the LORD (Yahweh). Yahweh was the first-born of the sons of God Most High, appointed as the Guardian Angel of Jacob, that is, of his descendents (Deut. 32:8, in the oldest known Hebrew text of that verse that was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls). Yahweh the Son of God Most High, the God of Israel who appeared in the Old Testament theophanies, in turn had a son, who was the human being in whom he was present with his people. This way of thinking about God and the divine presence did not fracture the Unity of the Divine; it extended it.  The Davidic king was known as Immanuel, which means ‘God with us’ (Isa. 8:8 and more famously, Isa. 7:14).  The psalmist described a procession into the temple when he saw ‘My God, my King’ going into the holy place (Ps. 68:24). When Solomon was made king, he sat on the throne of the LORD as king (1 Chron. 29:23), and all the people ‘bowed their heads and worshipped the LORD, the king’ (1 Chron. 29:20, the literal translation of the Hebrew).  The human king, in a way that they understood and we do not, was the LORD. He was the Son of God Most High with his people.  This problem of the human nature and the divine nature was to perplex Christian thinkers for generations; it was one of the temple belies that was never explained, or rather, never put into the public domain…The Christians saw all the temple ritual as foreshadowing the reality of the incarnation…⁷

The story of God having a Son, therefore, is not as foreign to the belief system of the ancient Israelites and later Jews as many biblical scholars would have us think. In fact, the idea was not foreign at all, but was an essential part of the ancient temple theology.  However, as Barker explains, the distinction between the Father (God Most High) and the Son (Yahweh) was “lost in the attempt to impose literal monotheism, and the language of fatherhood was changed to that of creation…The idea of a Father God and his Son fell out of favour among those who equated the LORD  and God Most High”⁸.  

One of the most important aspects of the temple in ancient times was the ritual of “seeing the LORD.” The greatest privilege and blessing was to be able to see beyond the temple veil and witness “the glory of the Lord’s presence.” The traditional high priestly blessing declared: “The Lord bless you and keep you: The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you: The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace” (Num. 6:24–26).  Barker reasons that Israelite temple-goers likely witnessed the king/high priest emerge from the holy of holies dressed in his “glorious robe”, representing Yahweh.  In one text, the high priest is described as appearing like “the morning star among the clouds…like the sun shining upon the temple of the Most High” (Ben Sira 50:6-7).⁹

Barker notes:

This was the glory in human form that Ezekiel saw in his vision. Isaiah recorded what was enacted in the temple ceremony: ‘The people who walked in darkness, have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has the light shined…For unto us a child is born…” (Isa. 9:2, 6).¹⁰

“Seeing the glory,” Barker explains, “however, became controversial. Nobody knows why.”¹¹ There were many attempts to downplay or exclude this ancient belief in the Lord appearing in his temple.  However, the Christians held on to this belief and witnessed that they had seen the Glory in the person of Jesus and, thus, had been given the privilege of looking beyond the veil.

Barker includes many other temple motifs that were incorporated by the authors of the Nativity stories which I don’t have room to include here.  These early Christian authors were careful to include events surrounding the birth of Jesus that they saw as fulfilling prophecy or pertaining to the temple tradition.  Now, this does not mean that they invented fictitious events about Jesus in order to fit a certain religious perspective. Barker explains:

A basic story was told, but not with the mundane detail  that modern writers might choose to include. There was no mention of, for example, nappies¹² or whatever was used at the time, although the infant Jesus doubtless needed them. but there was mention of the manger, and so we ask, Why was that detail  included? Those elements in the story that could be linked to prophecy, and illuminated by it, were naturally the most emphasized. This is not to say that the story of Jesus’ life was simply compiled from prophecies, as some have suggested. Rather, the incidents seen to be significant were emphasized, and the material of interest to modern biographers was not.¹³

In order to understand what the specific details of the Christmas stories were supposed to mean, one must be well acquainted with the worldview of the late Second Temple Jewish people.  First of all, one must understand the Temple–and not necessarily the way that the temple is represented in the Old Testament–but the way the temple was understood by those who knew the ancient temple traditions well. Also, Barker points out that some of the prophecies that were being used no longer exist in our Old Testament. Besides the fact that the early Christians had a more open canon and used “extra-biblical” works such as the Enochic writings as scripture, it is apparent that many Messianic proof texts used by the Christians were modified or removed by those critical of their movement. Justin Martyr maintained that Jewish teachers had been removing relevant texts from the scriptures: “they have deleted entire passages…”¹⁴ The discovery of ancient versions of key biblical texts among caches such as the Dead Sea Scrolls collection have confirmed this as fact.  The scriptures that the early Christians knew, both in Hebrew and Greek, supported their view of the Messianic expectations more than later Jewish versions would. 

The disciples of Christ knew that Jesus was the incarnation of Yahweh, the LORD. He was the reality that had been ritually depicted in the ancient temple rituals. He was the Son of God Most High and was the being who had appeared to the ancient faithful as the God of Israel.  Margaret Barker expounds on these ideas beautifully and convincingly.  However, this is only the beginning of her exploration. I hate to leave you hanging in suspense, but further comments on Barker’s enlightening discoveries will have to wait for my next post!

To be continued…

1. See her explanation of this method on her website: http://www.margaretbarker.com/Temple/default.htm or any of her recent books.
2. Preface, p. ix
3. p. 1
4. Ezek. 43:10; 45:9-12; Isa. 58:8
5. p. 5
6. See her explanation and quote from The Gospel of Philip, p. 8
7. pp. 9-10, emphasis in original
8. p. 11
9. See Barker’s discussion of this topic, p. 15
10. p. 15
11. p. 15
12. the English term for diapers
13. p. 18
14. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, 71, as quoted on p. 19