The Mother of the Lord
Volume 1: The Lady in the Temple
Margaret Barker
404 Pages, ISBN 978 0 5675 2815 5
Published by Bloomsbury, 2012
'Once again, Dr Barker offers us a massively learned and creative
re-reading of what the Bible has to tell us about the religion of
ancient Israel, using her wide knowledge of material in Hebrew,
Syriac and other Semitic languages, texts from Jewish, Gnostic and
Christian sources. She reinforces the case she had made in earlier
books that the Hebrew Scriptures represent a deeply conflicted set
of traditions, and excavates the lost cult of the divine 'Lady of the
Temple', the personification of divine Wisdom and the bearer of the
divine Son. Her contention that this alone makes sense not only of
tensions within the text of Hebrew scriptures but also op persistent
and otherwise baffling themes in early Christianity is argued with
vigour and comprehensiveness of scope. Controversial as it is, this
is a very significant contribution to the fuller understanding of
both Christian and Jewish origens.'
- Archbishop Rowan Williams.
Are there Old Testament roots of the veneration of the Blessed Virgin
Mary? Margaret Barker traces this devotion 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
of the Lord in the Royal cult. She was expelled around 600 BCE, was
almost written out of the Hebrew text, and virtually excluded from the
canon - but not entirely. The second volume will show how the Mother
became so important for the Christians who saw themselves as restoring
the First Temple.
Margaret Barker is a former President of the Society for Old
Testament Study, and author of numerous works, including Temple
Themes in Christian Worship, The Great High Priest and Creation:
A Biblical Vision for the Environment.
(The text above comes from the back of the book)
