Review of Temple Themes in Christian Worship

Earlier this year, John W. Welch¹ reviewed Margaret Barker’s Temple Themes in Christian Worship. According to the description, “In this new major book, Margaret Barker traces the roots of Christian worship back to the Jewish temple. By proposing a temple setting, a great deal more can be explained, and the existing rather limited resources can be more fruitfully used. By working with a great variety of sources (canonical, extra-canonical and Fathers, all presented here in translation), it is possible to reconstruct something of the early Christian world view, which shows the Church as the conscious continuation of the temple worship.”

Dr. Welch wrote in part:

After Margaret’s work, everything in the New Testament needs to be reconsidered in terms of temple themes. For example, Margaret rightly points to several temple connections in the Sermon on the Mount, mainly in the beatitude of seeing God (18, 146) and in the Lord’s prayer (20), “seeing the kingdom [come]” and the daily bread as the bread of the Presence (208). But as my own current work strives to show, pervasive temple connections can be drawn (as Margaret is well aware) throughout the entire Sermon on the Mount. For example, her intriguing discussion of how all Christians (as priests) bear (or forgive) [nasa’] the sins of others by consuming the inward parts of the sacrifice (193, 198-99), stands ready and waiting to be connected with “forgive us our debts as we forgive (or bear!) the transgressions of others.” I’m also drawn to the idea that all Christians are not only priests, but high priests. Margaret’s insight explains the puzzling fact that the word “firstborn”—normally there can only be one firstborn—in Hebrews 12:23, is a plural, for all shall be called not just “sons of God” but “firstborn sons of God,” it being a mystery how there can be more than one “firstborn.”

Notes:

1. John W. Welch is the Robert K. Thomas Professor of Law at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, editor in chief of BYU Studies, and director of publications for the university’s Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for LDS History. He serves on the executive committee of the Biblical Law Section of the Society of Biblical Literature.↩