Margaret Barker Decimates Mormonism at its Core

[_Philo Sofee]

I suspect it is entirely unintentional on her part, but Margaret Barker seems to me to be a singular powerful source of giving Mormonism a stab in the heart with a saber. It didn't dawn on me until reading her truly intelligent analysis in her text "Temple Theology in the Gospel of John" (2014) why Mormons have more or less faded in their enthusiasm for her.

It was a good symbiotic relationship for a decade or so, with Mormons touting her books and helping sell many more tens of thousands of them to an audience she perhaps at first had no idea even existed. So, of course, she participated with them in several conferences, and symposia, writing articles which worked on themes related to Mormonism and enjoying the ride around the world of scholarship. This is not to say she is scheming, not at all. I see her as truly genuine in her endeavors to elucidate the Biblical World, and her scholarship is Mercea Eliade style only the focus for her is the First Temple as background to everything in the ancient Jewish, Early Christian world. She makes the Bible come alive again with her inclusion of extra canonical materials that are enjoyable to re-read, and compare.

But the cooling off has had to come about since she has no shied away from her most interesting theme of First Temple background for Jewish restoration religious spirituality. She has not wavered, and has demonstrated through historical exegesis and intriguing interpretation that the mission of Jesus Christ was for one thing. The restoration of First Temple Jewish truth and religion. And what was the actual temple restoration involved?

The bringing back of the Menorah, the budding rod of Aaron, the Holy Spirit, and the Worship of the Mother who gave birth to the universe. And this occurred in the Holy of Holies! The Heavenly Mother was the CORE of the Holy of Holies. What was her role? Giving birth to the universe in time and material which leads also to the birth of her Divine Son.

This demonstrates that, to the consternation of Mormonism, the temple ceremony of Mormonism is nothing like the actual original work/ritual in the ancient Jewish Temple. The Mormon temple materials are fobbing from Freemasonry, a rather modern (nothing more ancient of it than 1700) tissue of rituals literally having nothing in common with anything near ancient Jewish concern, ritual, religion, or history, except in name only. It is as much a guess concerning Hyrum Abiff as it is concerning Solomon's temple. Barker's materials are solidly in the line and arena of ancient Judaism, as we know of it with what sources we possess. The entire philosophy of the ancient Jewish mystical temple is not concerned with baptizing for the dead, or even marrying for eternity. The concept of marriage concerning a man and woman is concerned with the reconciliation and joining of opposites, not the solidifying of a man and woman in their own form for eternity as eternal male and eternal female. It is about the many becoming the one, such as Jesus prayed for mystically in John 17, a chapter Mormons continually misunderstand its true meaning concerning reality as Jesus was asking God for Him and the others. The eternal family, with parents and children is not Judaism's conceptualization, it is the actual mystical joining of all into the One. That is what is eternal. And it is the MOTHER who is central to that joining with power and love. This you will not find in Mormonism nor its temples. But that is the core of Jesus' religious work, the rejoining of the many into the One. Barker shows this from very many fascinating angles and use of ancient documents and comments from ancients' understanding.

Jewish First Temple Hopes and meaning and philosophy and religion is simply by no possible stretch of even a light year's imagination is anything similar to what Mormonism does, says, or claims about its own temple work. Barker demonstrates this consistently and rather powerfully. The power of her material is, she doesn't have Mormonism in her sights at all. It doesn't even concern her, even though dozens of Mormon scholars have used her work to further their own biased agenda, who now see "temple" in absolutely everything in any scripture they can possibly discuss! They have so overblown the parallels and theme that it is all lost in a hazy overall glaze of everything ever said, thought or written has to do with the temple anciently, a simply ridiculous line of thinking.

Barker has never joined Mormonism regardless of what the Mormon scholars wooing her have said to her or praised her work, because for her, it isn't about which religion is true (another huge difference with her work and Mormon scholars!). It is about what was the ancient Jewish world about? Can we learn about it using the ancient writings of Jews (whether canonical or not), Greeks, or whoever has talked religious philosophy, and realize what Jesus actually was about? That is the theme, and has she ever stuck to her guns on it.

There is a lesson in this. The agenda of Barker is truth. Interpretation takes her in paths no one else dares go, because she has no goal to reach no matter what... except... what is the truth, not worrying about who can I please, or which group shall I join and get along with. And her ideas are argued, properly so, as she herself has said.

Her ideas that Jesus and all who follow him, when he was baptized was at that moment also resurrected, as all are who are baptized is nothing close to the Mormon doctrine, temple or otherwise. This too is another way in which she is so different and non-usable for any Christian group to latch onto and say here is confirmation of our own views! One does not die first in order to be resurrected. One is resurrected immediately during their own baptism. The only view Barker wants to verify is God's. This shows in her materials, much to the consternation of pretty much every organized religion out there.

[_huckelberry]

Philo, is this idea of being resurrected before you die much different than the rather widespread idea of being a born again Christian?

[_Philo Sofee]

Philo, is this idea of being resurrected before you die much different than the rather widespread idea of being a born again Christian?

Good question! I shall keep on looking into her materials (I'm getting a boatload of her stuff for my Christmas this year), and shall return and discuss.

[_Philo Sofee]

I actually found further in Barker's other book "The Mother of the Lord, the Lady of the Temple," p. 267 that the temple had the Throne of Glory, the Cherubim, and the cloud surrounding the temple as the sign that the Glory (Mother) was present, it was her sign. None of these have ever been all together in any Mormon temple whatever. And the Glory was equated with the Mother, who WAS THE CHARIOT THRONE, i.e., The VIRGIN Mary... to be a real restoration of the temple which Jesus was going to restore (as per the Revelation he gave John, the Apocalypse!), it would have had all of this. Nothing in Mormonism is a genuine restoration of the real temple in Jewish history. Remember, Jesus was not a Christian, he was a fully integrated Jew living that culture, returning its temple to its former glory. Joseph Smith is nowhere near this at all in any manner.

[_Dr Exiled]

Be careful Philo. Kevin Christensen has an intellectual crush on that woman. I'm sure he thinks he was best buddies with Ms. Barker in the premortal realms.

[_Philo Sofee]

Be careful Philo. Kevin Christensen has an intellectual crush on that woman. I'm sure he thinks he was best buddies with Ms. Barker in the premortal realms.

True, and he does a good job analyzing her materials, that is, only those parts which coincides with what he already believes. But the overall picture does not match Mormon temples much, if at all. It is the larger issue the apologists are going to have to deal with eventually. Of course, now that FARMS is past history, so is the enthusiasm over Barker, but I am just discovering her without the Mormon Rose colored glasses, and she does not give much for Mormonism to grasp on to.

The CORE of her background, I am finding out, is the FIRST (Solomon's) Temple, and it was to that which Jesus and the first genuine followers (Hebrews she says) who was working to restore THAT temple, not temples to dot the world over like Mormonism claims. That has literally nothing to do with the ideal of Jesus' true restoration (which incidentally has never happened). The Second Temple was, according to the Enoch writings, built and run by apostates. It is why it was destroyed. But the real temple never came back, Jesus utterly failed in getting the Glory back, let alone the building itself. John distinguishes some of the groups in his day in his Gospel, and it is the "Jews" to which he and Jesus were hostile to, not the Hebrews. Paul, the Gospel of Hebrews, and Jesus and the early Hebrews were looking to the restored GLORY (the Mother) to come back to Israel, which the 2nd temple never had. The entire debacle with the mighty Romans put a screamin halt to all the prophecies of it. Sad really. Makes on go Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......... in a sincerely long look at it all. There was nothing in Jesus to starting a church, a late Christian interpretation. He was the SERVANT getting back to his Mother in the temple. That was his mission, following Barker. If the Mopologists can connect that to Mormon temples today and the philosophy behind them, more power to em. They are the ones insisting on emphasizing Barker, so, well, lets see what her overall view is. It ain't what Mormons are imagining, not even by a loooooong shot.

I like Barker now better than I did as an apologist. She actually makes the Bible and that era more interesting to look at again! I never imagined I would say this! Her evidences of the mangles Hebrew and Greek are spectacular too. Her analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Gnostics are pretty doggone awesome, and far different than how Mormons Mormonized them... It just seems to me her context is a bit more realistic and based on historical considerations rather than making doctrinal points like Mormons attempt to do with the writings.

[_Philo Sofee]

Be careful Philo. Kevin Christensen has an intellectual crush on that woman. I'm sure he thinks he was best buddies with Ms. Barker in the premortal realms.

And now it's my turn to have the intellectual crush on her, but it won't convert anyone to Mormonism like the apologists were hoping. I think they felt it gave them a greater probability of credibility, and it did, the cherry picked version of her which they used. But her overall stance completely leaves Mormonism out in left field looking rather silly compared to the real context she has brought into this. Once one sees that, then one wants to read everything she has written, since it is even greater and far more interesting to see than seeing if it fits an eclectic Mormon interpretation.

The sense I am getting with what little I have read so far, is the poor Jews have been stranded out in the desert with no literal hope of any of it ever happening as the visions were proclaiming in Jesus' day. Literally nothing came of anything, and its been 2,000 years now. It's all just bygone legends of the old glory days of hope and dreams so far as I can tell. Everything, heaven and earth have bypassed them, and everyone else as well. Literally nothing panned out as any prophecy ever described in all the many hundreds which were offered.

[_Meadowchik]

Great stuff, thanks Philo!

[_Physics Guy]

I'd like to hear what other scholars say about Margaret Barker. She sounds flaky to me.

Wikipedia's description of her academic career includes only the ambiguous English expression that she "read theology" at Cambridge. This probably means that she earned a B.A. in theology, though I'm not sure it rules out the possibilities that she got an M.A. or that she never graduated. She did get a Lambeth doctorate in 2008, but this is weird thing.

Lambeth Palace in London is the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the senior cleric of the Church of England. The Church of England is officially "established" by law as the state religion of England, so in England the A of C is Establishment with a capital E. And as some kind of grandfathered rule from the Middle Ages, the Archbishop of Canterbury has the power to grant academic degrees, just whenever he (or someday she) wants.

A Lambeth degree is technically just as real a degree as anything from Oxford or Cambridge, but it's really somewhere between a normal academic degree and an honorary degree. The tradition is that recipients have to have done academic work comparable to what would be required for the normal degree, but the Archbishop is the sole judge of what counts as that.

I think at least sometimes Lambeth degrees are conferred with the idea that they are granting a recognition which should be granted but which for unfortunate reasons cannot be granted in the usual way. So a Lambeth degree redresses a failure in the academic system; or, put with less positive spin, it deliberately brings politics into academic status. Perhaps the UK didn't have enough female theologians and in 2008 Barker hadn't yet written her most radical books.

I'm sure Barker is brilliant but I'm still asking whether she's a brilliant crackpot. I don't know her field to judge for myself and her academic record looks ambiguous to me.

Apart from Margaret Barker's theories in particular, I'm sure that no real history of ancient Judaism and early Christianity will ever have anything to do with Mormonism. A lot of history happened long before Joseph Smith came to rip off Freemasonry in the 1830s. Mormon enthusiasm for anything in the field of ancient Judaism can only be based on misreading. I expect Mormons are bound to misread ancient Judaism eagerly, though, because of their basic view that it must have been all about them.

[_Meadowchik]

I'd like to hear what other scholars say about Margaret Barker. She sounds flaky to me.

Wikipedia's description of her academic career includes only the ambiguous English expression that she "read theology" at Cambridge. This probably means that she earned a B.A. in theology, though I'm not sure it rules out the possibilities that she got an M.A. or that she never graduated. She did get a Lambeth doctorate in 2008, but this is weird thing.

Lambeth Palace in London is the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the senior cleric of the Church of England. The Church of England is officially "established" by law as the state religion of England, so in England the A of C is Establishment with a capital E. And as some kind of grandfathered rule from the Middle Ages, the Archbishop of Canterbury has the power to grant academic degrees, just whenever he (or someday she) wants.

A Lambeth degree is technically just as real a degree as anything from Oxford or Cambridge, but it's really somewhere between a normal academic degree and an honorary degree. The tradition is that recipients have to have done academic work comparable to what would be required for the normal degree, but the Archbishop is the sole judge of what counts as that.

I think at least sometimes Lambeth degrees are conferred with the idea that they are granting a recognition which should be granted but which for unfortunate reasons cannot be granted in the usual way. So a Lambeth degree redresses a failure in the academic system; or, put with less positive spin, it deliberately brings politics into academic status. Perhaps the UK didn't have enough female theologians and in 2008 Barker hadn't yet written her most radical books.

I'm sure Barker is brilliant but I'm still asking whether she's a brilliant crackpot. I don't know her field to judge for myself and her academic record looks ambiguous to me.

Apart from Margaret Barker's theories in particular, I'm sure that no real history of ancient Judaism and early Christianity will ever have anything to do with Mormonism. A lot of history happened long before Joseph Smith came to rip off Freemasonry in the 1830s. Mormon enthusiasm for anything in the field of ancient Judaism can only be based on misreading. I expect Mormons are bound to misread ancient Judaism eagerly, though, because of their basic view that it must have been all about them.

Is an ambiguous academic record really the equivalent of "flaky?" And is that record the only reason for your opinion?