The Temple and the Christmas Story

I am rather at a disadvantage in reading this book because it comes at the end of Margaret Barker's exploration of her Temple Theology. As she comments on her website on her work:

Margaret Barker has developed an approach to Biblical Studies now known as Temple Theology. Margaret Barker read theology at the University of Cambridge, England, and went on to pursue her research independently. She was elected President of the Society for Old Testament Study in 1998, and edited the Society’s second Monograph Series, published by Ashgate. She has so far written 17 books, which form a sequence, later volumes building on her earlier conclusions.

Temple Theology as she summarizes it emphasizes the early Church:

Temple theology traces the roots of Christian theology back into the first Temple, destroyed by the cultural revolution in the time of King Josiah at the end of the seventh century BCE. Refugees from the purges settled in Egypt and Arabia. From widely scattered surviving fragments, it is possible to reconstruct the world view of the first Christians, and to restore to their original setting such key concepts as the Messiah, divine Sonship, covenant, atonement, resurrection, incarnation, the Second Coming and the Kingdom of God.

So in this book, Christmas: The Original Story, Barker is applying that Temple Theology to our understanding of the Nativity stories in the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew, and the Protoevangelicum of James. One point she makes on her website, summarizing the tenets of Temple Theology: "Sola Scriptura has hindered rather than helped the understanding of Christianity" and she calls on her fellow Protestants to understand the Tradition of the Church, how the early Christians, the Apostolic Fathers and the later Fathers of the Church experienced the Divine Revelation in mystery and sign.

I said I was at some disadvantage having not read the books in which Barker outlines the Temple Theology, but as I read Christmas: The Original Story, I realized that being a Catholic, attending Mass and praying with the Church liturgically in other ways, I could easily see how the liturgical sacrifices and ordinances of the Temple echo in our worship. Even in the externals: a consecrated, separated priesthood, incense, vestments, ritual, mystery, etc, I could appreciate some of what she unfolds in this book from experience, especially from having attended Eastern Orthodox and participated in Eastern Rite Catholic Divine Liturgies.

In Chapter 1, "The Setting" she covers "The World of the Temple," "Telling the Stories", and "The Politics". Part of her argument in this chapter is that the efforts to synthesize the early Christian view of Jesus, the Son of God Incarnate in the Virgin's womb with Greek philosophy created some of the confusion that led to the long debates about the Person of Jesus Christ from the Arians to the Nestorians, etc, etc.

In Chapter 2, "Other Voices", Barker examines the Gospels of St. John and St. Mark, and John's Revelation, exploring themes of "Adam", "The Lady", and "The Hidden Descent". She points out that early Christians, converts from Judaism, saw Jesus as the restorer of the First Temple, as the High Priest on the Day of Atonement and she explores Old Testament images of the Lady and the Mother of Jesus through the story of the Woman Clothed with the Sun. She references St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Irenaeus of Lyon in exploring how "the Lord descended invisible to created things".

Chapter 3 is dedicated to exploring the tenets of Temple Theology in the Gospel of St. Luke:

• The first annunciation:the birth of John [could also be: the conception of John]
• The second annunciation: the birth of Jesus [could also be: the conception of Jesus]
• The meeting of Elizabeth and Mary [the Visitation]
• The birth of John
• The birth of Jesus
• The annunciation to the shepherds
• The LORD in his temple

Barker's explication of the roles of Simeon and Anna in what I'm used to calling the Presentation of the Lord explores how they reveal aspects of Temple life at the time of Jesus, as they looked for the one who would truly restore the Temple and redeem Israel.

In Chapter 4 Barker explores the Nativity Story in the Gospel of St. Matthew:

• The genealogy
• The Virgin birth
• The star
• The magi
• The flight into Egypt

In the section on the genealogy she examines both Luke's and Matthew's family trees for Jesus. She notes that St. Matthew emphasized the Virgin birth of Jesus because of contemporary claims that Jesus's mother was a harlot. Barker describes the development of different theories about who the magi were, where they came from, and why they brought the gifts they gave. In general she notes that St. Matthew's infancy narrative emphasizes how the birth of Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, including that he would "come out of Egypt". She cites the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew as the source of some legends of the Holy Family's sojourn in Egypt.

Chapter 5 explores The Infancy Gospel of St. James, the great source of many traditions in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church: the Meeting of Anna and Joachim at the Gate; the Presentation of Mary in the Temple; the Marriage of Mary and Joseph; the Eastern Orthodox Icon of the Cave, etc. She argues that the Infancy Gospel or Protoevangelicum of St. James demonstrates Mary's exalted role in our redemption from the beginning as the Theokotos, the Mother of God, not simply the Mother of Jesus. In general, Barker notes that this gospel provides Christians with many traditions and is more influential than understood or acknowledged: she calls for more study of the text, of which she provides a translation.

In Chapter 6 Barker discusses how the Koran or Qur'an describes the birth of Jesus and dissents from the teaching that He is the Incarnate Son of God. As Barker states, this is too scandalous to accept, even though the Qur'an accepts that Jesus's birth was miraculous and honors Mary as the Mother of Jesus.

So Barker ends her book with the mystery of the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Incarnate in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born in a manger, a baby in swaddling clothes--the Savior and Redeemer. She says that there is an ongoing debate in the Christian Church about how to express how this mystery occurred--how to put it into English words (for English-speaking Christians). 

To me that means that this is mystery, beyond human language and complete understanding, as high as God is high above us and yet as surely true as the fact that God loves us as much as He loves us.

Fascinating.