Liturgical Studies

Solomon's Temple and the Roots of Christian Worship

• Gregory K. Beale, "Eden, the Temple, and the Church’s Mission in the New Creation", J. Ev. Theol. Soc. 48/1 (March 2005) 5-31— astonishing (because we're not used to reading it that way) how deeply temple-centered the Bible and the whole scheme of salvation is. Beale does a good job of connecting the temple in Eden, Kings, the Prophets, Jesus, Paul, and Revelation. I had never appreciated before that the temple was to expand! Towards the end of the article, he has to deal with the foolish speculations of some evangelical circles about a literal rebuilding of a temple in the Israeli nation-state, but this does not detract from the value of the article.

• Basil (Osborne), Bishop of Sergievo, "The Making of a Priest in the Byzantine Tradition": Abstract excerpted from Concepts of the Priesthood in Early Jewish and Christian Sources: Abstracts of the Conference held on 24 September 2001, Cambridge Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Studies. A discussion of the theology of the heavenly ascent which is contained in an Orthodox bishop's ordination rite. Interesting in view of current research in the Jewish roots of Christological and Trinitarian monotheism.

• Margaret Barker, "The Secret Tradition": First published in the Journal of Higher Criticism 2.1 1995 pp.31-67.
• Margaret Barker, “The Temple Roots of the Liturgy”: Some of the similarities between the early Christian liturgies and temple rituals.
• Margaret Barker, “Beyond the Veil of the Temple: The High Priestly Origin of the Apocalypses”: Temple imagery were memories of the cult of the first temple, which the prophets assumed and the apocalyptic visionaries kept alive in memory. Presidential address to the Society for Old Testament Study, Cambridge , January 1998, published in the Scottish Journal of Theology 51.1 (1998).
• Margaret Barker, "Parousia and Liturgy", Excursus from The Revelation of Jesus Christ, (T&T Clark: Edinburgh, 2000), pp. 373-388.
• Margaret Barker, “Atonement: The Rite of Healing”: What was assumed by the New Testament writers was a traditional understanding of the temple rituals and myths of atonement. Concepts in the New testament such as covenant, righteousness, justification and grace were related to the central theme of atonement, but the overall pattern, it seems, has been lost. Paper read to the Society for Old Testament Study in Edinburgh, July 1994, and published in the Scottish Journal of Theology 49.1.1996.
• Margaret Barker, “Text and Context”: Chapter 12 of The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (T&T Clark / Continuum, 2003), pp. 295-215, discusses how the early Church used a somewhat different canon of Scripture in which priestly/temple themes were more prominent than in the MT, and how the Jews created the MT by modifying the text earlier in response to the Exile, and later in response to early Christian polemic. A fascinating study. I originally obtained this paper from the internet, but there were deficiencies in that version which I have corrected against the version as subsequently published. I have included the page numbering of the printed version, but if citing this paper, the reader should refer to the published text as more authoritative.
• Margaret Barker, “Temple Imagery In Philo: An Indication Of The Origin Of The Logos?" Originally published in W. Horbury, ed, Templum Amicitiae: Essays on the Second Temple Presented to Ernst Bammel (JSOT Press: Sheffield, 1991), pp. 70-102.