OK, so I'm stretching the genre of this series to include the following!
'[T]he original gospel message was about the temple, not the corrupted temple of Jesus' own time, but the original temple which had been destroyed some six hundred years earlier ... The Book of Revelation is the key to understanding early Christianity ... Melchizedek represented the older faith ... Jesus as Melchizedek can now be seen as the key to the New testament'
Margaret Barker, Temple Theology: An Introduction, pp. 1, 4-5
Just a thought: Barker often writes interchangeably of the 'mindmap' of the temple and the 'worldview' of the early Christians, as if they were essentially synonymous. However, is a mindmap, while it may be part of a worldview, sufficient to form a worldview itself (especially as I suspect Barker's temple theology tends to neglect a necessary focus on the crucial matter of 'story' in constructing worldviews)?
6 comments:
Can you say more about your parenthetical comment, Chris?
Chris, can you recommend this book? I'm attempting a "theological exegesis" of Psalm 24 and will have to deal with the symbolism of temple.
Any book by Margaret Barker is worth reading. Her Temple Theology, and Greg Beale's The Temple and the Church's Mission are decent reads.
Hi Terry, perhaps I'll post a more extensive critique of Barker at some stage. Barker asserts that the temple formed the worldview of early Christians. But essentially temple theology, as she calls it, was a mindmap rather than a story, and thus I am not sure it qualifies as a wordview. Does that clarify matters?
Hi Phil, I would receommend the book for your purposes, yes!
I think my problem is that I'm not sure what you mean by a mindmap, Chris.
Thanks Chris,
just a little comment: you said, But essentially temple theology, as she calls it, was a mindmap rather than a story, and thus I am not sure it qualifies as a wordview.
Are you making story and worldview synonymous? In NTPOG - as far as I can remember - Wright relegates it to one element of a worldview.
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