The Great Lady : restoring her story / Margaret Barker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barker, Margaret, 1944- author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint--Symbolism.

Mary.

Bible. Isaiah--Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bible.

Bible. Revelation--Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint.

Personification in the Bible.

Women--Religious aspects.

Women.

Goddesses.

Physical Description:

xv, 448 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Sheffield, United Kingdom : Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2023.

Summary:

"In this, the eighteenth of Margaret Barker's sequence of works on Temple Theology, she returns to give further and fuller attention to the figure of the Great Lady. Barker surveys the Hebrew Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament and noncanonical texts from both Jewish and Christian traditions--and undertakes a re-telling of the story of the Great Lady's shadowy but enduring presence in community memory and later writings. This extensive volume has three parts: The Great Lady in the first temple, revered as the heavenly Mother of the Davidic kings until King Josiah's purge in 623 BCE; The Great Lady in the Book of Revelation, present in her ancient symbols and the hopes of her prophets, which Jesus knew; The Great Lady hidden in the teaching of Jesus and stories about him, explaining why she was so important in the world of the early Church. This close study of the Great Lady shows new significance in the words of the Hebrew prophets and the Qumran texts, and offers a new context for early Christian writings and so-called Gnostic texts. Barker shows how the first Christians brought the Great Lady back to their Temple Theology. She proposes that in this community Jesus her Son was the expected Melchizedek and great high priest, and Mary of Nazareth was hounoured as the Mother of God." -- Publisher, page four of cover.

Contents:

Part One. Her Story

Chapter 1. Writing the Old Testament

Chapter 2. Reading the Old Testament

Chapter 3. Reading outside the Old Testament

Chapter 4. Reading in exile from the Old Testament

Chapter 5. Isaiah and his disciples

Chapter 6. The Great Lady as Isaiah and his disciples knew her

Chapter 7. The Great Lady in exile

Part Two. The Great Lady in Revelation

Chapter 8. The cloud, the throne and the voice

Chapter 9. The woman clothed with the sun

Chapter 10. The mother of the saints and angels

Chapter 11. The bride, the wife of the lamb, the Holy City Jerusalem (Revelation 21:9-10)

Chapter 12. The lady as the Tree of Life

Part Three. The Beatitudes.

Notes:

Includes bibliographic references (419-422) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

ISBN:

9781914490224

1914490223

OCLC:

1378710695

Publisher Number:

99995578364