King of the Jews

Temple Theology in John's Gospel

Margaret Barker

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780281069682
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The book starts with background chapters on the Jews, Moses, the King in the Old Testament, and moves on to the King in the New Testament (apart from John) and then reaches its main focus on the Gospel of John.

Only John's Gospel says that Jesus was crucified as Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews. Jesus was the keeper of the ways of the first temple in Jerusalem. These had almost been lost when the Moses traditions came to dominate in the second-temple period.

Jesus' mission was to restore the ways of the original temple. He entrusted his visions to John the Elder, a priestly disciple in Jerusalem, and John compiled them into the Book of Revelation. Later, John wrote his Gospel to show how the visions had been fulfilled. The background to the Fourth Gospel is temple tradition. John shows how Jesus' debates with the Jews centred on the great difference between the world of the second temple and the world of the priest-kings of the first temple from which Christianity emerged. The Johannine community were the Hebrew disciples of Jesus who saw themselves as the true high priesthood restored.

"Those at Qumran who worshipped as/with the angels in heaven cannot have been very different from those who wrote and read John's gospel and the Book of Revelation. The latter were the Hebrew-Christian community who saw themselves as the heavenly throng...

"Their Lamb on the throne opened a sealed book - secret teaching - and they were originally people chosen from all the twelve tribes of Israel to receive the Name of the Lord on their foreheads (Rev.7.3-4). This vision was set in the early days of the first temple, before the kingdom divided, and it had become the hope for the future." Taken from the Introduction.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1 The Background to John’s Gospel
• 2 Who was Moses?
• 3 The king in the Old Testament
• 4 The king in the New Testament
• Part 2 Temple Theology in John’s Gospel
• John 1
• John 2
• John 3
• John 4
• John 5
• John 6
• John 7
• John 8
• John 9
• John 10
• John 11
• John 12
• John 13
• John 14
• John 15
• John 16
• John 17
• John 18—19
• John 20
• John 21
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