Margaret Barker

Margaret Barker (born 1944), a Methodist preacher, studied theology at the University of Cambridge, after which she has devoted her life to research in ancient Christianity. She has developed an approach to biblical studies known as Temple Theology. She was president of the Society for Old Testament Study in 1998, and in July 2008 she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Temple Theology

Temple Theology is an approach to biblical studies developed by Margaret Barker in her books starting from The Great High Priest (2003) and Temple Theology (2004). This approach identifies some elements of the theology and worship of the Jewish First Temple that endured beyond Josiah's reform and survived in both early Christian theology and liturgy and in gnosticism. According to this view Temple Theology has been influential in molding the roots of Christianity as well as, or even more than, Hellenistic or synagogue culture.

According to Barker, the main ideas of Temple Theology are the following:

Margaret Barker (artist)

Margaret Dorothy Baker (6 June 1907 - 2003) was a British artist.

She was born in Sydenham, South London, on 6 June 1907. She was awarded a scholarship in 1925 to Royal College of Art where she was under the tutelage of William Rothenstein and Randolph Schwabe. In school she submitted her work to the New English Art Club for the Prix de Rome. After school, 1929, she taught art at girls schools near Birmingham until she got married to Kenneth Pringle, a dental surgen in 1938. They lived in central London until the blitz. Margaret and her son escape to the Devon Coast from the bombing to return after the war. Barker mostly produced landscapes but also painted friends and imaginative portraits. After their son died in the 1960s Barker and her husband moved to North Kent where Margaret's painting trailed off only producing a few watercolor landscapes. Kenneth Pringle died March 1983 returning Margaret to Sydenham.

Her work is in the permanent collection of the Tate Gallery.