Temple Mysticism by Margaret Barker

Author:Margaret Barker
Format: epub
Publisher: SPCK

Dionysius, too, the influential and undatable theologian with whom we began this chapter, said that Isaiah was taught the song of the angels in order to learn the heavenly knowledge. ‘He was also introduced to the mystery of that divine and much honoured hymnody, for the angel of his vision taught the theologian [i.e. Isaiah], as far as possible, whatever he knew himself of the sacred.’113

Within living memory of the first generation, as we have seen, Clement could write in Rome:

Think of the vast company of angels, who all wait on him to serve his wishes. ‘Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him’, says Scripture, ‘and thousand thousands did him service, crying, “Holy, holy Holy is the LORD of hosts; all creation is full of his glory.”’ In the same way ought we ourselves, gathered together in a conscious unity, to cry to him as it were with a single voice, if we are to obtain a share of his glorious promises.114

The angel music and the theology it represented have been largely overlooked by recent scholarship because of the influence of Deuteronomy. The key elements of the angel music and its meaning – the vision of God, the throne, the hosts, the music and calling the LORD to the temple, atonement – are all missing from the Deuteronomic writings. Their account of Moses receiving the commandments denies that the LORD was seen (Deut. 4.12); their description of the temple in 1 Kings says nothing of the throne (cf. 1 Chron. 28.18); they say nothing of the Levites and their music; they denied that the LORD could dwell in the temple (1 Kings 8.27); they removed the ‘Hosts’ from the title LORD of Hosts (Isa. 37.16, cf. 2 Kings 19.15); there was no day of atonement in their calendar (Deut. 16); and they denied that anyone could make atonement for the sins of Israel (Exod. 32.31–33). The early Christians, on the other hand, kept all these things and they worshipped like the Levites. With their music they praised the LORD, they gave thanks (‘eucharist’) and they called on the LORD to come – which is what Maranatha means.

The earliest glimpse of their worship is John’s vision of heaven where the heavenly beings clustered around the throne and worshipped: ‘For thou didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were created’ (Rev. 4.11). Later temple mystics said they had actually been created from the engravings on the throne. The throne, as we shall see, symbolized the Lady of the temple – Wisdom – someone almost lost to contemporary readings of the Bible, due to its translators and interpreters. The correcting scribes are not just a phenomenon of the remote past. The angels from the throne were called the children of Wisdom.

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The early Christians not only knew about the angels of the older temple tradition, they lived in their world. Even a brief overview such as this shows that the early Church kept the angel lore, which shaped both its liturgy and its way of life.

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