Margaret Barker Interview – Part 6 (Seeing the Face of God)

“The original purpose of the temple pilgrimage, was that you went to the temple to see the face of the Lord. Yea? In the old calendars ‘each of your males will see the face of the Lord’… By the time you’re reading the Masoretic texts as we have now, ‘each of your males will be seen in the presence of the Lord’… it’s been changed. Because the idea that you saw the presence of God was unthinkable, so they said, well, ok, you appear in the presence of God, you present yourself in the temple…”  —Margaret Barker

“So we know that somebody thought it was you are seeing the face of the Lord. Yea. Very interesting, very interesting. So someone has been at work, changing the docs, and we know which way.”  —Margaret Barker

“I think Melchizedek was a theophany of Yahweh. The Jewish interpretation, certainly the next passage, … Yahweh is the great high priest, and he is the one, as you have in the temple, you know, the great high priest is Yahweh, and he is the priest to God Most High. So you’ve got a hierarchy of priests. And I think that is how Genesis 15 was interpreted. Where, in the Apocalypse of Abraham, Abraham sees, mostly clearly, Melchizedek, but he describes him as … the angel Yahweh, and he is dressed as a high priest, with his purple and his… turban thing, and yes, it’s all very very interesting… all the other earlier sources… Melchizedek is the priest of El Elyon, almost certainly Yahweh, part of the great angel hierarchy. I mean, the implications of that for Melchizedek priesthood, is just mind boggling, absolutely mind boggling… So there is a lot of work for people to do, waiting to be done. Oh dear, it would be nice if we didn’t need sleep. We’d get such a lot more done!”  —Margaret Barker