Mary Magdalene’s Easter: Study of John 20

Tutor:  Margaret Barker

Preparing for the feast of St Mary Magdalene on July 22^nd, we shall look in depth at St John’s account of her meeting Jesus.  Mary Magdalene was remembered as a visionary, a teacher and a leader in the early Church, and St John has recorded the reason for this.

What she learned from her encounter with the risen Lord became the basis for understanding his death and resurrection.

Margaret Barker read theology at Cambridge and went on to pursue her research independently. She was elected President of the Society for Old Testament Study in 1998, and edited the Society’s second Monograph Series, published by Ashgate. She has so far written 17 books, which form a sequence, later volumes building on her earlier conclusions. Since 1997, she has been part of the symposium Religion, Science and the Environment, convened by His All Holiness Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch.

Margaret developed an approach to Biblical Studies now known as Temple Theology. In 2008 she was awarded a Lambeth Degree of Doctor of Divinity by Rowan Williams, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘in recognition of her work on the Jerusalem Temple and the origins of Christian Liturgy, which has made a significantly new contribution to our understanding of the New Testament and opened up important fields for research’.

Margaret Barker is a mother and grandmother, a retired Methodist preacher and was involved for over 30 years with the work of a women’s refuge.