Margaret Barker traces the veneration of the Mother of the Lord back to the Old Testament and a female deity in the first temple in Jerusalem.

Are there Old Testemant roots of the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Margaret Barker traces the roots of the devotion to Mary as Mother of the Lord back to the Old Testament and the first temple in Jerusalem. The evidence is consistent over more than a millennium: there had been a female deity in Israel, the Mother figure in the Royal cult, who had been abandoned about 600BCE. She was almost written out of the Hebrew text, almost excluded from the canon. This first of two volumes traces the history of the Lady in the Temple, and looks forward to the second volume in which Barker will show how the Lady of the Temple is reclaimed in the advent of Christianity, and becomes the Lady in the Church. The result is breathtaking, and like all Barker's work, is impossible to put down.

"This is a challenging and stimulating book for anyone interested in the origins of the Jewish religion and its relation to contemporary religious practises in the ancient near east." - The Reader

"Barker's detailed arguments and analysis of her topic is nothing short of encyclopedic - she covers vast amounts of ground with insightful detail . . . I look forward to her second volume" - Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 65

"Barker’s work is impressive and the conclusions reached merit serious academic consideration, especially given the persisting fictive division between ‘official’ Josianic religion and Israelite ‘folk’ religion in a fair few strands of biblical scholarship. I look forward to the second volume." - Theology