Starting with The Older Testament in 1987, Margaret Barker proposes a new reconstruction of religious life and practice in Jerusalem before the exile. Barker is a revisionist biblical scholar from England. As a revisionist, her views stand apart from the mainstream, though her books have been garnering more and more attention.

She claims that a "fundamental misreading of the Old Testament" has been "forced upon us by those who transmitted the text," meaning those who initiated Josiah's reform and their exilic and postexilic heirs, the group that even conventional scholarship identifies as the Deuteronomists — a school of authors or redactors of the biblical books from Deuteronomy through 2 Kings.

Thus, according to Barker, the Deuteronomists have superimposed upon the biblical history — in particular, Deuteronomy through 2 Kings — their own particular theological emphasis both in their selection of material to be preserved and in the theological emphasis and interpretation of the history they tell.

Barker directs our attention to "the conflicts of the sixth century BC when the traditions of the monarchy were divided as an inheritance amongst several heirs."

What makes her work of particular interest to Latter-day Saints is the picture she constructs of First Temple theology and practice based on "the accidents of archaeological discovery and the evidence of pre-Christian texts preserved and transmitted only by Christian hands." That is, based on a wide reading of newly discovered texts and a rereading of familiar texts, she constructs a picture of the religion of preexilic Jerusalem that is strikingly different from the conventional view.

Lehi and Nephi offer us another look at the same time and place. How do the pictures compare?

Her model centers on the temple, the monarchy, and the wisdom tradition, all of which were intertwined in the preexilic era but were transformed by reforms initiated by Josiah (2 Kings 22–23), and changes continued during the exile by the Deuteronomic school in response to the destruction of the temple and monarchy in 587 BC.

In comparison, the Book of Mormon begins in "the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah," Nephi's father Lehi "having dwelt at Jerusalem in all his days," when "there came many prophets, prophesying unto the people that they must repent, or the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed" (1 Nephi 1:4).

The young Lehi was a contemporary of Josiah, in whose reign the book of the law was rediscovered during a renovation of the temple dated at 621 BC (see 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34). The clear Deuteronomic influence in the Book of Mormon plausibly follows from Lehi's experience of Josiah's ten-year reforms and whatever version of their texts Nephi obtained from the plates of Laban.

No matter which proposed date we take for Lehi's departure from Jerusalem, most of Lehi's mature life in that city would have been after Josiah's death and, hence, during the period when his reform unraveled.

The death of Josiah destabilized everything; the power of Egypt did the rest. The king was quickly replaced. The landed nobility was rendered powerless by high taxes. The administration was changed, even if this happened slowly, as we see from the very different groups of people mentioned in the brief accounts of the book of Jeremiah for the period of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah.

Even among the priests, things changed. The groups that had collaborated in a happy period were soon back at their old rivalries. The single movement was dead; the many parties at court returned.

The Book of Mormon stands in clear contrast with the efforts of these reformers. After reaching the New World, Nephi soon sets about constructing a temple, accepts de facto kingship, consecrates high priests, and demonstrates in his writings elaborate ties to known and surmised wisdom traditions, all stemming from the pre-Josiah era.

In claiming roots in Jerusalem at that specific time, Nephi and Lehi give us a look at the other side of the "formidable barrier" that the exile represents. Barker makes her new reconstruction in light of her wide-ranging review of primary sources, including new information from "the accidents of archaeological discovery and the evidence of pre-Christian texts preserved and transmitted only by Christian hands."

How does her view compare with what we see among Lehi and his descendants?

In this study, I show that Lehi's first visions provide a direct connection to Barker's reconstruction of the beliefs and practices of preexilic Israel. I explore in greater detail Barker's reconstruction of the First Temple, the monarchy, and the lost wisdom traditions.

Under each of these three themes, I show parallels to the Book of Mormon and then give some concluding observations. Because the parallels occur in radically different settings, without collusion, and because both differ dramatically from the common views, each can provide checks and potential illumination for the other.

In order to be significant, any parallels that we find should appear as part of a woven fabric rather than as isolated instances. Any differences should have valid explanations in terms of reasonable historical factors and the nature of available sources.

If there is no truth to either account, we should expect the views to have little or nothing in common. If one is accurate and the other false, we should also expect their accounts to have little or nothing in common. If both are accurate, they ought to demonstrate elaborate convergence, which indeed they do.

How was it even possible for the Nephites to observe the Mosaic rituals without the Levitical priesthood, the Aaronite high priest, and the Ark of the Covenant? And given that our temple worship today isn’t about animal sacrifice, what, if anything, does their temple worship have to do with ours?

In addition to the king’s position at the top of the Nephite priesthood structure, we find evidence of his status as high priest in his using the same or a similar instrument to the one used by the biblical high priest to inquire of God’s will for His people.

For the ancient Israelites this instrument was the stones of Urim and Thummim, kept in the pocket of a breastplate. The equivalent Nephite instrument, which also attaches to a breastplate, is called in the Book of Mormon “the interpreters” and in revelation to Joseph Smith “the Urim and Thummim.”

Importantly, this Nephite equivalent to the Jerusalem high priest’s most important relic was the possession of the Nephite kings. Mosiah the Second used it to interpret the twenty-four Jaredite plates, as his grandfather Mosiah the First evidently had to interpret the Jaredite stone record.

This would place the interpreters in the hands of the Nephite kings even while the prophetic record “the small plates” was still being through Jacob’s line, suggesting that the Nephite high priestly relics and role belonged, not to the prophets, but to the kings.

We go from the “who” now to the “how” of Nephite temple worship. Nephi wrote that he had built a temple like that of Solomon. This statement has drawn guffaws from critics, who note the enormous scale and grandeur of Solomon’s temple.

But it isn’t the scale and grandeur of Solomon’s temple that made it a model for Nephi’s. Nephi wanted his temple to be like Solomon’s, not in size, but in functionality. To perform the rituals prescribed by the Law of Moses his people would need a temple parallel to Solomon’s in rooms and relics.

The modeling of Nephite worship on early Israelite worship in Jerusalem has been explored by Kevin Christensen. Christensen describes key features of Jerusalem worship from the days of Lehi’s youth, before the heavy-handed Josian reform, and then observes that Nephite religion contained all of these, “with the understandable exception of the specific temple artifacts kept in the holy of holies, the ark of the covenant … and the cherubim.”

But while the Nephites’ omission of the Ark of the Covenant from their temple is, as he says, understandable, it is also glaring. The Jerusalem temple was, in one sense, a house for the Ark of the Covenant. The temple was structured in layers of sacredness, or degrees of glory, if you will, around the Ark, with the chamber that contained the Ark being the holiest place of all, the Holy of Holies.

The Ark, bearing as it did the stone tablets God touched with His finger on Sinai during the Exodus, provided Israel an embodiment of His presence. The Ark also served as an altar, upon which the Aaronite high priest was required to sprinkle sacrificial blood during the all-important Day of Atonement.

How could the Nephites keep the Law of Moses without access to the Ark of the Covenant? And with what, if not the miraculous relics of the Exodus, including their literal touchstones with Deity, would sufficiently sanctify their Holy of Holies to make it an appropriate dwelling place for God?

As in the case of replacing the Aaronite high priest, they would have to introduce their own fitting substitute. Whether the Nephite temple was like Solomon’s on its exterior was irrelevant. Whether it was like Solomon’s here, at its heart, the Holy of Holies, was vital.

Something, presumably something remarkable, would have to sit in the Ark’s place.

But what did the Nephites have that could stand in for the sacred relics of the Exodus kept in Solomon’s temple? They had their own sacred relics, including those of their exodus to the new Promised Land, relics handed down through the line of kings and then that of prophets and ultimately recovered by Joseph Smith on the Hill Cumorah.

In the stone box — which Martin Harris reportedly called an “ark” — Joseph found a set of Nephite sacred treasures that paralleled the relics associated with the Ark and its custodian, the High Priest.

The relevant relics associated with the Ark and the High Priest were as follows: in the Ark were the stone tablets God had touched during the Exodus, and according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, also Aaron’s rod that budded and a pot of manna. And we’ve already discussed the High Priest’s Urim and Thummim and breastplate, which attached to a garment referred to as the ephod.

Cumorah’s “ark” contained the plates, the breastplate and interpreters, the Liahona, and the sword of Laban. The most obvious identification, which we’ve already made, is that of breastplate with breastplate, and interpreters with Urim and Thummim. Only slightly less obvious is the parallel of scriptural stone tablets with scriptural golden plates — or, golden tablets.

The cache of Nephite sacred treasures was more than sufficient, and at least equal in spiritual power to those in the Ark of the Covenant. Including as it did the interpreters, which had been touched by God and served as a medium of communication with Him, it made an ideal point of contact between God and man to rest at the center of the Nephite Holy of Holies.