Elaine Pagles

Elaine Pagels earned a B.A. in history and an M.A. in classical studies at Stanford, and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.  She is the author of ‘Adam, Eve, and the Serpent’; ‘The Origin of Satin’; ‘Beyond Belief’; and ‘The Gnostic Gospels’, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award.  She is currently the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University.

In 1975, after studying the Pauline Epistles and comparing them to Gnosticism and the early Church, Pagels wrote the book The Gnostic Paul. This book expounds the theory that Paul of Tarsus was a source for Gnosticism whose influence on the direction of the early Christian church was great enough to inspire the creation of the Pastoral Epistles, in order to make it appear as if Paul was anti-Gnostic.

Pagels' study of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts was the basis for The Gnostic Gospels (1979), a popular introduction to the Nag Hammadi library. The bestselling book won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award and was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best books of the twentieth century.

Pagels argues that the Christian church was founded in a society espousing a number of contradictory viewpoints. Gnosticism as a movement was not very coherent and there were several areas of disagreement among different factions. According to Pagels, Gnosticism attracted women in particular because of its egalitarian perspective, which allowed their participation in sacred rites.

In 1982, Pagels joined Princeton University as a professor of early Christian history. Her research resulted in ‘Adam, Eve, and the Serpent’, which examines the creation account and its role in the development of sexual attitudes in the Christian West. In both ‘The Gnostic Gospels’ and ‘Adam, Eve, and the Serpent’, Pagels focuses especially on the way that women have been viewed throughout Christian history.

In 1987, Pagels's son Mark died after five years of illness, and in next year her husband Heinz Pagels (a theoretical physicist) died in a mountain climbing accident. These personal tragedies forced her to reexamine the roots of Christianity, which offered little in explanation, eventually leading her to greater spiritual awareness and the release of ‘The Origin of Satan’.  ‘Origin of Satan’ argues that the figure of Satan became a way for orthodox Christians to demonize their religious opponents, namely, other Christian sects and Jews.

Her New York Times bestseller, ‘Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas’ (2003), focuses on religious claims to possessing the ultimate truth. In it, Pagels contrasts the Gospel of Thomas with the Gospel of John, and argues that a close reading of the works shows that while the Gospel of John emphasizes that Jesus is the "light of the world", the Gospel of Thomas teaches individuals that "there is a light within each person, and it lights up the whole universe. If it does not shine, there is darkness." On Pagels' interpretation, the Gospel of Thomas reveals, along with other apocryphal teachings, that Jesus was not God but rather a teacher who sought to uncover the divine light in all human beings. Pagels argues that the Gospel of John was written as a reaction and rebuttal to the Gospel of Thomas. She bases this conclusion on her observation that, in the Gospel of John, the apostle Thomas is portrayed as a disciple of little faith who cannot believe without seeing and, moreover, that the Gospel of John places a very strong emphasis on accepting Jesus as the center of belief, which Pagels views as a hallmark of early orthodoxy. Beyond Belief also includes Pagels' personal exploration of the meaning of loss and tragedy.

Pagels is the main notable modern advocate for a connection between Buddhism and the 3rd and 4th Century Christian sects which were called "Gnostics" by early Christian heresiologists. Pagels views were published in 1979, including a call for a comparative study of the Nag Hammadi tractates and Buddhist sources. The word gnosis (knowledge) as used by the Gnostics is equivalent to the Buddhist word prajna. Both traditions of Buddhism and Gnosticism held that only direct knowledge was liberating. Some basic parallels held in common with the Buddhist and the Gnostic, and canonical gospels, is that the Buddhists believed that the Buddha was like a great father with sons of light (Bodhisattvas), while all Christians held that Jesus was the light and the son of a great father.

The Gospel Truth (NY Times-8APR06)

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