Elaine Pagels

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Elaine Pagels (née Hiesey, born February 13, 1943), is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She was born in California, graduated from Stanford University (B.A. 1964, M.A. 1965) and, after briefly studying dance at Martha Graham's studio, began studying for her Ph.D. at Harvard University as a student of Helmut Koester. She married theoretical physicist Heinz Pagels in 1969.

At Harvard, she was part of a team studying the Nag Hammadi library manuscripts. Upon finishing her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1970, she joined the faculty at Barnard College, where she headed the department of religion from 1974. Her 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. However, the conservative Christian Intercollegiate Studies Institute listed it as one of the 50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century.

In the book she argued 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 between different factions. 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. Aided by a MacArthur fellowship (1980–85), she researched and wrote Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, which examines the creation myth and its role in the development of sexual attitudes in the Christian West. In both The Gnostic Gospels and Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, Elaine Pagels examines the way that women have been viewed in Christian history, and thus these texts have been important in the feminist study of religion.

In 1987, Pagels' son Mark died after four years of illness, and the following year her husband Heinz Pagels died in a hiking accident. Partly due to these experiences, Pagels began working on the research leading to The Origin of Satan. This book purports to show the way that the figure Satan became a way for Christians to demonize their religious opponents, the Jews and the unorthodox Christians.

In 1992, 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 gnostic whose influence on the direction of the early Christian church was great enough for the creation of forged additions such as the Pastoral Epistles (those to Timothy and Titus) to make it appear as if Paul supported their interpretation rather than gnosticism.

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 John emphasizes that Jesus is the "light of the world", 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." Thomas also shares with other supposed secret teachings a belief that Jesus is not God but rather a teacher who seeks 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. In John, the apostle Thomas is portrayed as a disciple of little faith who cannot believe without seeing, and very strong emphasis is put on accepting Jesus as the center of belief. During the time of persecution of Christians, the church fathers constructed the canon, creed and hierarchy, suppressing some of its spiritual resources in the process, in order to avoid conflict with Roman law and religion.

In addition to the MacArthur award, Professor Pagels is also a recipient of the Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships.

[edit] Major books

• The Gnostic Gospels (1979), 182 p., ISBN 0-679-72453-2
• Adam, Eve and the Serpent (1987), 189p., ISBN 0-679-72232-7
• The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (1992), ISBN 0-8006-0403-2
• The Origin of Satan (1995), 214p., ISBN 0-679-72232-7
• Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003), 241p., ISBN 0-375-50156-8

[edit] External links

• Paul Mankowski, S.J., "The Pagels Imposture", A Jesuit at the Pontifical Biblical Institute claims discrepancies between Pagels interpretation of texts and what the texts actually say.
• Positive review of Beyond Belief
• Beyond Unbelief, a negative response to Beyond Belief
• Christianity and/or Elaine Pagels, an exchange exploring the Christian validity of Pagels' methodology