Elaine Pagels
Autor/a de The Gnostic Gospels
Sobre l'autor
Elaine Pagels is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship best known for her studies and writing on the Gnostic Gospels. Pagels graduated from Stanford University receiving a B.A. in 1964 and an M.A. in 1965. She mostra'n més received a Ph.D in religion from Harvard University in 1970. She is the author of The Gnostic Gospels (1979), which won the National Book Award (Religion 1980) and the National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism 1979). Pagels is also the author of Adam, Eve and the Serpent (1988), The Origin of Satan (1995), Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003), Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (2007), and Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (2012). (Bowker Author Biography) mostra'n menys
Crèdit de la imatge: Elaine Hiesey Pagels, Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion, Princeton University. Photo by Denise Applewhite, 1996 (photo courtesy of Princeton University)
Obres de Elaine Pagels
Gnostic and Orthodox Views of Christ's Passion: Paradigms for the Christian's Response to Persecution? 2 exemplars
I will lift up mine yes. 2 exemplars
The Gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdalene 2 exemplars
'The Politics of Christianity' in edge.org, 2003 1 exemplars
'The Gospel of Judas' in edge.org, May 2007 1 exemplars
Elaine Pagels 1 exemplars
The gnostic Jesus and early Christian politics 1 exemplars
Nauka Jezusa : według tajemnej Ewangelii Tomasza 1 exemplars
Ewangelie gnostyckie 1 exemplars
Obres associades
A World of Ideas : Conversations With Thoughtful Men and Women About American Life Today and the Ideas Shaping Our… (1989) — Interviewee — 548 exemplars
Face to Face: Women Writers on Faith, Mysticism, and Awakening (2004) — Col·laborador — 33 exemplars
Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism (Studies in Antiquity & Christianity) (1988) — Col·laborador — 31 exemplars
Whose Torah? A Concise Guide to Progressive Judaism (2008) — Pròleg, algunes edicions — 28 exemplars
Heresy & Identity in Late Antiquity (Texts & Studies in Ancient Judaism) (2008) — Col·laborador — 9 exemplars
A most reliable witness : essays in honor of Ross Shepard Kraemer (2015) — Col·laborador — 5 exemplars
Etiquetat
Coneixement comú
- Nom normalitzat
- Pagels, Elaine
- Nom oficial
- Pagels, Elaine Hiesey
- Data de naixement
- 1943-02-13
- Gènere
- female
- Nacionalitat
- USA
- Lloc de naixement
- Palo Alto, California, USA
- Llocs de residència
- Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- Educació
- Stanford University (B.A.|1964|M.A.|1965)
Harvard University (Ph.D.|1970) - Professions
- professor
- Relacions
- Pagels, Heinz R. (husband)
Hiesey, William (father) - Organitzacions
- Barnard College
Princeton University - Premis i honors
- MacArthur Fellowship (1981)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1979)
Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1978)
National Book Award (1980)
National Book Critics Circle Award (1980)
Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities (2012) - Biografia breu
- Elaine Pagels (1943- ), American professor of religion and Gnosticism scholar, born Elaine Hiesey
Membres
Converses
Gnostic Gospels Group Read a 75 Books Challenge for 2012 (abril 2012)
Ressenyes
Llistes
Nonfiction (2)
readingList (1)
Premis
Potser també t'agrada
Autors associats
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 25
- També de
- 12
- Membres
- 13,598
- Popularitat
- #1,705
- Valoració
- 3.8
- Ressenyes
- 182
- ISBN
- 155
- Llengües
- 15
- Preferit
- 46
Elaine Pagels
Elaine Pagel’s book Beyond Belief is somewhat a continuation of her book, the Gnostic Gospels. It was written more than 20 years later, and in addition to being a historical account of the Gospel of Thomas, it also includes elements of a memoir. The results is a book that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. It isn’t a memoir, however, the elements of memoir make it so that it doesn’t quite read as history either.
Pagels’ focus, “is how certain Christian leaders from the second century through the fourth came to reject many other sources of revelation and construct instead, the New Testament gospel canon of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, along with the ‘canon of truth,’ which became the nucleus of the later creeds that have defined Christianity to this day.” Pagels chooses the Gospel of Thomas as a vehicle for comparison to the canonical gospels, particularly the Gospel of John. Of all the canonical gospels, John is the gospel believed by most scholars, to have been most heavily influenced by the gnostics. Pagels describes the process by which canonical and gnostic gospels, rather than being complementary, were set up to be rivals by the men who were intent on establishing a universal Christian church.
Her protagonist is not Thomas but instead, Irenaeus, the 2nd century BCE Bishop of Lyons. Despite his hard-line orthodoxy, Pagels portrays his motives with sensitivity and understanding. He was the primary architect of the four-Gospel canon. She points out that he wasn’t opposed to diverse interpretations of scripture; what he opposed was the gnostics’ methods. The gnostics were what we might today call elitist. For example, they believed that there were two levels of baptism. The basic level required a person to repent past sins, confess his faith to Jesus Christ, and promise to live according to that faith. The second level required “soul-searching” - asking question after question to know oneself (gnosis) and attain spiritual transformation, therefore becoming Christ-like. This division of the congregation into “basic” and “higher level” Christians greatly concerned Irenaeus because of its exclusivity. Pagels does a wonderful job explaining Irenaeus’s motives. He was not a philosopher, but instead was a person thrust into a leadership position at a young age who had grown up watching his teachers and mentors violently persecuted and killed. Any threat to Christian unity was concerning to him. He believed unity was needed to create a strong community assured in the strength of its common faith against Roman foes.
As Pagels shows the progression of the orthodoxy and its growing strength against the decline of gnosticim, she incorporates pieces of her own spiritual evolution. Like Irenaeus, her own journey is rooted in grief. She must navigate the impact of the death of her young son on her personal beliefs. While I sympathized with her personal journey, I felt that it was a bit misplaced in this particular book. She didn’t focus on it enough. However, if she had, the historicism of the journey away from gnosticism and toward orthodoxy would have lost its focus and therefore power. It would have been better to write a separate and more in-depth memoir. Instead, she inconsistently sprinkled in personal thoughts and feelings that felt out of place. I enjoyed reading the historical aspects of Beyond Belief. And I would have loved to read more about her own personal journey. Just not in the same book.… (més)