Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels
American
Known for	Nag Hammadi manuscripts Early Christianity
Spouses	Heinz Pagels ​ ​ (m. 1969; died 1988)​ Kent Greenawalt ​ ​ (m. 1995; div. 2005)​
Awards	PhD)
Academic work
Discipline	History of religion
Institutions	Princeton University Barnard College

Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey (born February 13, 1943), is an American historian of religion. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnosticism.

Her best-selling book The Gnostic Gospels (1979) examines the divisions in the early Christian church, and the way that women have been viewed throughout

named it as one of the 100 best books of the twentieth century.

Early life and education

Pagels (pronounced Paygulls) was born February 13, 1943, in California.^[1] She is the daughter of Stanford University botanist William Hiesey.^[2]

According to Pagels, she has been fascinated with the

Academic work

Pagels completed her PhD in 1970, and joined the faculty at

Titus

), in order to make it appear that 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. It was a

and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Modern Library named it one of the 100 best books of the twentieth century.^[6] She follows the well-known thesis that Walter Bauer first put forth in 1934 and argues that the Christian church was founded in a society espousing contradictory viewpoints. A review of the book in the UK newspaper, The Sunday Times, led to the UK broadcaster, Channel 4, commissioning a major three-part series inspired by it, called Jesus: The Evidence. The programme triggered a national furore, and marked a significant moment in the changes that religious broadcasting was already undergoing at that time.^[7] As a movement Gnosticism was not coherent and there were several areas of disagreement among the different factions. According to Pagels's interpretation of an era different from ours, Gnosticism "attracted women because it allowed female participation in sacred rites".

In 1982, Pagels joined Princeton University as a professor of early Christian history. Aided by a

In April 1987, Pagels's son Mark died after five years of illness, and in July 1988, her husband Heinz Pagels died in a mountain climbing accident.^[9] These personal tragedies deepened her spiritual awareness and afterwards Pagels began research leading to The Origin of Satan.^[10] This book argues that the figure of Satan became a way for Christians to demonize their religious and cultural opponents, namely, pagans, other Christian sects, and Jews.

Her

is portrayed as a disciple of little faith who cannot believe without seeing and, that the Gospel of John places an emphasis on Divine Jesus Christ as the center of belief, which Pagels views as a hallmark of early orthodoxy. Beyond Belief also includes Pagels' personal exploration of meaning during a time of loss and tragedy.

In 2012, Pagels received Princeton University's Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities for, as one nominator wrote, "her ability to show readers that the ancient texts she studies are concerned with the great questions of human existence though they may discuss them in mythological or theological language very different from our own."^[11][12] In 2015, Pagels was given the National Humanities Medal.^[13]

Reviews

Pagels and other scholars contend that the Gospel of John exposes the gnosticism advanced by the Gospel of Thomas, which was ultimately rejected by church authorities and excluded from the canon. Other scholars have contested this position. For example, Larry Hurtado argues that John portrays Thomas as no worse than Peter in John 21:15-23, where Jesus asks a disconcerted Peter whether he really loves him and later admonishes him. As well, Hurtado notes that Thomas's insistence, in the post-resurrection accounts, on seeing Jesus before he'll believe he has risen from the dead is answered positively by Jesus and that Thomas is not represented polemically but as coming to faith.^[14]

Personal life

She married

Pagels married law professor

Books

• Pagels, Elaine H. (1973). The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis: Heracleon's Commentary on John. Society of Biblical Literature monograph series. Vol. 17. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.
  OCLC 447422
  . - based on the author's thesis
• ——— (1975).
  OCLC 1043495966
  .
• ——— (1979). The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books.
  OCLC 1002324965.^[19]
• ——— (1989). Adam, Eve and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity. New York: Vintage Books.
  OCLC 17326302
  .
• ——— (1995). The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics. New York: Vintage Books.
  OCLC 32168225
  .
• ——— (2003). Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Vintage Books.
  OCLC 50913545
  .
• ———;
  OCLC 85255593
  .
• ——— (2012). Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation. New York: Viking Press.
  OCLC 746833711.^[20]
• ——— (2018). Why Religion?: A Personal Story. New York: Ecco.
  OCLC 1059513469
  .

Notes

1. ^ This was the award for hardcover Religion and Inspiration.
   From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Award history there were dual awards for hardcover and paperback books in many categories, including several nonfiction subcategories. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including those in the 1980 Religion and Inspiration category.

References

1. ISBN 9780824208752. American religious scholar and historian, was born in Palo Alto, California, to William McKinley Hiesey, a research biologist, and Louise Sophia (Van Druton) Hiesey. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
   )
2. ^ Pagels, Elaine (2018). Why Religion: A Personal Story. HarperCollins. pp. 0–4.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Pagels 2004, p. chapter two.
4. ^ Fabrizio, Doug (19 March 2019). "A Conversation With Elaine Pagels". radiowest.kuer.org.
5. ^ "National Book Awards – 1980". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-08.
6. ^ Sheahen, Laura (June 2003). "Matthew, Mark, Luke and... Thomas?: What would Christianity be like if gnostic texts had made it into the Bible?". Faiths & Prayer. Beliefnet. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
7. S2CID 147313606
   .
8. ^ "Revelations". RadioWest. Retrieved April 26, 2012.
9. ^ Magill, Frank Northen, ed. (1997). Elaine Pagels. Vol. 4. Salem Press. In 1987 Pagels and her husband Heinz suffered the loss of their six-year-old son Mark to a rare lung disease. Fifteen months later, Heinz Pagels fell to his death while hiking in Aspen, Colorado. Elaine Pagels was left to raise their children. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
10. ^ Pagels The Origin of Satan, p.xv. "In 1988, when my husband of twenty years died in a hiking accident, I became aware that, like many people who grieve, I was living in the presence of an invisible being — living, that is, with a vivid sense of someone who had died. During the following years I began to reflect on the ways that various religious traditions give shape to the invisible world, and how our imaginative perceptions of what is invisible relate to the ways we respond to the people around..."
11. ^ Staff. "Oates and Pagels receive Behrman Award". Princeton University. Retrieved May 19, 2012.
12. ^ Staff Report. "Princeton honors two professors". The Trentonian. Archived from the original on March 9, 2013. Retrieved May 19, 2012.
13. ^ "Elanie Pagels". National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
14. ^ Hurtado, Larry. Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Eerdmans, 2005, 474-479.
15. ISBN 978-1-4129-7685-5
    . Retrieved January 19, 2020. In 1969, she married Heinz R. Pagels, a noted theoretical physicist,
16. ^ ^{a b} Remnick, David (March 26, 1995). "The Devil Problem". The New Yorker. Vol. 71. Retrieved January 19, 2020. "The Origin of Satan" will be published in June [1995]. It is dedicated to the living: "To Sarah and David with love. "That same month, Pagels will marry Kent Greenawalt in an Episcopal church in Princeton.
17. ^ ^{a b} Smith, Dinitia (June 14, 2003). "The Heresy That Saved A Skeptic". New York Times. Retrieved January 19, 2020.
18. ^ Williams, Mary Alice (October 10, 2003). "Elaine Pagels". Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. PBS.
19. ISBN 9780679724537. Retrieved March 13, 2019. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help
    )
20. ^ Garner, Dwight (20 March 2012). "Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation". The New York Times. Retrieved March 13, 2019.

Bibliography

• Pagels, Elaine (2004), Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

External links

• Faculty page Archived 2014-02-27 at the Wayback Machine, Princeton University Department of Religion
• Diane Rogers, "The Gospel Truth," Stanford Magazine (January/February, 2004). – A profile of Elaine Pagels in the Stanford alumni magazine.
• "The Politics of Christianity", Edge.org. – A talk by Pagels exploring some of the political issues raised by her work.