Special edition including the complete text of the Gospel of Thomas Elaine Pagels, one of the world's most important writers and thinkers on religion and history, and winner of the National Book Award for her groundbreaking work "The Gnostic Gospels," now reflects on what matters most about spiritual and religious exploration in the twenty-first century. This bold new book explores how Christianity began by tracing its earliest texts, including the secret Gospel of Thomas, rediscovered in Egypt in 1945. When her infant ...
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Special edition including the complete text of the Gospel of Thomas Elaine Pagels, one of the world's most important writers and thinkers on religion and history, and winner of the National Book Award for her groundbreaking work "The Gnostic Gospels," now reflects on what matters most about spiritual and religious exploration in the twenty-first century. This bold new book explores how Christianity began by tracing its earliest texts, including the secret Gospel of Thomas, rediscovered in Egypt in 1945. When her infant son was diagnosed with fatal pulmonary hypertension, Elaine Pagels's spiritual and intellectual quest took on a new urgency, leading her to explore historical and archeological sources and to investigate what Jesus and his teachings meant to his followers before the invention of doctrine-and before the invention of Christianity as we know it. The astonishing discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, along with more than fifty other early Christian texts unknown since antiquity, offers startling clues. Pagels compares such sources as Thomas's gospel (which claims to give Jesus' secret teaching, and finds its closest affinities with kabbalah) with the canonic texts to show how Christian leaders chose to include some gospels and exclude others from the collection we have come to know as the New Testament. To stabilize the emerging Christian church in times of devastating persecution, the church fathers constructed the canon, creed, and hierarchy-and, in the process, suppressed many of its spiritual resources. Drawing on new scholarship-her own, and that of an international group of scholars-that has come to light since the publication in 1979 of The Gnostic Gospels, Pagels shows that what matters about Christianity involves much more than any one set of beliefs. Traditions embodied in Judaism and Christianity can powerfully affect us in heart, mind, and spirit, inspire visions of a new society based on practicing justice and love, even heal and transform us. Provocative, beautifully written, and moving, "Beyond Belief," the most personal of Pagels's books to date, shows how "the impulse to seek God overflows the narrow banks of a single tradition." Pagels writes, "What I have come to love in the wealth and diversity of our religious traditions-and the communities that sustain them-is that they offer the testimony of innumerable people to spiritual discovery, encouraging us, in Jesus' words, to 'seek, and you shall find.'"
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Elaine Pagels first came to my attention on PBS; she was commenting on some facet of the Bible, the focus of the program. Since then, I've seen her a number of times when she has been interviewed regarding historical aspects of the Bible. I've found her opinions to be intelligent and shared succinctly. When I found this book discussing the cache of texts and fragments found in a jar in Nag Hamadi (Egypt, found in 1945), I knew she would shed some historical light on these works.
I was not disappointed; Pagels set the scene to explain why these banned works might have been hidden around 360 AD. When we look at religion today, everything seems clear and organized. However, after Christ's death, the emerging Church was in conflict and in flux.
The fact that Dr. Pagels is not a theologian is a bonus; she looks at the Nag Hamadi texts and pieces from the view of a historian. She helped me see why these texts were not selected for the final version of the New Testament. I am always surprised by the disparity between Mathew, Mark, Luke and John's version of God's story . Now I see that there were many more versions of God's story that were not selected for the final version of the New Testament.
Pagels explains that Iraneous, the Bishop of Lyons, was trying to weave various factions of the emerging Church into a more cohesive whole. Iraneous viewed John's gospel to be the most important of the four gospels. Only in John is Christ equated with God; in the other gospels, Christ is a paragon of goodness (Christ is not called God).
Probably the most important reason Iraneous did not select the Thomas text was the fact that Thomas did not say Christ was divine; his writings encouraged touching the Divine through deep thought and ritual. Neither of those two things required an organized Church. Hmmmmm.
Pagels paints Iraneous with an all-too-human stroke of the brush. He did not seem to think women capable of understanding spirituality. From Pagel's quotes by this bishop, the reader can see that he was fairly pompous and narrow minded. But through his tireless efforts to condense the news of Christ's life into the New Testament, he probably saved the Christian Church from devolving into countless warring factions (that might eventually have killed the Christian movement).
I find Pagels to be highly readable and she explains the complex geopolitical facts of the time that had such an effect on the early Christian believers.
ElaineP1
Sep 8, 2011
Not focused
I usually do not find Pagels' books very useful. She is obviously an expert on the fields she writes about, but her books drift around too much. In the present book, relatively little is about the gospel of Thomas. I was looking for more info on how it compares to the canonical gospels, but what I found was ramblings about Christianity. To be fair (?) I have somewhat the same complaint about Karen Armstrong.
Sandra M
Mar 10, 2011
Beyond Belief describes the events and discussions during the apostlic age, particularly the views of the gnostics and their differences with latter accepted cannon. Very interesting, especially if you have no background information on the contents of the scrolls and books found at Nag Hammadi. This is a comfortable, friendly book to read, as it also presents the information from the view of the author's journey into religion.
Liane
Apr 16, 2009
Awesome research
I love Elaine's work. She's done all the research for me so I don't have to dig in all those dusty old tomes and piece together history. It's so enlightening to have a more wholistic view of the origins of Christianity as well as an understanding of the political and social structure of that time.
glenda
Jun 14, 2007
Pagels does it again !
The fourth of her series is as enlightening as the others. She takes you back in time, before the "church' and illuminates early Christians and Jews, their turmoil, their beliefs, and their strange new fellowship. A must read for anyone seeking answers to their personal spirituality.
