Johnny Skeptic

http://www.roycecarlton.com/speakers/pagels.html

Elaine Pagels is a preeminent figure in the theological community whose impressive scholarship has earned her international respect. The Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University, Pagels was awarded the Rockefeller, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships in three consecutive years.

As a young researcher at Barnard College, she changed forever the historical landscape of the Christian religion by exploding the myth of the early Christian Church as a unified movement.

Her findings were published in the bestselling book, The Gnostic Gospels, an analysis of 52 early Christian manuscripts that were unearthed in Egypt. Known collectively as the Nag Hammadi Library, the manuscripts show the pluralistic nature of the early church and the role of women in the developing Christian movement. As the early church moved toward becoming an orthodox body with a canon, rites and clergy, the Nag Hammadi manuscripts were suppressed and deemed heretical.

The Gnostic Gospels won both the National Book Critic’s Circle Award and the National Book Award and was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best books of the 20th Century.

In her most recent New York Times bestseller, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Pagels focuses on religious claims to possessing the ultimate “truth.” She contends that, as Christianity became increasingly institutionalized, it became more politicized and less pluralistic. Says Pagels, “I’m advocating, on some level, the inclusion of [religious texts] that were considered blasphemous. I suggest that there are ways of embracing a far wider spectrum of religious diversity within Christianity and quite beyond Christianity.”

She presents even the most esoteric material in a fashion accessible to those who know nothing of her subject: a gift few scholars possess. She possesses them all in abundance.
Yale Law School

Pagels is also the author of The Origin of Satan, which chronicles the evolution of Jewish and Christian concepts of evil. She sees a clear connection between the primarily western view of the world as a battleground between good and evil and the tendency of certain societies to demonize others. Her other books include Adam, Eve and the Serpent, which examines the creation myth and its role in the development of sexual attitudes in the Christian West.

Pagels earned an M.A. from Stanford University and Ph.D. “with distinction” from Harvard. She possesses a working command of Greek, Latin, German, Hebrew, French, Italian and Coptic.

She has written many scholarly articles and book reviews and has been profiled in TIME, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Mirabella and The New Yorker. In 2004 she was a featured commentator on the ABC special program, “Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci.”

Johnny Skeptic: Pagels has said "The victors rewrote history, 'their way.'"

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/9-19-2003-45623.asp

Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew

The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human. By Bart D. Ehrman

http://birthtime.info/vedic-b/free.p...sin=0195141822

Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament, by Bart D. Ehrman

We may think of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as the only sacred writings of the early Christians, but this is not at all the case. Lost Scriptures offers an anthology of up-to-date and readable translations of many non-canonical writings from the first centuries after Christ--texts that have been for the most part lost or neglected for almost two millennia.

Here is an array of remarkably varied writings from early Christian groups whose visions of Jesus differ dramatically from our contemporary understanding. Readers will find Gospels supposedly authored by the apostle Philip, James the brother of Jesus, Mary Magdalen, and others. There are Acts originally ascribed to John and to Thecla, Paul's female companion; there are Epistles allegedly written by Paul to the Roman philosopher Seneca. And there is an apocalypse by Simon Peter that offers a guided tour of the afterlife, both the glorious ecstasies of the saints and the horrendous torments of the damned, and an Epistle by Titus, a companion of Paul, which argues page after page against sexual love, even within marriage, on the grounds that physical intimacy leads to damnation. In all, the anthology includes fifteen Gospels, five non-canonical Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles, a number of Apocalypes and Secret Books, and several Canon lists. Ehrman has included a general introduction, plus brief introductions to each piece.

Lost Scriptures gives readers a vivid picture of the range of beliefs that battled each other in the first centuries of the Christian era. It is an essential resource for anyone interested in the Bible or the early Church.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...diversity.html

Holland Lee Hendrix: President of the Faculty Union Theological Seminary

Christianity, or one would rather say "Christianities," of the second and third centuries were a highly variegated phenomenon. We really can't imagine Christianity as a unified coherent religious movement. Certainly there were some religious organizations.... There were institutions developing in some Christian churches, but only in some. And this was not universal by any means. We know from, for example, the literature recovered at Nag Hammadi, that gnostic Christianity didn't have the kind of clear hierarchy that other forms of Christianity had developed. They still clung to a charismatic leadership model. And so there was a lot of variety in 2nd and 3rd century Christianity....

There were very different views of Jesus in the various types of Christianity.... Perhaps the starkest contrast was among those who considered themselves as gnostic Christians, and those who considered themselves Christians in the old Pauline view of things. On the one hand, Paul, and Pauline Christianity, would have placed all of the emphasis on Jesus' death and resurrection, and the saving power of that death and resurrection. Gnostic Christianity, on the other hand, would have placed its prime emphasis on the message, the wisdom, the knowledge, the gnosis, that's where the word gnostic comes from, the Greek word for knowledge, the knowledge that Jesus transmits, and even the secret knowledge that Jesus transmits. So one would have on the one hand faith in the saving event of Jesus' life and death, and on the other hand knowledge as the great source of adherence to the Jesus movement on the other hand.

WishboneDawn

Damn...I get more homework on this board then I ever did in highschool. Thanks for the links Johnny. This was something I was interested in but haven't really pursued.

Haran

Not surprisingly, there are a lot of scholars who disagree with Pagels. I don't really see that she has "exploded" anything.

Johnny Skeptic

You are welcome. It is definitely worth pursuing. Consider the following:

Elaine Pagels:

"For nearly 2,000 years, Christian tradition has preserved and revered orthodox writings that denounce the Gnostics, while suppressing and virtually destroying the Gnostic writings themselves. Now, for the first time, certain texts discovered at Nag Hammadi reveal the other side of the coin: how Gnostics denounced the orthodox. The 'Second Treatise of the Great Seth' polemicizes against orthodox Christianity, contrasting it with the 'true church' of the Gnostics. Speaking for those he calls the sons of light, the author says: '...we were hated and persecuted, not only by those who are ignorant (pagans), but also by those think they are advancing the name of Christ, since they were unknowingly empty, not knowing who they are, like dumb animals.'"

Richard Carrier:

"All other religions but Judaism were outlawed under pain of death throughout the Mediterranean and Europe by 395 AD."

Larry Taylor:

"How does this apply to the story of Jesus? Simply that all of the early critics are dead. Skeptical opinions were banned. Christian opinions, other than those of the establishment, were banned. Books were destroyed, and later, heretics were burned."

Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2002:

"By the 3rd century Gnosticism began to succumb to orthodox Christian opposition and persecution. Partly in reaction to the Gnostic heresy, the church strengthened its organization by centralizing authority in the office of bishop, which made its effort to suppress the poorly organized Gnostics more effective."

S. Angus, Ph.D., D.Lit., D.D., who is a Christians author:

“No one could have dreamed that the Christians, who had themselves suffered so much from persecution and protested so vehemently against the injustice and futility of persecution, would so quickly have turned persecutors and surpassed their Pagan predecessors in fanatical savagery and efficiency, utterly oblivious of the Beatitude of the Divine Master (Matt. V. 10, 44, 45). It became ominous for subsequent history that the first General Council of the Church was signalized by bitter excommunications and banishments. Christians, having acquired the art of disposing of hostile criticism by searching out and burning the objectionable books of their Pagan adversaries, learned to apply the same method to the works of such groups of Christians as were not in power or in favour for the time; when this method proved unsatisfactory, they found it expedient to burn their bodies. The chained skeleton found in the Mithraic chapel at Sarrebourg testified to the drastic means employed by Christians in making the truth conquer otherwise than by the methods and exemplified by the Founder. The stripping and torture to death with oyster-shells in a Christian church and the subsequent mangling of limb from limb of Hypatia, the noblest representative of Neo-Platonism of her day, by the violent Nitrian monks and servitors of a Christian bishop, and probably with his connivance, were symptomatic and prophetic of the intolerance and fanaticism which Christianity was to direct throughout the centuries upon its disobedient members and troublesome minorities until the day – yet to dawn – when a purer, more convincing because more spiritual, Christianity gains ‘the consent of happier generation, the applause of less superstitious ages.’”

Joseph McCabe:

"From the first Constantine had, apart from his unsuccessful decrees, showered wealth and privileges upon the Church. A stream of gold flowed from the palace, and new churches, of a more attractive nature, began to rise. At court and in the army the best way, if not the only way, to secure promotion was to become convinced by the brilliant evidence of the religion. Even ordinary citizens were rewarded with a baptismal robe and a piece of gold. Villages were raised to the rank of cities if all their inhabitants exchanged Jupiter for Christ. In ten years imperial gold had done more than the blood of all the martyrs, the miracles of all the saints, and the arguments of all the apologists.

“Except that wealth continued to reach the Roman clergy, the progress of the Church in the west was now suspended. The city of Constantinople was dedicated in 330. The world had at least a Christian metropolis; and it was a superb city. Already, as I said, more than three fourths of the Christians were in the ignorant east, and they were now encouraged to attack pagan temples and openly ventilate their scorn. Few pagans could get advancement in the east. Constantine had lost all his vigor and clear wit. Dressed in effeminate robes, laden with jewels, crowned by a mass of false hair, he sat amongst the women and priests who now 'converted' the world by means of his money and favors. Only now and again did the old anger burst, when the quarrels which rent the Church, from Africa to Mesopotamia, showed him how futile was his dream of a spiritual empire or, as Napoleon would later say, a spiritual gendarmerie. But he had chosen: and he had opened a new chapter of the human chronicle. He was baptized, and died in 337."

mountainman

Elaine simply provides support for the theory that christianity is a
blind and animalistic phenomenom of the fourth century, since the
only carbon dating of the relevant Nag Hammadi manuscripts, or
rather the manuscripts and their BINDINGS is c.350 CE.

This ties in very neatly with the emperor Julian's treatise
AGAINST THE GALILAEANS in which he commences with
the following words:

"It is, I think, expedient to set forth to all mankind
the reasons by which I was convinced
that the fabrication of the Galilaeans
is a fiction of men composed by wickedness.

Though it has in it nothing divine,
by making full use of that part of the soul
which loves fable and is childish and foolish,
it has induced men to believe
that the monstrous tale is truth."

--- Emperor (360-363 CE) Flavius Claudius Julianus (the Apostate)
"Against the Galileans" remains of the 3 books,
excerpted from Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum (1923)"



Pete Brown, MOUNTAIN MAN GRAPHICS
www.mountainman.com.au

In order that Elaine Pagel explode the myth in the Eusebian
inference that there were christians in existence prior to
Constantine, she will need a carbon dating, and/or some
objective scientific archeological evidence.

Johnny Skeptic

This is way out of my league. I suggest that you contact Pagels, or possibly Richard Carrier. Elaine Pagels is a brilliant and well-educated woman. I suspect that she will be able to adequately defend herself if you contact her.

Malachi151

All that Pagels really does it provide post-modernist support for Christianity. She just opens up more avenues for Christianity to evolve, adapt, and become more vile and destructive. Boooo

She should be denouncing Christianity as a whole, not denouncing orthodoxy and saying that Christianity can "embrace more ideas".

Fuck Christianity, kill the damned thing already...

Haran

Atheism/Agnosticism are the most moronic things that anyone could possibly be believed in and someone should destroy any remaining vestiges of it.

Chris Weimer

Yeah, except for talking to an invisible man in the sky who can see everything you do, and will send you to hell for not believing in him but HE LOVES YOU. This is a farce.

Haran

Hey, Chris... I didn't start it now, did I?

I'm not the one who normally goes around pointing out all the flaws in your worldviews as an atheist/agnostic/panthewhatever. If Christian's beliefs are fair game, then so is everyone else's. If you can say those things about Christians and Christianity, then I can say the same of the moronic beliefs shared by atheists and agnostics. Don't like it, then complain to the moderators. I'm sure they'll have a fire lit under their butt for you. They don't even respond when I point out the junk that other posters always lay down.