MortalWombat

Fresh Air with Terry Gross has an interview with Elaine Pagels about the Gospel of Thomas.

MortalWombat

For those who missed it, it should be archived on the Fresh Air site either later today or by tomorrow.

CX

You mean her book? Or the actual GThom? I just finished the book last night. It was an unbelievably quick read. It had a bit too much personal philosophy and "human interest" type stuff, but on the whole it was a very interesting survey of the diversity of early Xian belief. She talks about the dispute underlying the differences between GThom and GJn
as well as the tremendous influence of Irenaeus on orthodoxy in the 2nd century and beyond. I read the whole thing in about 3 sittings.

MortalWombat

I haven't read the book and I only caught the last half of the interview, but she did mention these things in the interview. It was only a half hour interview, so one would expect her to focus on her current book.

Grumpy

Pagels presented the formation of the Canon as if it were a great mystery. Terri Gross suggested people might find it "sacrilegious" to hear that the books of the Bible were assembled by politicians. Sadly, this isn't very well known. I think I heard Pagels say that there is a tendency to not think of religion in historical terms.

I doubt her book spends much time on the almah/parthenos goof-up that led to the Virgin Birth, but they discussed it in the interview. Again, a fact well-known to scholars that is, so far as I know, unheard of to the average pew-sitter.

copernicus

Thanks, MortalWombat. I am still trying to get my system to download and play the interview. Unfortunately, there seems to be no archived version of the interview available, just streaming audio of what is currently on.

I have a special interest in Elaine Pagels that goes back to when she and I were assistant professors at Barnard College. There was a tradition of afternoon teas for the faculty back then, and she used to discuss her research on the gnostic gospels with us. She was something of a theist back then, but I am curious about how her thinking has evolved since those early days before she became famous. (Actually, she never admitted being a theist, but she expressed great admiration for christianity. I never got her to take an explicit stand on her own beliefs.)

Interestingly, the NPR page advertises another old acquaintance of mine from those days--the linguist Geoff Nunberg. He was a grad student in linguistics at Columbia when Elaine was a professor at Barnard.

MortalWombat

The interview is archived now here.

CX

Her book actually deals with that somewhat as it describes the death of her first son and the "spiritual crisis" that provoked. She is, as always, somewhat enigmatic about her views on Xianity. In essence she seems to be almost a "Secular Gnostic" of some kind. She obviously greatly values GThom and it's theme that the divine Jesus represented is within each of us. Basically it seems that as an Historian she rejects the literal truth of the New Testament in terms of the supernatural events described, but as a person she is compelled by the spiritual feeling illicited by Xianity (even if it is nontraditional) and Xian ritual. It almost get a sense of credo consolans from her.

Ultimately though her own introspection is not the most fascinating part of Beyond Belief, but rather her outlining of the early conflict between "Thomas Christians" and "John Christians" and her lengthy discussion of the efforts of Irenaeus to solidfy a Xian canon and orthodox doctrine in the face of widespread acceptance of Valentinian gnosticism which make the book a worthwhile read.

Grumpy

Like Jack Spong. That's exactly what I thought while listening to the interview. Here's a guy who admits that there's little to no factual basis for Christianity, but he loves Jesus. Is Pagels the same, or did she maybe arrive at the same belief from another direction?

I'm surprised the question never came up during the interview. It seemed like the elephant in the living room.

copernicus

Thanks, MortalWombat. I'm listening to it now.

I don't think that Elaine's reticence about her own beliefs is accidental. Like many good scholars, she tries to remove any hint of personal prejudice from her work. She talks about a very controversial subject in the most neutral terms possible. It is impossible for her to write about these subjects without sounding sacrilegious to many christians. Her objective tone avoids shifting the focus of the scholarly debate from the historical subject matter to her motives or biases for saying what she does. Contrast that with authors like Freke and Gandy, who say many of the same things (and lavish praise on Pagels' work), but are easily dismissed by serious scholars as polemicists.

I believe that Elaine is far more willing to express her true feelings about the misogyny that she perceives in the historical founders of the orthodox church. Back when I used to talk to her, she expressed surprise and pleasure in the feminist streak that she saw in the gnostic literature. That was her focus, and it resonated well with Barnard College, traditionally an all-female school.