Elaine Pagels
Elaine Pagels
Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey, is an American religious historian, best known for her writing on the Gnostic Gospels. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionReligious Author
Date of Birth13 February 1943
CountryUnited States of America
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The Gospel of Judas is a real surprise. It pictures Judas ..not as the worst villain in the history of the world as he's been thought of in Christian tradition..but as the one disciple whom Jesus entrusts with secret understanding.
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I got to thinking about the Book of Revelation that was written by a Jewish prophet who was also a follower of Jesus who hated the Roman Empire. I realized that the Book of Revelation could be a way to reflect on the issue of religion's relationship to politics.
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Startling as the Gospel of Judas sounds, it amplifies hints we have long read in the Gospels of Mark and John that Jesus knew and even instigated the events of his passion, seeing them as part of a divine plan.
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Jesus Christ rose from the grave.' With this proclamation, the Christian church began. This may be the fundamental element of Christian faith; certainly it is the most radical.
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The story of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas gave a moral and religious rationale to anti-Jewish sentiment, and that's what made it persistent and vicious.
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Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them.
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The sense of a spiritual dimension in life is absolutely important, and the religious communities are also important. The question of believing in a set of creedal statements is a lot less important, because I realize the Christian movement thrived then and can now on other elements of the tradition.
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These ancient stories in religion speak to our desire. But they move us toward hope.
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So often, religion is identified in terms coined by Christianity as sets of belief. But I had the sense that it not only involves practice, but also emotion and levels of our experience that are almost precognitive.
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At the end of the day I'll go to a yoga class. I used to say that my work was my yoga, because it stretches everything, expands and challenges everything you know and understand and are.
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I study religion because I find it fascinating and problematic. But I struggle with the idea of what religion is, what being religious means. A lot of people assume that if you write about early Christianity, you must be some kind of Sunday-school teacher.
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Unlike many deities of the ancient Near East, the God of Israel shared his power with no female divinity, nor was he the divine husband or lover of any.
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Fundamentalism does mean reading quite conservatively and literally, saying 'the Bible is the word of God and we have to follow it. What it says is this.'
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The Gospel of Judas is a kind of protest literature. It's challenging leaders of the church.