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The Gnostic Gospels Paperback – September 19, 1989

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • SELECTED BY THE MODERN LIBRARY AS ONE OF THE 100 BEST NONFICTION BOOKS • The landmark study exploring alternative perspectives of early Christianity as revealed through the Nag Hammadi texts that could have shaped the religion differently if included in the Christian canon • "[Pagels] is always readable, always deeply informed, always richly suggestive of pathways her readers may wish to follow out for themselves."—Harold Bloom, The Washington Post

“[Pagels] writes with the instincts of a novelist, the skill of a scholar, and the ability to sort out significances that many writers lack.”—Chicago Tribune • “An intellectually elegant, concise study . . . The economy with which [Pagels] evokes the world of early Christianity is a marvel.”—The New Yorker

The Gnostic Gospels is a work of luminous scholarship and wide popular appeal. First published in 1979 to critical acclaim, winning the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Gnostic Gospels has continued to grow in reputation and influence. It is now widely recognized as one of the most brilliant and accessible histories of early Christian spirituality published in our time.

In 1945 an Egyptian peasant unearthed what proved to be the Gnostic Gospels, thirteen papyrus volumes that expounded a radically different view of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ from that of the New Testament. In this spellbinding book, renowned religious scholar Elaine Pagels elucidates the mysteries and meanings of these sacred texts both in the world of the first Christians and in the context of Christianity today.

With insight and passion, Pagels explores a remarkable range of recently discovered gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, to show how a variety of “Christianities” emerged at a time of extraordinary spiritual upheaval. Some Christians questioned the need for clergy and church doctrine, and taught that the divine could be discovered through spiritual search. Many others, like Buddhists and Hindus, sought enlightenment—and access to God—within. Such explorations raised questions: Was the resurrection to be understood symbolically and not literally? Was God to be envisioned only in masculine form, or feminine as well? Was martyrdom a necessary—or worthy—expression of faith? These early Christians dared to ask questions that orthodox Christians later suppressed—and their explorations led to profoundly different visions of Jesus and his message.

Brilliant and stunning in its implications, The Gnostic Gospels is a radical, eloquent reconsideration of the origins of the Christian faith.

Print length

182 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Vintage
Publication date

September 19, 1989
Dimensions

5.12 x 0.59 x 7.99 inches
ISBN-10

0679724532
ISBN-13

978-0679724537
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Editorial Reviews

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Gnosticism's Christian form grew to prominence in the 2nd century A.D. Ultimately denounced as heretical by the early church, Gnosticism proposed a revealed knowledge of God ("gnosis" meaning "knowledge" in Greek), held as a secret tradition of the apostles. In The Gnostic Gospels, author Elaine Pagels suggests that Christianity could have developed quite differently if Gnostic texts had become part of the Christian canon. Without a doubt: Gnosticism celebrates God as both Mother and Father, shows a very human Jesus's relationship to Mary Magdalene, suggests the Resurrection is better understood symbolically, and speaks to self-knowledge as the route to union with God. Pagels argues that Christian orthodoxy grew out of the political considerations of the day, serving to legitimize and consolidate early church leadership. Her contrast of that developing orthodoxy with Gnostic teachings presents an intriguing trajectory on a world faith as it "might have become." The Gnostic Gospels provides engaging reading for those seeking a broader perspective on the early development of Christianity. --F. Hall

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"The first major and eminently readable book on gnosticism benefiting from the discovery in 1945 of a collection of Gnostic Christian texts at Nag Hammadi in Egypt." --The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

"The first major and eminently readable book on gnosticism benefiting from the discovery in 1945 of a collection of Gnostic Christian texts at Nag Hammadi in Egypt." --The New York Times Book Review

From the Inside Flap

A provocative study of the gnostic gospels and the world of early Christianity as revealed through the Nag Hammadi texts.

From the Back Cover

A provocative study of the gnostic gospels and the world of early Christianity as revealed through the Nag Hammadi texts.

About the Author

Elaine Pagels is the Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She is the author of several books, including Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity, the New York Times bestseller Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, and The Gnostic Gospels, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award. Professor Pagels lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I

The Controversy over Christ’s Resurrection: Historical Event or Symbol?

“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. Other religions celebrate cycles of birth and death: Christianity insists that in one unique historical moment, the cycle reversed, and a dead man came back to life! For Jesus’ followers this was the turning point in world history, the sign of its coming end. Orthodox Christians since then have confessed in the creed that Jesus of Nazareth, “crucified, dead, and buried,” was raised “on the third day.” Many today recite that creed without thinking about what they are saying, much less actually believing it. Recently some ministers, theologians, and scholars have challenged the literal view of resurrection. To account for this doctrine, they point out its psychological appeal to our deepest fears and hopes; to explain it, they offer symbolic interpretations.

But much of the early tradition insists literally that a man—Jesus—had come back to life. What makes these Christian accounts so extraordinary is not the claim that his friends had “seen” Jesus after his death—ghost stories, hallucinations, and visions were even more commonplace then than now—but that they saw an actual human being. At first, according to Luke, the disciples themselves, in their astonishment and terror at the appearance of Jesus among them, immediately assumed that they were seeing his ghost. But Jesus challenged them: “Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.” Since they remained incredulous, he asked for something to eat; as they watched in amazement, he ate a piece of broiled fish. The point is clear: no ghost could do that.

Had they said that Jesus’ spirit lived on, surviving bodily decay, their contemporaries might have thought that their stories made sense. Five hundred years before, Socrates’ disciples had claimed that their teacher’s soul was immortal. But what the Christians said was different, and, in ordinary terms, wholly implausible. The finality of death, which had always been a part of the human experience, was being transformed. Peter contrasts King David, who died and was buried, and whose tomb was well known, with Jesus, who, although killed, rose from the grave, “because it was not possible for him to be held by it”—that is, by death.3 Luke says that Peter excluded metaphorical interpretation of the event he said he witnessed: “[We] ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”

Tertullian, a brilliantly talented writer (A.D. C. 190), speaking for the majority, defines the orthodox position: as Christ rose bodily from the grave, so every believer should anticipate the resurrection of the flesh. He leaves no room for doubt. He is not, he says, talking about the immortality of the soul: “The salvation of the soul I believe needs no discussion: for almost all heretics, in whatever way they accept it, at least do not deny it.” What is raised is “this flesh, suffused with blood, built up with bones, interwoven with nerves, entwined with veins, (a flesh) which … was born, and … dies, undoubtedly human.” Tertullian expects the idea of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection to shock his readers; he insists that “it must be believed, because it is absurd!”

Yet some Christians—those he calls heretics—dissent. Without denying the resurrection, they reject the literal interpretation; some find it “extremely revolting, repugnant, and impossible.” Gnostic Christians interpret resurrection in various ways. Some say that the person who experiences the resurrection does not meet Jesus raised physically back to life; rather, he encounters Christ on a spiritual level. This may occur in dreams, in ecstatic trance, in visions, or in moments of spiritual illumination. But the orthodox condemn all such interpretations; Tertullian declares that anyone who denies the resurrection of the flesh is a heretic, not a Christian.

Why did orthodox tradition adopt the literal view of resurrection? The question becomes even more puzzling when we look at what the New Testament says about it. Some accounts, like the story we noted from Luke, tell how Jesus appears to his disciples in the form they know from his earthly life; he eats with them, and invites them to touch him, to prove that he is not a ghost.” John tells a similar story: Thomas declares that he will not believe that Jesus had actually risen from the grave unless he personally can see and touch him. When Jesus appears, he tells Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.” But other stories, directly juxtaposed with these, suggest “different views of the resurrection. Luke and Mark both relate that Jesus appeared “in another form”—not his former earthly form—to two disciples as they walked on the road to Emmaus. Luke says that the disciples, deeply troubled about Jesus’ death, talked with the stranger, apparently for several hours. They invited him to dinner; when he sat down with them to bless the bread, suddenly they recognized him as Jesus. At that moment “he vanished out of their sight.” John, too, places directly before the story of “doubting Thomas” another of a very different kind: Mary Magdalene, mourning for Jesus near his grave, sees a man she takes to be the gardener. When he speaks her name, suddenly she recognizes the presence of Jesus—but he orders her not to touch him.

So if some of the New Testament stories insist on a literal view of resurrection, others lend themselves to different interpretations. One could suggest that certain people, in moments of great emotional stress, suddenly felt that they experienced Jesus’ presence. Paul’s experience can be read this way. As he traveled on the Damascus road, intent on arresting Christians, “suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground,” hearing the voice of Jesus rebuking him for the intended persecution. One version of this story says, “The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one”; another says the opposite (as Luke tells it, Paul said that “those who were with me saw the light, but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me”). Paul himself, of course, later defended the teaching on resurrection as fundamental to Christian faith. But although his discussion often is read as an argument for bodily resurrection, it concludes with the words “I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable [that is, the mortal body] inherit the imperishable.” Paul describes the resurrection as “a mystery,” the transformation from physical to spiritual existence.

If the New Testament accounts could support a range of interpretations, why did orthodox Christians in the second century insist on a literal view of resurrection and reject all others as heretical? I suggest that we cannot answer this question adequately as long as we consider the doctrine only in terms of its religious content. But when we examine its practical effect on the Christian movement, we can see, paradoxically, that the doctrine of bodily resurrection also serves an essential political function: it legitimizes the authority of certain men who claim to exercise exclusive leadership over the churches as the successors of the apostle Peter. From the second century, the doctrine has served to validate the apostolic succession of bishops, the basis of papal authority to this day. Gnostic Christians who interpret resurrection in other ways have a lesser claim to authority: when they claim priority over the orthodox, they are denounced as heretics.

Such political and religious authority developed in a most remarkable way. As we have noted, diverse forms of Christianity flourished in the early years of the Christian movement. Hundreds of rival teachers all claimed to teach the “true doctrine of Christ” and denounced one another as frauds. Christians in churches scattered from Asia Minor to Greece, Jerusalem, and Rome split into factions, arguing over church leadership. All claimed to represent “the authentic tradition.”

How could Christians resolve such contrary claims? Jesus himself was the only authority they all recognized. Even during his lifetime, among the small group traveling through Palestine with him, no one challenged—and no one matched—the authority of Jesus himself. Independent and assertive a leader as he was, Jesus censured such traits among his followers. Mark relates that when James and John came to him privately to ask for special positions in his administration, he spoke out sharply against their ambition:

You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reissue edition (September 19, 1989)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 182 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679724532
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679724537
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.12 x 0.59 x 7.99 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #51,193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7 in Gnosticism (Books)
- #143 in History of Christianity (Books)
- #196 in Christian Church History (Books)

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After receiving her doctorate from Harvard University in 1970, Elaine Pagels taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she chaired the department of religion. She is now the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Professor Pagels is the author of several books on religious subjects and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981. She lives and teaches in Princeton, New Jersey.

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Customers find the book enlightening, engrossing, and interesting. They say it provides a fascinating review of the general contents of the Gnostic Gospels. Readers appreciate the author's perspective and depth of knowledge. Overall, they describe the book as a good introduction to gnostic beliefs and theological influences in the two centuries after Christ.

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Outstanding scholarly work

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2007

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Originally written nearly 30 years ago, this book remains a must-read on the subject. Elaine Pagels is a renowned scholar with a Harvard Ph.D. in religion. She directly studied and translated some of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts in the early seventies. Her related research represents the foundation of this book. She later became a Princeton professor. She wrote several seminal books on Christianity. Her lifelong work has significantly advanced our knowledge of early Christianity.

Each chapter focuses on a specific tenet of Christianity and stresses the differences between Gnostic and orthodox Christians. While the orthodox Christians believe in the physical reality of Jesus' resurrection, the immaculate conception of Jesus, and martyrdom; the Gnostic Christians interpret the resurrection in a spiritual way (not a literal one). They also do not believe in the Immaculate Conception. And, they reject martyrdom as a fanatical practice not reflecting Jesus' teachings.

The Gnostic Christians don't believe in the orthodox Christians' hierarchy. Gnostic Christians believe each of us has direct access to God. And, that orthodox bishops and priests represent unwanted obstacles to this access. Additionally, Gnostic Christians do not exclude women as the sexes are equal in front of God. They even revere God as both the Father and the Mother. Also, they don't consider Mary Magdalene to be a woman of ill repute, but instead an equal if not a superior to the twelve apostles.

For Gnostic Christians, the overarching factor is how much gnosis (knowledge) a believer has. This also entails wisdom and maturity. Gnosis is means knowledge based on empirical firsthand experience in Greek. It entails self-knowledge or "know thyself" a key concept in Greek philosophy (Aristotle, Plato, Socrates). For Gnostic Christian this concept is so important that knowing self ultimately leads to knowing God. Thus, there is no separation between God and the individual. This underlines the drastic difference between Gnostic and orthodox Christians. The author mentions that this concept leads to Gnosticism having a significant influence on modern Existentialism.

Gnostic Christians also considered Jesus to be a spiritual guide more than a divine entity. The author indicates that other historians suggested this concept comes from Buddhism and that early Gnostic Christians may have likely been influenced by Buddhism. They support their arguments by the existing trade routes of the time that linked the relevant regions allowing for the mentioned exchange of spiritual concepts.

Pagels advances that the orthodox Christians more concrete criteria to join their religion were at the essence of their success over their Gnostic counterparts. For a religion to be successful it needs more than ideas. It needs a strong organizational political structure that promotes its expansion based on principles readily understandable to newcomers. Orthodox Christianity had all these elements enhancing its prospective success. Gnosticism had ideas alone. Within two centuries, the Gnostic movement will have disappeared and orthodox Christianity will flourish presenting a fairly united front for over a millennium until Martin Luther in the 16th century. Oddly enough, Luther's Reformation would adopt certain of the Gnostics concepts including the deemphasizing of a religious hierarchy and implementing the more direct access between each individual and God.

To this day the majority of Christian movements follow an orthodox Christian structure. Gnostic Christianity has entirely disappeared; But as mentioned some of its ideas have survived within eastern philosophies (Buddhism), classical Greek philosophy, and modern existentialism.

This is a fascinating book on a subject with an extensive literature. If you like this book, I strongly recommend all the other books written by the same author. I also recommend books written by Michael Baigent. In particular, his latest book "The Jesus Papers" is excellent.

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R. Schwartz

Visible Structured Dogma vs. Subjective Experience & Choice

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2004

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This book is very enlightening and I think highly significant for anyone professing the Christian faith. In the second century of our common era, the Catholic Church, under their interpretation of Christianity, which differed from the Gnostics, as found in the Nag Hammadi. In this they constructed the bible cannon including the 66 books commonly used by all current day Protestants, and in addition, the apocryphal. In turn, they rejected scores of other books that were just as valid expressions of the Christian experience. In this, they omitted crucial variations into the understanding of an experience that went far beyond mere doctrines and dogma. And this is exactly what the Gnostics endorsed, a Christianity that emanated from individual subjective experiences, each having a private interior journey, as in the case of St. Paul, as opposed to prescribed doctrines and organization hierarchy. They supported an invisible brotherhood of inclusive equality as opposed the visible hierarchal organization endorsed by the Orthodox. Thus they violently opposed each other; however there were exceptions made for the Orthodox within different schools of Gnosticism. In this they did not support a physical resurrection, but rather subjective experiential visions as in Christ's (visionary) appearance to Martha and later to St. Paul on the road to Damascus and his vision of being "caught up in a third heaven," which equated to the rejection of Christ's sole appearance to the Apostles, supposedly designating their unique authority and the inherited authority of their so-called successors, the Orthodox Catholic church. While the Gnostics walked in the uncertainty of self discovery and freedom of choice, the Orthodox rested in the fundamentalism of certainty, safety and captured structure.

What I think makes this book so good is that fact that is comprehendible without the philosophical, theological abstractions and circular semantics you will find in other explanatory expressions in Gnostic scholarship.

Unlike the Orthodox, the Gnostics did not seek answers, but instead they sought furthering the process of asking questions. This is a major difference. Like the East in various forms of Buddhism and Hinduism, their progression of understanding existed in subjective experience through meditation, contemplation and the search inward as opposed to the external search of traditional monotheism found in various forms of Judaism and the Orthodox. It was an internal search to "know thyself," as Socrates had so stated, as well as the contemporary Plotinus, although he was an objective philosophical metaphysicist, who rejected both Eastern thought, Gnosticism, and all Christianity for that matter, for its simplicity and lack of definitive philosophical explanation, which be believed was the only way to enlightenment.

In this, the Valentinus school of Gnostic thought rejected the literalization of the Hebrew Scriptures, rejecting the God of Israel's claim of Oneship, perceiving him as a lesser divine being who serves as the instrument of the higher powers, and thus stated in ignorance, "I am the only God, there is no other," and "I am a jealous God." In this, they defined the Creator as Plato's demiurge, the creator was not the same as the divine essence the permeated all Beinghood. Rather, the creator existed as a form apart from the perfect absolute idea that rested beyond the form, as in the case of Sophia, the mother of the demiurge, similar to Paul Tillich's expression of the "God beyond God." Anotherwards, the dualism of Plato's God of Good, the eternal and unchanging in the world of perfect forms of Sophia-Wisdom and the God of Demiurge, the fleeting and impermanent God, Yahweh, in the world of changes. The Creator of the Hebrew Scriptures is not the eternal God, Valentinus explains, but the demiurge who reigns as king and lord, who acts as a military commander, who gives the law and judges those who violate it. Achieving gnosis recognizes the ignorance that dwells both in the demiurge's claims of being the "only God" and that of those who interpret this world of senses as reality. Gnosis involves coming to recognize the true source of divine power, the depth of all being, the Father and Mother. Before gaining gnosis, the candidate worshiped the demiurge, mistaking him for the true God, but now has been released from the demiurge's power, declaring his independence, transcending it. Valentinus' writes to his opponent, Clement:

"You claim to represent God, but, in reality, you represent only the demiurge, whom you blindly serve and obey, I, however, have passed beyond the sphere of his authority and so, for that matter, beyond yours!"

In this Valentinus rejected the idea of one creator God of this world of senses, one Bishop and one visible Church to obey, but favored subjective experience, as in visions, dreams, intuitive awareness and flashes of insight and artistic expression.

Interestingly, they followed the Newtonian cause and effect of a belief system, as in Orthodoxy with gatherings and shared expressions, and yet, they rejected hierarchy, letting the Quantum law of acausal effect take place in that they had no hierarchy, no dogmas and no strict organizational structure. Therefore they drew lots at each meeting to decide on the spot who would be the priest, leader and directors of each meeting, inclusive to all, both male and female.

Now there were various schools of thought within Gnosticism, Valentinus, Basilides, Marcion and others, not all endorsed the above and they fought amongst themselves, which makes this information much more detailed. This book contains not only information on the Gnostics but various quotes from the well known Orthodox leaders, as Clement, Tertullian (who later left the Orthodox), Irenaeus, Ignatius and others in their views against the Gnostics for a well rounded view of both the Gnostics and its opposing viewpoints, although there were many variations. Also, Pagels has other books on the Gnostics, The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis, The Gnostic Paul, The Secret Gospel of Thomas and Beyond Belief, which go further into the Gnostic teachings.

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L. Perez

Fantastic

Reviewed in the Netherlands on September 21, 2024

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Love this book

Almntas Pocevicius

Wider view on gospels and Jesus teaching

Reviewed in Germany on June 17, 2024

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Very interesting to get some unexpected understanding of early teachings and authencity of Jesus teaching

Ines F.

Excellent

Reviewed in France on March 26, 2021

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I fell in love with this book. Explains very well and without judgement what is the gnostic mouvement. I highly recommend this book to anyone who desires to know more about the subject.

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Tutto positivo, everything positive

Reviewed in Italy on October 22, 2020

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Qualità del prodotto ottima e consegna puntuale. Very good quality of the book and delivery on time

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Kalyan Ray

Will swerve your thinking!

Reviewed in India on March 12, 2019

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Thought-provoking and well-research.

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