Fw: What Bible? (Elaine Pagels)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Schneider" <rjschn39@bellsouth.net>
To: "Alexanian, Moorad" <alexanian@uncw.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: What Bible? (Elaine Pagels)

> Yes, Elaine Pagels is the widow of the late Heinz Pagels. That tragedy
> and the death of their young son were motivating factors in her personal
> search for understanding that led to her books on early Christianity and
> Gnosticism.
>
> I've read all of them (The Gnostic Gospels; her translations in The Nag
> Hammadi Library; Adam, Eve and the Serpent; The Origin of Satan; and
> Beyond Belief) and have found them all stimulating, very informative, and
> thought-provoking. Her research in the Nag Hammadi texts, which she
> undertook as a student at Harvard Divinity School under Helmut Koester,
> have greatly enlarged our knowledge of gnostic movements in early
> Christianity. Learning about Gnosticism from texts that are not
> tendentious, as those of Irenaeus and others are, gives a different
> picture of these movements and provides some understanding of why features
> of early gnosticism were attractive to many. Beyond Belief does this
> quite well.
>
> My wife says that she thinks Pagels has since remarried, but I can't
> confirm it.
>
> Bob
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Alexanian, Moorad" <alexanian@uncw.edu>
> To: "Clarke Morledge" <chmorl@wm.edu>; "Mervin Bitikofer"
> <mrb22667@kansas.net>
> Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 1:57 PM
> Subject: RE: What Bible? (Elaine Pagels)
>
>
>> Is Elaine Pagels the wife of the late physicist Heinz Pagels who died in
>> Colorado in a mountaineering accident?
>>
>> Moorad
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of Clarke Morledge
>> Sent: Sat 3/11/2006 11:34 AM
>> To: Mervin Bitikofer
>> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
>> Subject: Re: What Bible? (Elaine Pagels)
>>
>>
>>
>> Merv,
>>
>> I'd like to add my 2 cents on Elaine Pagels...
>>
>> I have mixed thoughts about her. On the one hand, she is quite an
>> engaging
>> and gifted writer. She is really good at presenting scholarly historical
>> research for a lay audience. I also learn a lot reading her. Pagels
>> makes for a very enjoyable read. It is difficult to find a comparable
>> conservative writer who is as accessible and good as she is.
>>
>> On the other hand, her presuppositions unfortunately place her not only
>> outside historic, evangelical orthodoxy but also outside the mainstream
>> in
>> church history research. She is clearly to be commended for trying to
>> integrate her personal struggle over tragic family loss with scholarly
>> research. But she finds traditional evangelical approaches to
>> theodicy to be lacking -- and that forces her to place more of her hope
>> in
>> rehabilitating Gnosticism as a viable Christian option. Unfortunately, it
>> just will not work so easily.
>>
>> The scholarly consensus she assumes for an early date for the Gnostic
>> writings, such as the Gospel of Thomas, simply isn't there. Furthermore,
>> I am constantly suprised by her embrace of the Gospel of Thomas when the
>> last verses of the work are so clearly misogynist. As it concerns ASA
>> members, classic Gnosticism pretty much severs the connection between
>> science and faith by divorcing the doctrine of creation from the doctrine
>> of redemption.
>>
>> Here is a review of one of her earlier books, _The Origin of Satan_,
>> which
>> is also quite good in some ways. But the reviewer, Jeffrey Burton
>> Russell, is able to identify the problems with Pagels and her tendency
>> towards revisionism as found in all of her writings:
>>
>> http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9511/russell.html
>>
>> Maybe, Pagels simply wants to keep the good and throw out the bad in both
>> Gnosticism and Orthodoxy. She once attended an evangelical church when
>> she was a teenager. There are probably a lot of things that she misses
>> about that experience. But the attempt to bring in Gnosticism as
>> something that simply broadens our horizons is tragically misleading.
>>
>> I, for one, find it very hard to accept the Gnostic claim that anyone can
>> have any "secret" direct insights into the "real" teaching of Jesus that
>> bypasses the the orthodoxy of Nicene faith.
>>
>> Blessings in Him,
>>
>>
>> Clarke Morledge
>> College of William and Mary
>> Information Technology - Network Engineering
>>
>> On Sat, 11 Mar 2006, Mervin Bitikofer wrote:
>>
>>> I would guess that you are probably a reader of Elaine Pagels -- am I
>>> correct? The questions you ask below could come straight from her
>>> book:
>>> "Beyond Belief" -- which I'm in the middle of at the moment. I may
>>> not
>>> come to the same conclusions as I anticipate she might (I'm not a Da
>>> Vinci
>>> code fan -- although I haven't read that one at all yet, and only know
>>> about
>>> it by hearing various responses to it.) But I am learning some
>>> excellent
>>> Bible history from Pagels' work. According to her, the pre-Nicean body
>>> of
>>> believers was so diverse and eclectic that they could not agree even on
>>> the
>>> things that eventually came to be embraced as orthodoxy. She points
>>> out
>>> that every 'canonical' source of truth had claims to close proximity to
>>> Jesus
>>> -- and yet the actual authorship of each has also been called into
>>> doubt.
>>> This applied to the writings that were eventually rejected as well as
>>> those
>>> embraced. Each group had their own underlying assumptions and
>>> emphases.
>>> Is it so wrong that some church fathers found the 'decide what truth is
>>> for
>>> yourself' mentality alarming and felt compelled to delineate and define
>>> what
>>> truth is? We can always quibble over whether or not their version of it
>>> was
>>> right -- but the alternative to abandoning the quest for absolute
>>> (community
>>> -- even world-wide) truth in favor of more individualistic "just search
>>> within" type of interpretations seems dangerous to me. And yet to throw
>>> out
>>> committment to a ('the') sacred text, seems to me to invite just such a
>>> conclusion. I'm eager to finish her work to see what conclusions she
>>> draws
>>> -- I already suspect I won't be in complete agreement with them, but I'm
>>> learning a lot about early church history that I didn't know.
>>>
>>> --merv
>>
>>
>>
>
Received on Sat Mar 11 14:43:39 2006