Hi to all,
Has anyone here read the very controversial books of Elaine Pagels about the New Testament and such other tgexts as the gospel of Thomas. I would really love some critique/comments from members of this board. I must say, some of her analysis are to say the least, very controversial.
All the best,
Denis
I've read her The Origin of Satan, but none of her other books (at one time I did have one of her other books, but when it came time to move and I had to decide which books would be making the move with me, it didn't make the cut 
). It's been a few years since I've read Origin of Satan, but from what I can remember, she writes like a typical non-Christian (or nominally Christian) academic. She chooses a topic she will know will sell books, she does a lot of research, then she strings quotes and supposed facts together in an attempt to prove his/her assertions. I don't put much stock at all into such books... not when there are so many other good books out there already. Even if we are talking about untypical looks at Christianity, I think books by people like agnostic-turned-atheist A.N. Wilson are perhaps a bit more thought provoking. But, by wary, for I'm basing this all on very limited reading of the authors I'm mentioning.
PS. I'll look and see when I get home if I still have Origin of Satan; if I do I'll give it a look through and try to offer some more concrete criticisms/critique.
The only book of hers that we have (as far as I know-- we have several thousand books!) is The Gnostic Gospels, which sits as reference material on the Six Foot Shelf. This is where we keep stuff like the Book of Mormon and other dubious religious and occultic works, sort of like the supposed secret room in the Vatican library.
The impression I get is that this material has made very little impact outside of the excessively speculative scholarly world (and the world of woo-woo religion, but thence lies the road to the Six Foot Shelf). The one exception has been the parallel passages in Thomas and the synoptics, which maybe sheds some light on the "Q" hypothesis. But the general view is that the ancient rejection of the Gnostics weighs more heavily.
CGW wrote:the "Q" hypothesis. But the general view is that the ancient rejection of the Gnostics weighs more heavily.
Sorry for my ignorance but what is the Q hypothesis? Btw, thanks to all for the interesting answers.
denis wrote:CGW wrote:the "Q" hypothesis. But the general view is that the ancient rejection of the Gnostics weighs more heavily.
Sorry for my ignorance but what is the Q hypothesis?
"Q" figures in answering the 'synoptic problem", which is to say, explaining the parallelism of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. If you line the three it's pretty simple to see that almost all of Mark appears in the other two, pretty much in the same order; this has led to the theory that Mark was written first and that the other two are elaborations of the Markan text. Things get interesting when you compare the other parts of Matthew and Luke, because there is still a lot of material in common. In particular the sayings of Jesus (of which there isn't a lot in Mark) tend to appear in both. Germans in the late 1800s postulated another source which we don't have, which they labeled "Q" (for "Quelle", or "source").
At the time the Nag Hammadi texts weren't known. They knew there was a gnostic Gospel of Thomas because the Fathers refer to it, but they didn't know what was in it. When the Nag Hammadi texts appeared, one of the texts was this "gospel", which is indeed unmistakably gnostic. But what was especially intriguing was that much of the sayings material ascribed to "Q" also appeared in Thomas. This led to tons of speculation. The radicalist theory is that Thomas is "Q". I don't think anyone but the radicals take this seriously; it has too many dating problems. A more middle of the road position is that "Q" remained as a separate document to which the author of Thomas referred. There's also a position arguing that there never was a separate "Q".
Except for the radicalist position, none of this has much impact on orthodox Christianity (small o). It's not too hard to read this stuff and conclude that it tends to boil down to people riding their particular intellectual hobby-horses.
This E. Pagels wrote a book called "Beyond Belief : The Secret Gospel of Thomas". She tries to show this text as evidence against thw Church! It is simply a gnostic 2nd century document, supposedly written by st. Thomas, that contains various sayings of Christ. Most of them are based on the New Testament. No early Church Father(e.g. St. Clement of Rome, St. Ignatius, St. Justin etc.) makes any reference to the Gospel of "Thomas"! If it were actually part of Scripture, how come they don't recognize its existence?
