More than twenty years ago, Elaine Pagels earned one of our “Best Spiritual Book of the Year” awards for Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. The unique feature of this new study of Jesus is how she has brought her expertise on the gnostic gospel texts to the framing of a familiar story. References to accounts in the gospels of Thomas and Philip are found woven together with those from the gospels collected in the New Testament.
Pagels also uses sources that have become common in life of Jesus books written by scholars. There was a flurry of these books a generation ago, when the media was writing stories about The Jesus Seminar (a group of elite scholars who met from 1985-2006) scrutinizing the sayings of Jesus. Pagels quotes these scholars, such as John Dominic Crossan and Paula Fredriksen, as well.
But Pagels also incorporates in her telling a fascination with how and why there’s been an “astonishing persistence of Jesus, both rediscovered and reinvented” (emphasis hers). This way of focusing on how audiences have responded to what’s recorded in the Bible, focusing not so much on its truth as on the response it has elicited in people, is sometimes called “reception criticism.” In this respect, Pagels’ book is about the spiritual practice of devotion as much as it is about faith.
For example, at one point she engages with the conservative Anglican biblical scholar N.T. (Tom) Wright, telling a story of his coming to Princeton University, where Pagels teaches, wanting to debate her on the matter of Jesus’ resurrection. She refuses and offers this conclusion on that topic — a conclusion that would, by the way, satisfy most biblical scholars today: “I do not intend to imply that reports of resurrection are false. Instead, as I see it, historical evidence can neither prove nor disprove the reality that gave rise to such experiences. What we can verify historically, though, is that after Jesus died many people claimed to have seen him alive. What fascinates me, and many others, is how their various reports of visions and appearances catalyzed the explosion of activity that led to the spread of Christianity all over the world; even now it attracts new converts” (again, the emphases are Pagels’).
In an earlier chapter, Pagels deals with the reports of Jesus performing astonishing miracles, in the gospel texts, with a similar approach.
