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Summary: Whose Beliefs?
Review: When asked what book provided you with the basis of your faith and beliefs, I imagine many people would say it's the Bible. When asked how the Bible you are reading came to be, I'd imagine that most people wouldn't have the faintest idea, but merely launch into a talk about "faith". Pagels attempts to trace the history of the formation of the Bible in her well researched and meticulously notated book "Beyond Beliefs", and does a fantastic job.Author of the book "Gnostic Gospels", Pagels revists the Secret Gospel of Thomas as a method to describe the historical background into the formation of the Bible as we see today. She starts her tome with a largely personal story about her ailing son and how church called her to help her through this crisis time. She launches into an intriguing comparison of the Gospels of John and Thomas, and how the four gospels came to be "the chosen ones", all because of a Lyons bishop named Irenaeus. The main character of her story is this Irenaeus, who comes across as well intentioned, if not tolerant, of other gosepls floating around during the fourth century. Due to splintering all over of "Christians" based on their own personal beliefs and interpretations of Jesus' life, Irenaus sets out to streamline the Christian faith and have a general set upon bundle of agreements to work from. This job is none-to-easy as different sects have different thoughts. At first, Irenaeus could be the type of historical figure somewhat villified by denouncing other gospels as heretical and removing them from public consideration. However, Pagels strives to show us all sides of the bishop, and emphasizes that despite his preference towards Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, he was sympathic and tolerant of a variety of religious expressions. He just felt it important to have a basis from which all Christian thought arises, thus leading to the Nicene Creed, among others. Pagels work is engrossing and mesmerizing. Anyone with a taste for history and religion will eat up this book for breakfast. Her writing is thorough and understandable. Sometimes, professors, as they write from their ivory towers, forget their audiences, Pagels strives for understandability and clarity. She is approachable and engrossing in her writing. I fear some people, whose faith is rigid and based not on questioning it, will find this book unbelievable. They might think how dare anyone question the early Christian church and the eventual work known as the Bible. However, this book only adds to the deeper dimensions of our faith. By learning more about where the Bible as we know it comes from, we gain an appreication for the work as a sense of what it is; a purposefully planned document designed to shape faith. The fact that there are other gospels out there, whether or not they are true. is not a threat to my beliefs, but only adds and enhances what I believe. Let me be the judge, after reading them, what I believe. Pagels suggests that people for themselves are empowered to find the light within. For some, that's heresy, for others, salvation. I highly recommend "Beyond Belief" as an important text to support your faith, and to make it fly.
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Summary: A greater image of Jesus and Christianity
Review: Pagels remains a champion for truth and an asset to Christians who want to know it, painting a more complete picture of Jesus and the evolution of Christianity. Most Christians still consider the Gnostic Gospels heresy - derided as such 2000 years ago, suppressed, lost and rediscovered in 1945 outside Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Ironically many of those same Christians adhering to the heretical designation promoted by an early Catholic Church also consider it a questionable entity, even radically so - and without knowing what the Gnostic Gospels are. One of those gospels, the Gospel Of Thomas, is Pagels emphasis. Scholars have dated Thomas to the same time frame as John, the latest (youngest) of the four Gospels. With Mark as the oldest surviving gospel (after an undiscovered Q Gospel) Pagels reveals an astonishing expansion of the concept of Jesus from man to God over time. We find much of John a rebuttal of Thomas and his rival school of thought. The central message of Thomas is that Jesus claims the kingdom of the Father is upon the land and men do not see it, that each has God within them, they only need discover it for themselves and see the world in a new way conveyed by Jesus. John, however, rails against this perspective by making clear that only Jesus has "the light", no one else, it is only through Jesus one finds salvation and the kingdom won't be here until Armageddon. The Thomas Jesus is cryptic, demanding self-examination. Johns Jesus is easy, concrete and requires only belief in His divine nature. It is also from John we receive the gift of damnation for all non-Christians. Such claims made John (the Johnian school or whoever wrote John) appear in his day as a radical Jewish sect and apparently he/they were persecuted for it as John includes them in his list of rivals. That John rebukes Thomas is clear through his differences with Mark, Mathew and Luke. Only in John, when Jesus reappears designating his disciples to carry forth, is Thomas not among them. Only in John is Thomas the doubter and does he receive a reprimand from Jesus. It is also in John that Jesus has a "beloved disciple" never named and superior to Peter. Does John want to claim the beloved is John, but finds it politically expedient to only imply it? Pagels book is a revelation itself in which Thomas shows us a genius in Jesus not seen in the other gospels. Given the political nature of John and their timing one fears the same error in Thomas - was he responding to John, inventing words for Jesus for political/philosophical gain? Thomas lost the contest to John, of course, through suppression by the Church, and one might wonder if not from the easy grasp of, and more supernatural Jesus he presents. At least he won in the first 2000 years. Perhaps someone will print a complete Bible with gospels of Thomas, Mary and the rest (becoming known as extracanonical gospels) such that a clearer picture of Jesus can be given in the next 2000 years, and thanks to efforts by those like Pagels who truly practice what Jesus preached, to seek the truth and set us free.
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Summary: Moving and Beautifully Written
Review: Ms. Pagels has written another highly readable yet brilliantly researched and substantive examination of the early founding of the Christian faith. She begins the book with a very moving personal anecdote regarding her child and her faith that I found moved me to tears. This is followed by a fair and objective analysis of the recently-uncovered Gospel of Thomas and its contrast and comparisons to the Gospel of John. Along the way, readers will be fascinated by the machinations and different spiritual approaches taken by various early Church leaders and sects. In all, a very satisfying book on a worthwhile topic. If you are open-minded and willing to learn something new about the early formation of Christianity, then you will find this book informative and thought-provoking. If your mind is closed to this topic, you have no need for the research this scholar provides, and can move on to another book that confirms and re-affirms your (limited) world-view.
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Summary: A Little Far-Fetched
Review: First and foremost I think Elaine Pagels writes nicely. She gives her work a nice tone and it flows easily. This book itself seems to contrast an apparently ancient work, the Gospel of Thomas, to one of the main works in the Four Formed Gospel, John. The Gospel of Thomas was discovered with some other works hid away in a field in the town of Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt. Apparently these works which oppose orthodox Christianity were hid there to preserve them from being destroyed. Pagels herself was apparently disillusioned with orthodox Christianity at an early age and asked herself 'how could people with different beliefs be condemned to hell?' Therefore, she has found great comfort in works like the Gospel of Thomas which seem to say the Truth of God can be found within as opposed to John which says Jesus is the way to the Truth etc. The Gospel of Thomas has a bit of similarity with Buddhist thought (especially Zen) which emphasizes looking to oneself for ultimate answers and also the idea that we only lose perfection through not realizing our Buddha natures. For these reasons this book is actually an interesting read but I can't give it a high rating because I find it fanciful to say the least. There is a reason John was included in the gospels of the new testament by the early Christians. I don't believe like Pagels does that John was written perhaps to refute the more heretic book of Thomas. Secondly, John seems to have much in common with the synoptic gospels even though Pagels proclaims it doesn't. If you do a thorough check of the information you will see for yourself. I simply cannot believe that for nearly two thousand years we've all been duped about how Christianity should have been. I have no doubts that Pagels has some merit of scholarship but I do not feel she's above and beyond the many scholars who have looked and written about this issue extensively. To put it simply: Pagels doesn't give any strong proof for us to accept the Gospel of Thomas and also other so-called secret works. Throughout the book Pagels gives us an account of a man named Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, and his struggle to suppress what he viewed as heretical works of the day being put forth.
Later in this book Pagels goes on to give a minor historical account of the Nicene Creed. Of course, this was the time when the orthodox doctrines were agreed upon by most of the Christian leaders and would shape the universal Catholic church in the future. Perhaps distressingly to "true" Christians the concept or idea of the Trinity was solidified here. We are also told about a bishop who held a contrary view, (as did some other Christians at this time) Arius. However, ultimately the emperor Constantine who had been a Christian convert prevailed and we have what constitutes orthodoxy today. My point here being that Pagels did a good job of providing interesting reading. Her minor tracing of history keeps you interested enough to plow ahead. It's a shame the other parts of the book didn't have more support or weight to help make them more convincing. This is what ultimately causes this book to fall short.
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Summary: Is ¿Jesus' God or simply "one of us" pointing us to God?
Review: Is 'Jesus' God or simply "one of us" pointing us to God? This question is the crux of Pagels' book: the Gospel of John (Jesus is divine) or the Gospel of Thomas (Jesus comes forth from the divine light, but so do we all). The Nicene council cemented the Christian statement of faith, but according to Pagels' history, could have, or should have, pushed another gospel. 'Beyond Belief' is more than a discussion about why John got in the Bible; 'Beyond Belief' is also a book about the skeptic, for skeptics. This is a book that affirms the questioning Christian and historically supports the doubting 'Thomas'. With Pagels you will have a friend and advocate; one who states that it is not only dutiful, but historically correct for Christians to question the divinity of Jesus. This book is, in actuality, about accepting your place, in the Christian world, as a heretic. Heresy originally meant - the act of choice. And if you 'choose' which elements of Christianity to accept and practice, and which to reject, then you fit Pagels' definition of heretic. For Pagels the choice not to unquestioningly accept religious authority is good, right and what those seeking both truth and God, must ultimately do. Elaine Pagels so states: "Most of us, sooner or later, find that, at critical points in our lives, we must strike out on our own to make a path where none exists." Highly recommended for those who think outside the big box.
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Summary: "Gnostic Gospels" twenty years later
Review: Other reviewers much more knowledgable than I can debate the fine points of biblical scholarship--but for the lay person Pagels work brings home a few basic points. Building on her own work and that of others in the last twenty years, Pagels once again demonstrates that while the birth and death of Jesus are historical facts, who he was and what his life meant will mystify forever. That any one interpretation can lay claim to being "the truth" seems more unlikely than ever after reading this book. Pagels meticulously details the process by which men came together around a set of common beliefs embodied in the Creed of the 4th century. Certain writings of the early church became the Gospels and others were supressed as the church grew, certain factions gained power, and finally Christianity became the state religion. It was only in the 4th century that the earliest list of books that became the "New Testament" appears.
Pagels raises a lot of tough questions. The modern church--particularly the Roman catholic church--teaches that we know God through faith, not the mind. But early Christian writings suggest another approach. We are taught that a certian set of beliefs is required for salvation--but why? Is not God essentially unknowable? Why is it so dangerous to interpret events like the Last Supper in different ways? Did God truly intend for us to abandon our powers of reason and judgment? Are we not all responsible, as difficult as it is, to engage in the hard work of distinguishing right from wrong, truth from lies?
Some reviewers fault Pagels for being too objective--but isn't that the point? She no more has the answer than anyone else. But she poses the questions.
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Summary: As Good As Her Book "Gnostic Gospels"
Review: I got this book after having read her 1979 published work, "The Gnostic Gospels", which was and still is a best seller and an extraordinary book. You know, the critique of Page's "personal interpretations" in other reviews kind of astounds me. Unless you plan to write the book as a literal translation, and even then personal interpretation seeps through, it's impossible not to have it happen. That's what books are; an author's words and personal thoughts. She's considered by countless reader's and scholars to be the country's foremost authoritarian on religion, being a Professor of Religion at Princeton. So I think her credentials to interpret are all reliable frankly. Now obviously this book tackles one of the most profound of all the ancient texts found in Egypt in 1945: The Gospel of Thomas. Pagels contours the struggles here between Irenaeus, the prime draftsman of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and those who found value and legitimacy in the "secret" Gospel of Thomas. John's Jesus and Thomas's Jesus appear to be from two completely different worlds, though some of the same storyline exists in both. John's was more an arrow pointing outward, and Thomas's was more of an arrow pointing inward. The numinous style in the Gospel of Thomas respects the image of God that's within one and all. This struggle of dogma is ongoing, between orthodox Christians and Gnostic Christians (the latter appears to be somewhat more open to a very wide range of diversity). Today, as in all the ages, Gnostics are considered by in large to be heretics, a name which for too many denotes the devil. That being said, I can understand why many reviewers are reluctant to give this a listen I suppose. It's difficult for Christians to embrace so called "pluralism" or the religion of others. Elaine is successful in her critique of the superior role BELIEF persists to play in Christianity, which at first isn't entirely bad. But maybe in the coming years, more "believers" will see and treasure the multiplicity within their own institution and start benefiting from The Gospel of Thomas and the other early Christian Gnostic texts. It's a great book, so please enjoy it.
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Summary: Enigmatic!
Review: BEYOND BELIEF compares the Gospel of John with the Gospel of St. Thomas found among a cache of texts near Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt in 1945. Pagels suggests that both were written about the same time, about sixty years after Jesus's death. John emphasizes belief in Jesus Christ as god (something that is not implicit in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke); Jesus is a supreme being, separate from man and if we are to be saved we must believe in him. Thomas, on the other hand, argues that God's light shines within and that we should seek to know God through our own, divinely given capacity.
Parts of BEYOND BELIEF are quite compelling, such as Pagel's portrayal of early Christians living by the Golden Rule, even during the plague when they stayed with their fellow Christians while everyone else ran away to save themselves. Non-believers saw this and wanted to be part of this compassionate religion. Most of the book, however, deals with how the New Testament came about. Pagel gives most of the credit to early church father Irenaeus who emphasized the Gospel of John and put it above Matthew, Mark, and Luke although it was written later. Pagels argues that the Gospel of John may have been a response to the Gospel of Thomas, since it is the only one that shows St. Thomas doubting Christ when he appeared to the Apostles after rising from the dead.
A later chapter deals with Christianity after Constantine's conversion when he called together catholic bishops to form the Nicene Creed, during which time many of Irenaeus ideas were given an official stamp. A later bishop, Athanasius, called for the destruction of "apocryphal" texts and it was most likely then that St. Thomas's gospel was hidden at Nag Hammadi. Athanasius wanted right thinking among his subjects and warned against something called "epinoia," or spiritual intuition, "a deceptive, all-too human capacity to think subjectively, according to one's preconceptions."
If you're expecting a thorough analysis of the Gospel of St. Thomas, you won't find it here (although Pagels does refer the reader to other scholars who discuss it extensively). You will, however, find the entire text in an appendix. Some of it is quite enigmatic, especially saying 114 in which Peter asks Jesus to make Mary Magdalen leave since "females are not worthy of life." Jesus promises to make her male "for every female who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Much of St. Thomas's Gospel is every bit as enigmatic.
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Summary: Scholarly and beautifully written...
Review: This provocative and informative little book explores the historical beginnings of Christianity. As has been pointed out by other critics, the text is, for the most part, a personal though scholarly exploration into what the Christian religion offers, in terms of its doctrines, orthodox and heretical, and that our faith or belief in what has been handed down to us from the original church fathers, can be questioned, though in the end, what we find to be true is a personal affair between us and the Divine. Personally, gaining knowledge about the history of Christianity, its early writings, and the profound political influences that shaped 'orthodoxy', in the first centuries of the first millennia, reveals aspects about Christianity that not only informs belief, but also provides deeper meaning and understanding. Pagels' examines the differences between the Gospel of John in the New Testament and The Secret Gospel of Thomas, found in Nag Hammadi in 1947. Scholars believe these two texts to be written at the same time, around the first century. The central difference between the two Gospels is the interpretation of what actually constitutes Christ's nature, i.e., who he was and what he was, in terms of either being a prophet, a 'man' endowed with the Divine spark, to then begin his ministry, spreading his word of love, or actually the Son of God, come down from heaven in human form to save us from our sins. In the Gospel of John, there is no question that Jesus is represented as the Divine, who has been born by Immaculate Conception, sacrificing himself on the cross to save us from our sins, and who rose from the dead three days later. In the Gospel of Thomas, however, Christ can be interpreted as human, who asks us to look within ourselves in order to understand God. He tells us to seek, and to not stop seeking, until we find the truth. This point of interpretation, as to Christ's true nature, was argued by the church fathers in the third century which set Christian doctrine in stone ever since. Certain gospels were deemed heretical based on certain interpretations, and thrown out of the canon. The Secret Gospel of Thomas was one of them. The reasons for throwing out some scripture over others is examined in some detail in this book, however, the main reason was to ensure the church had a unifying doctrine that would bring the many Christian sects at the time under one authority, creating the Catholic or Universal church. As history has shown, they were successful. The reasons for their success, though, are not limited to 'correct' interpretation of scripture, but extend to political, historical and cultural influences at the time. I found this book to be beautifully written and informative, but it mostly inspired me to investigate the history of Christianity and how that history has shaped what it has become today.
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Summary: Hidden Good News from Long Ago
Review: According to Publishers Weekly, Beyond Belief was the fifth best selling religious book in 2003. In it, Elaine Pagels discusses insights from the first Century AD that were well known to the Early Church but have been lost over time. Pagels introduces twenty-first century Christians to a work that has gone unnoticed for most of the intervening centuries, the secret Gospel of Thomas. We already have four Gospels in the New Testament, so why might Christians want to know what is in this non-canonical book? Dr. Pagels, who is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University, says that this is a distinctive voice about the history of early Christianity. It is original source material. It would be like discovering a heretofore unknown history of the Revolutionary War era written by one of the Signers, only more so; since it has to do with the history of the Church of Jesus Christ. Dr. Pagels describes the world of the Early Church in vibrant and exciting ways, in an initial chapter called "From the Feast of Agape to the Nicene Creed." Her account of the growth and development of the Christian faith demonstrates that it happened amid varying views and diverse ideas of how to put faith into practice. Pagels' contention is that there was at that time an internal debate within the Church that can be drawn along the lines of the views that are familiar to us from the Gospel of John and views in the Gospel of Thomas. The debate centered upon what is most important about spiritual and religious expression-and what following Jesus meant, long before the books to be included in the New Testament were agreed upon. While John's Gospel famously speaks of Christ as Light dwelling within all beings and the source of all creation, the Gospel of Thomas speaks of Christ as "hidden good news" in much the same way that Jesus told of the treasure hidden in the field, the tiny mustard seed and the pearl of great price. The Gospel of Thomas is unfamiliar to us because it is one of about fifty early Christian texts that went missing in ancient days and have only recently come to light. So, like other information that antique its unfamiliarity may strike us as both unusual and incorrect. But it also helps us understand the decisions in the Early Church that led to the theology of John's Gospel to come to the fore and the information in this other work to recede into the background. Beyond the historical information, what else might we glean from this book? Perhaps Dr. Pagels says it best. The book offers "insights or intimations of the divine that validate themselves in experience-what we might call hits and glimpses..." (page 183). If you would like to peer into the First and Second Century world of the Church, try this one.
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