The Gnostic Gospels

Rating:
Summary: Easy to read and thought provoking
Review: If you're the least bit interested in the development of christianity, then this book is certainly well worth your time.

It is an easy to read, concise, and thought provoking study of some Gnostic texts. It points out that politics and practical necessity had a great deal to do with shaping what we've come to know as Christianity. It also shows that in the early years there were other versions of Christianity -- and that perhaps the Gnostic version is one of the missing links between Eastern religion and Western religion.

This book certainly gets you wondering how much of what we are told was Jesus' teaching was in fact his. How many of our beliefs are the result of a man-made church structure and how many of them are the real "word of God"?

Rating:
Summary: Easy read by a true scholar
Review: Considering Pagels background and involvement in the translation and presentation of Nag Hammadi, I was thoroughly surprised at this concise piece, and how easy it was to read. Having read several of her books, I have seen that they are all on a level most can accept, and gain knowledge from. I wish, in truth, that the book was stronger and more indepth. This is a good introduction to Gnostic understanding, but is a far cry from other books. Nothing obviously will substitute reading the actual ancient texts, but this is a great place to start. May peace be with you today...

Rating:
Summary: attitude
Review: If you are looking for an objective study of Gnosis read Rudolph's "Gnosis", not this book. It has an obvious feminist attitude and does not even pretend to be objective. Now I am a woman and a feminist, but I do not need to read about speculations about religions of long ago which may or may not have had the same problems that we face today as well as at the time of these beginnings. This book did not have the a good slice of the Gnostic texts and what was given was obviously done to prove its point.

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Summary: earliest christianity and gnostism
Review: this is a great read for those who wish to know more about the gnostics and thier relationship with early christianity. However this book itself does not endorse either perspective( that is not its purpose), it simply wants to inform the reader on the debates that first challenged chrisitianity, why those debates took place and their ramifications on future theological thought.

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Summary: The Catholic Question revisited
Review: One of the greatest bones of contention in the Christian world for the past several centuries has been the nature of the catholicity of the Church. Is the Church institutional in nature(the "Catholic" view) or is the institutional church a harbor for the "real Church", the priesthood of those who believe (the "Protestant" view)? Reading this book has helped me to understand that many of the Catholic/Protestant (and, now, Charismatic) debates are perennial ones. They have been with the Christian community since its inception and, indeed, were the disputes that proved formative of the institutional Christianities which endure to this day. If you would like to know more about the early theological/political debates that shaped all of Christianity this is an excellent book to read both because of its exposure of the theological diversity of early Christianity [Gnosticism(s) versus the strands of Christian thought that eventually coalesced into Orthodoxy] and because of its exploration of the political implications of these vigorous theological debates. You won't regret spending your time perusing this book.

Rating:
Summary: Great reading
Review: This is a great introductory book about information on the Gnostic gospels of the Nag Hammadi library. It presents basically unbiased discussion of some of the theological ideas present in the Gnostic sources, and how they inter-twine with Christian history. I just await the day when someone digs up another accidental discovery like this or the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the study of early Christianity is once again turned 180 degrees >;-)

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Summary: A magnificent soul-bridge connecting Christ, theology, & art
Review: As a young man afraid to leap off what seemed to be a heretical ledge with the books that now make up 80% of my personal library (from Frazer's GOLDEN BOUGH to Joseph Campbell to Godfery Higgins' ANACALYPSIS), this book was the begining of my answering the calling to higher knowledge. I knew intuitively that there was so much more to Christ and Christianity than what I was taught to blindly accept in church, or was trivialized by New Age spiritualists. My intiuition wasn't affirmed until I got this book.

Elaine Pagels brings the art back to the Christian mind, heart and way of life, by bringing out the texts and philosophies of the early Christians who didn't "make the cut," as a Seventh-Day Adventist friend of mine once said (she hadn't realized nor was taught that they were, for the most part, assassinated for political reasons). With them- the Gnostic Christians- and their ways lost, a disowning of much of the spiritual self became part and parcel of Christian doctrine, setting itself up as antagonistic to much of its ancient influences and original purpose.

Elaine Pagels allowd me to finally, comfortably see Christ the way one would look at an artist like Dizzy Gillespie, in a world where all the money and power comes from playing three chords in a rock band and nothing else. The full beauty and metaphoric power of Christianity is revealed to have been lost by most, hidden by few, antagonistic to nothing but the lower forms of thought, feeling, behavior, language and ritual that Catholicism actually yielded to, in the efforts to establish itself as the state religion under Constantine and beyond. The things thast call to aspects of the mind and soul that are thought to be antagonistic to Christian doctrine and "pagan" in their implications, actually form the essence and the specifics of Christ's teaching. In such, Pagels shows that the line separating Christianity from paganism, philosophy and much more ancient religious thought in the modern mind can only be kept in place via a misreading of the actual scripture, out of full context.

Pagels makes it fundamentally clear just how important the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library is to all people, not just Christian or Christian raised. She succeeds in creating a bridge, connecting all of those many subjects and ideas that your heart and soul call to simultaneously, but cannot seem to get without great sacrifice. And her writing style makes it all so clear and easy to understand to anyone that you will come away very enlightened- and affirmed- on the first reading.

This book will probably become a very important part of the library of whoever reads it.

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Summary: A Question of Religious Authority
Review: The book, The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels presents an easy-reading historical document that reveals the fundamental and theoretical similarities and differences of gnostic and orthodox Christians of the early Christian movement. According to Pagels, the finding of the 52 Coptic texts at Nad Hammadi in 1945, has seemingly shifted our very thoughts about Christianity as a traditional religious movement. Interpretation of the gospels reveals that historically, various diverse forms of Christianity flourished during Christianity's early formative years. Probably the single most threatening movement of the time was a group known as the Gnostics who formed from a variety of sources and traditions and who were often referred to as a heretical movement by the Christian church forefathers. The strength of Pagels work shows that although Gnostic and orthodox Christians believed in God and the value of sharing a relationship with God, they differed greatly in their approach to knowing and understanding God. Gnostics believed that one could know God by gaining insight into oneself, and that by knowing oneself, one might understand human nature and destiny. In general, Gnostics maintained an equality amongst individuals and established no fixed orders of clergy. They allowed all individuals to seek to know God through their own experience and to achieve personal enlightenment through rigorous spiritual discipline and self-discovery. Unlike the Gnostics, the Christian church developed as a religious structure to encourage social interaction amongst individuals and required only that individuals accept the simplest essentials of faith and a variety of celebrated church rituals. Pagels work also succinctly shows the interaction between the two forms of Christianity and challenges the reader to explore the very meanings of the movements on the Christian tradition of today. The essence of the book reveals that the survival of the Christian tradition was dependent on the organizational and theological structure of the emerging church and that the emergence of the religious hierarchical structure of the church seemed to mirror the difficult times of the growing social and political forces of the governing body of that time. Furthermore, the movement to institutionalize Christianity, created a leadership structure that consisted of a small band of persons (bishop and priests) who stood in a position of incontestable authority to define how individuals could know God. Pagels postulates that mounting alienation from the world in which the individuals lived combined with a longing for a miraculous salvation as an escape from the constraints of political and social existence of the time, gave the necessary strength and power to create the burgeoning orthodox Christian church. A shortcoming of the book concerns Pagels personal indifference in the final chapter of the very core truths of Gnosticism that she so vividly and explicitly sought to describe in her book. Certainly, Pagels gave a strong voice of support for the movement in terms of it's early beginnings with orthodox Christians and it's impact on Christianity today. Surprisingly, however, she chose to leave the reader hanging by failing to embrace the concepts of Gnosticism that she asked the reader to re-visit regarding some of the major debates surrounding issues of religious authority and God. Despite this shortcoming, the author highly recommends Pagels engaging, richly evocative, well-written, historical text that introduces the amazingly paradoxical development of the early Christian movement.

Rating:
Summary: Informative, albeit Deficiently Reported
Review: Written in narrative form, orthodox and gnostic debates are conveyed without an undiminished resolution to the argument. The resurrection, for example, is unequivocally a bodily resurrection, and yet, Elaine Pagels offers both views without a definitive conclusion. On this issue, the gnostic view is based on an assumption when no one instantly recognizes the resurrected Jesus [page 6]. The gnostics obviously forgot that no physical body remains buried. Gnostic views as a whole tend to be insignificant. On many gnostic issues, I offer what the apostle Paul said: "we see through a dim mirror." There are also gnostic errors: they believe Adam and Eve had four children [page 54], when in fact they had five - two sets of twins, and Seth. Gnostics do not believe that Mary conceived apart from Joseph [page 53], but this is proved by (a) Jesus needing to be made from both Spirit and human in order to be our kinsman redeemer. (b) A curse in the royal lineage (via Jeconiah) is eliminated when Joseph is told to name Jesus [a custom of adoption]. (c) Jesus fulfilled every jot and tittle so the husband [God's Law] could die on the cross, and the wife [the church] could remarry the resurrected Jesus. On the positive, gnostics correctly identify that God did not establish the Catholic church; Christianity is not an institutional religion; and religious authority need not be through apostolic succession; however, it is also not as the gnostics believe, through "inner vision" [page 13] but in fact, only through one of God's gift ministries [Ephesians 4:11] which is randomly selected. Gnostics believe the Holy Spirit is female [page 52], not considering that heavenly beings do not need to reproduce themselves; consequently, God made a new creation [women] for human procreation. I have come to recognize Satan as an imitator; it is his mission to pervert God's message in every way. The apostle Paul was strictly chosen to rescue God's New Testament message of Peace and Grace, or Christianity would have been merged with Judaism. I adhere to the New Testament message and any deviation must conclusively prove its validity, or it fails. I impart with indifference to these gnostic gospels.

Rating:
Summary: good for starting out
Review: 'The Gnostic Gospels' is a very general look at the history of the gnostics and the beginnings of Christianity. If you are curious and just beginning the search into what gnosticism is about then this is a good book (as I was when I read this book), but if you are already somewhat knowledgable then this book is too simple for you. Do not read this book if you are a hard-core Bible-thumping Christian for you will find it offensive.