Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels in 2019.

Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey (born February 13, 1943), is an American historian of religion. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnosticism.

Quotes

  • At one point in my life, I had to make a decision...I had to decide whether to have too little or too much in my life...Study, children, friends, travel—all of it. That was an easy one. I chose too much.”
  • Satan is a way of perceiving opponents. You may not believe the mythology of such a universe, but it’s in you, a background perception.”
  • There are certain ecological structures in any marriage—some with a traditional gender bias and some not. Simply, people take on certain roles. In a way, I had to do everything. But, most of all, I also wanted to take on the challenge of not giving up, of not despairing. Because Heinz was on the side of life. He loved life. He was full of explorative excitement, interest, passion. I realized that it would be no honor to him to say, ‘I can’t take this, I can’t go on, it’s too hard.’ Somehow, I wanted to take on something of what I’d learned from him, the way he embraced life, with all its dangers and difficulties. I was challenged to do that. I can’t say I’ve done it, but that’s what I wanted to do.
  • Yet the gnostic Gospel of Thomas relates that as soon as Thomas recognizes him, Jesus says to Thomas that they have both received their being from the same source . . . Does not such teaching—the identity of the divine and human, the concern with illusion and enlightenment, the founder who is presented not as Lord, but as spiritual guide—sound more Eastern than Western? Some scholars have suggested that if the names were changed, the 'living Buddha' appropriately could say what the Gospel of Thomas attributes to the living Jesus. Could Hindu or Buddhist tradition have influenced gnosticism?
    • Elaine Pagels. Pagels, Elaine H. The Gnostic Gospels. Vintage Books, 1989. Quoted from Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines
  • Could the title of the Gospel of Thomas—named after the disciple who, tradition tells us, went to India—suggest the influence of Indian tradition?
    • Elaine Pagels. Quoted from Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines

Quotes about Elaine Pagels

  • ...she is enormously strong. Pagels not only survived two tragedies in the space of fifteen months but since then has written another book, reared her children, taught her many students. She is, by all reports, a good colleague, a devoted friend. Her mind is quick and generous. At fifty-two, she has a mild, earnest appearance (a rounded, friendly face, windblown blond hair), and yet in conversation she is absolutely fierce, focussed, picking apart the careless question, delighted by the unexpected one. When she delivers her lectures for an undergraduate course on the New Testament—Monday and Wednesday mornings at ten—she does not so much pace the room as prowl it. Pagels radiates so much intensity that you somehow imagine a fast-burning cigarette in her hand. There is none. She does not smoke. She smolders.

See also

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