Marvin Meyer, ed., The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (The International Edition), with an Introduction by Elaine H. Pagels (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007) (From the backcover: Since the discovery of ancient lost gospels, secret books, treatises, and tractates in the Nile Valley near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, the study of Gnostic religion and its impact on Christianity, Judaism, and Greco-Roman religions has been fundamentally transformed. Gnosticism's influence on Western culture and tradition through the ages and up to modern times has been profound. In this definitive edition an international team of esteemed scholars provide the most complete English translation of all the texts of this ancient mystical tradition, with introductory essays and extensive notes reflecting the latest scholarship--including the recently discovered Gospel of Judas.").
Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988) ("What I intend to show in this book is how certain ideas--in particular, ideas concerning sexuality, moral freedom, and human value--took their definitive form during the first four centuries as interpretations of the Genesis creation stories, and how they have continued to affect our culture and everyone in it, Christian or not, ever since." Id. at xxviii.).
Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random House, 2005) ("When I found that I no longer believed everything I thought Christians were supposed to believe, I asked myself, Why not just leave Christianity--and religion--behind, as so many others have done? Yet I sometimes encountered, in churches and elsewhere--in the presence of a venerable Buddhist monk, in the cantor's singing at a bar mitzvah, and on mountain hikes--something compelling, powerful, even terrifying that I could not ignore, and I had come to see that, besides belief, Christianity involves practice--and paths toward transformation." Id. at 143. "But those who see Christianity as offering, in Irenaeus's words, a 'very complete system of doctrines' that contain 'certain truth' often have difficulty acknowledging--much less welcoming--diverse viewpoints, which, nevertheless, abound. Anyone who stands within the Roman Catholic communion, for example, knows that it embraces members who differ on topics ranging from doctrine to discipline, and the same applies, of course, to virtually every other Christian denomination. But since Christians often adopt Irenaeus's view of controversy, many tend to assume that only one side can speak the truth, while others speak only lies--or evil. Many still insist that only their church, whether Roman Catholic or Baptist, Lutheran or Greek Orthodox, Pentecostalist or Presbyterian, Jehovah's Witness or Christian Scientist--or only the group with their church with with they agree--actually remains faithful to Jesus' teaching. Furthermore, since Christian tradition teaches that Jesus fully reveled God two thousand years ago, innovators from Francis of Assisi, to Martin Luther, from George Fox and John Wesley to contemporary feminist and liberation theologians, often have disguised innovation--sometimes even from themselves--by claiming that they are not introducing anything new but only clarifying what Jesus actually meant all along. . . . " What such people seek, however, is often not a different 'system of doctrines' so much as insights or intimations of the divine that validates themselves in experience--what we might call hints and glimpses offered by the luminous epinoia. . . . " Id. at 182-183.).
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979) (From the bookjacket: "In this brilliantly lucid account, we discover why the orthodox church chose o suppress these gnostic texts, and why they gnostics themselves were condemned as heretics as early as the first century. Professor Pagels also explains why these writings were hidden, how they were found, and how their meaning is now being revealed through painstaking scholarship. Most significantly, she shows us how these extraordinary texts compel us to reconsider profoundly the traditional view of the origins and meanings of Christianity.").
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1975, 1992) (From the backcover: "In this landmark work, Elaine Pagels demonstrates how evidence from gnostic sources may challenge the long-established assumption that Paul writes his letters to combat 'gnostic opponents' and to repudiate their claims to secret wisdom. Drawing upon evidence from a variety of gnostic sources, including the Nag Hammadi documents, Pagels demonstrates how gnostic writers not only failed to grasp the whole point of Paul's writings, but dared to claim his letters as a primary source for their anthropology, Christology, and sacramental theology.").
Elaine H. Pagels, The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis: Heracleon's Commentary on John (Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series 17) (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989) ("The gnostics challenge these very 'first principles.' Gnostic theologians do not necessarily deny that the events proclaimed of Jesus have occurred in history. What they deny is that the actuality of these events matters theologically. Heracleon claims, for example, that those who insist that Jesus, a man who lived 'in the flesh,' is 'Christ' fail to distinguish between literal and symbolic truth. Those who write accounts of the revelation as alleged biographies of 'Jesus of Nazareth'--or even of Jesus as messiah--focus on mere historical ;externals' and miss the inner truth they signify." Id. at 13. "This study is intended to investigate gnostic, especially Valentinian, exegeis of the Johannine gospel. How did gnostic exegetes actually interpret it? Is their exegesis as hopelessly 'arbitrary' and 'contrived' as Irenaeus, Clement, and Origen allege (with concurrence from several recent scholars)? Does it reflect any systematic methodology? Most important, what theological presuppositions underlie their hermeneutical practice, and what theological issues are at stake in the controversy over Johannine exegiseis?" Id. at 16-17.).
Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan (New York: Random House, 1995) ("What interests me ... are specifically social implications of the figure of Satan: how he is invoked to express human conflict and to characterize human enemies within our own religions tradition." "In this book, then, I invite you to consider Satan as a reflection of how we perceive ourselves and those we call 'others.' Satan has, after all, made a kind of profession out of being the 'other'; and so Satan defines negatively what we think of as human. The social and cultural practice of defining certain people as 'others' in relation to one's own group may be, of course, as old as humanity itself." Id. at xvii. "In this book I add to the discussion ...what I call the social history of Satan; that is, I show how the events told in the gospels about Jesus, his advocates, and his enemies correlate with supernatural drama the writers use to interpret that story--the struggle between God's spirit and Satan. And because Christians as they read the gospels have characteristically identified themselves with the disciples, for some two thousand years they have also identified their opponents, whether Jews, pagans, or heretics, with forces of evil, and so with Satan." Id. at xxii-xxiii. "Many Christians, then, from the first century through Francis of Assisi in the fifteenth and Martin Luther King, Jr., in the twentieth, have believed that they stood on God's side without demonizing their opponents. Their religious vision inspired them to oppose policies and powers they regarded as evil, often risking their well-being and their lives, while praying for the reconciliation--not the damnation--of those who opposed them." "For the most part, however, Christians have taught--and acted upon--the belief that their enemies are evil and beyond redemption. Concluding this book, I hope that this research may illuminate for others, as it has for me, the struggle within Christian tradition between the profoundly human view that 'otherness' is evil and the words of Jesus that reconciliation is divine." Id. at 184.).
Elaine Pagels, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelations (New York: Viking, 2012) (See Dale B. Martin, "The Last Trumpet," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/8/2012; and G. W. Bowersock, "Apocalypse Then," New York Review of Books, April 4, 2912, at 56.).
Ram Dass, Be Here Now (Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press/Hanuman Foundation, 1971).
Frederick J.. Streng, Understanding Religious Life, 3rd ed. (The Religious Life of Man Series) (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1985) ("One of the major assumptions of this book is that religious life is a life in process." Id. at 23. "The most significant comparisons of religious life, then, are of the processes through which the advocates claim they are ultimately transformed." Id. at 22.).
Michael Walzer, In God's Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible (New Haven & London Yale U. Press, 2012) (From the bookjacket: "In this ... book, political theorist Michael Walzer reports his findings after decades of thinking about the politics of the Hebrew Bible. Attentive to nuance while engagingly straightforward, Walzer examines the laws, the histories, the prophecies, and the wisdom of the ancient biblical writers and discusses their views on such central political questions as justice, hierarchy, and war, the authority of kings and priests, and the experience of exile." "Because there are many biblical writers, with differing views, pluralism is a central feature of biblical politics. Yet pluralism, Walzer observes, is never explicitly defended in the Bible; indeed, it couldn't be defended since God's word had to be as singular as God himself. Yet different political regimes are described in the biblical texts, and there are conflicting political arguments--and also a recurrent antipoltical argument: if you have faith in God, you have no need for strong institutions, prudent leaders, or reformist policies. At the same time, however, in the books of law and prophecy, the people of Israel are called upon to overcome oppression and 'let justice well up like water, righteousness like an unfailing stream'." Another good read for those who still believe that idea, here, political ideas, matter.).
Garry Wills, Font of Life: Ambrose, Augustine, and the Mystery of Baptism (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2012).
