Synopses & Reviews
Special edition including the complete text of the Gospel of ThomasElaine Pagels, one of the worlds most important writers and thinkers on religion and history, and winner of the National Book Award for her groundbreaking work The Gnostic Gospels, now reflects on what matters most about spiritual and religious exploration in the twenty-first century. This bold new book explores how Christianity began by tracing its earliest texts, including the secret Gospel of Thomas, rediscovered in Egypt in 1945.
When her infant son was diagnosed with fatal pulmonary hypertension, Elaine Pagelss spiritual and intellectual quest took on a new urgency, leading her to explore historical and archeological sources and to investigate what Jesus and his teachings meant to his followers before the invention of doctrine–and before the invention of Christianity as we know it.
The astonishing discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, along with more than fifty other early Christian texts unknown since antiquity, offers startling clues. Pagels compares such sources as Thomass gospel (which claims to give Jesus secret teaching, and finds its closest affinities with kabbalah) with the canonic texts to show how Christian leaders chose to include some gospels and exclude others from the collection we have come to know as the New Testament. To stabilize the emerging Christian church in times of devastating persecution, the church fathers constructed the canon, creed, and hierarchy–and, in the process, suppressed many of its spiritual resources.
Drawing on new scholarship–her own, and that of an international group of scholars–that has come to light since the publication in 1979 of The Gnostic Gospels, Pagels shows that what matters about Christianity involves much more than any one set of beliefs. Traditions embodied in Judaism and Christianity can powerfully affect us in heart, mind, and spirit, inspire visions of a new society based on practicing justice and love, even heal and transform us.
Provocative, beautifully written, and moving, Beyond Belief, the most personal of Pagelss books to date, shows how “the impulse to seek God overflows the narrow banks of a single tradition.” Pagels writes, “What I have come to love in the wealth and diversity of our religious traditions–and the communities that sustain them–is that they offer the testimony of innumerable people to spiritual discovery, encouraging us, in Jesus words, to ‘seek, and you shall find.”
Review
"In this majestic new book, Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels) ranges panoramically over the history of early Christianity, demonstrating the religion's initial tremendous diversity and its narrowing to include only certain texts supporting certain beliefs....Exhilarating reading, Pagels's book offers a model of careful and thoughtful scholarship in the lively and exciting prose of a good mystery writer." Publishers Weekly
Review
"This packed, lucid little book belongs to that admirable kind of scholarship in which the labor of acquiring Greek and Coptic, Hebrew and Aramaic, the exhausting study of ancient fragments of text against the background of an intimate knowledge of religious history, can be represented as a spiritual as well as an intellectual exercise." Frank Kermode, The New York Times
Review
"Peeling away accreted layers of doctrine the triune God, the Athanasian canon Pagels ventures alternative and sometimes novel readings of biblical history, all with the cumulative effect of questioning the orthodoxy that 'tends to distrust our capacity to make...discriminations and insists on making them for us.' A thoughtful and rewarding essay, as we've come to expect from Pagels, and sure to arouse fundamentalist ire." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"This luminous and accessible history of early Christian thought offers profound and crucial insights on the nature of God, revelation, and what we mean by religious truth. Those who are moved by religion but who find that they can no longer accept the official doctrines of their church will find this marvelous book a source of inspiration and hope." Karen Armstrong
Review
"It is as generous as it is rare that a first-rate scholar invites the reader to see and sense how her scholarship and her religious quest became intertwined. Elaine Pagels calls for a generosity of mind as she takes us into the world of those early Christian texts that were left behind but now are with us. Her very tone breathes intellectual and spiritual generosity too rare in academe." Krister Stendahl
Review
"Beyond Belief is a marvelous bookhonest and engaging, discussing the core issues of contemporary spirituality with such simplicity and profundity. Elaine Pagels guides readers to enter afresh into the ancient debates over whether Christianity is better understood as a system of doctrines or a spiritual inquiry into the divine. It's a book many readers will treasure for its healing, its good sense, and its permission to think, imagine, and yet believe." Karen King
Synopsis
Over the last twenty-five years, award-winning author Elaine Pagels has been on a personal and intellectual quest to understand the origins of Christianity, and in this exciting new book, she traces the source to the Gospel of Thomas. When her infant son is diagnosed with fatal pulmonary hypertension, Elaine Pagels's spiritual quest takes on a new urgency. In Beyond Belief, her most personal book, she reexamines the faith of the early Christians, revealing a path toward transformation that was offered before Christianity became, for many simply a set of beliefs. Pagels shows that both the New Testament's Gospel of John and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas draw on the same sources of Jesus' teaching, but interpretthese in different ways. While both see Jesus as revealing the divine light of God, in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus urges each one of us to seek that divine light within, since all are created in the image of God. But the Gospel of John insists that Jesus alone reveals God, and that only those who believe in him are saved. The Church's decision to include John in the New Testament and reject Thomas as heresy has decisively shaped Christianity ever since. In Beyond Belief, Pagels lends stunning new interpretations to the virgin birth, the creation of Eve, and the nature of our relationship with God. Pagels's scholarship is accessible and alive, and, as with The Gnostic Gospels, it will challenge and transform what we know of Christianity.
Synopsis
A provocative new edition of the New Testament that includes ten more recently found texts, selected by a council of scholars and spiritual leaders, alongside the classic books, with introductions and contextual background from Hal Taussig.
Synopsis
It is time for a new New Testament.
Over the past century, numerous lost scriptures have been discovered, authenticated, translated, debated, celebrated. Many of these documents were as important to shaping early-Christian communities and beliefs as what we have come to call the New Testament; these were not the work of shunned sects or rebel apostles, not alternative histories or doctrines, but part of the vibrant conversations that sparked the rise of Christianity. Yet these scriptures are rarely read in contemporary churches; they are discussed nearly only by scholars or within a context only of gnostic gospels. Why should these books be set aside? Why should they continue to be lost to most of us? And don’t we have a great deal to gain by placing them back into contact with the twenty-seven books of the traditional New Testament—by hearing, finally, the full range of voices that formed the early chorus of Christians?
To create this New New Testament, Hal Taussig called together a council of scholars and spiritual leaders to discuss and reconsider which books belong in the New Testament. They talked about these recently found documents, the lessons therein, and how they inform the previously bound books. They voted on which should be added, choosing ten new books to include in A New New Testament. Reading the traditional scriptures alongside these new texts—the Gospel of Luke with the Gospel of Mary, Paul’s letters with The Letter of Peter to Philip, The Revelation to John with The Secret Revelation to John—offers the exciting possibility of understanding both the new and the old better. This new reading, and the accompanying commentary in this volume, promises to reinvigorate a centuries-old conversation and to bring new relevance to a dynamic tradition.
About the Author
A founding member of the Jesus Seminar, HAL TAUSSIG is a pastor, professor of Biblical literature at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and professor of early Christianity at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He is the author of In the Beginning Was the Meal; The Thunder: Perfect Mind; A New Spiritual Home; Reimagining Life Together in America (with Catherine Nerney); Jesus Before God; Reimagining Christian Origins (with Elizabeth Castelli), and others.
Table of Contents
Foreword xi
Preface xvi
Preface to the Translations xx
Introducing A New New Testament xxiii
How to Read A New New Testament xxviii
The Books of
A New New Testament
An Ancient Prayer from the Early
Christ Movements
The Prayer of Thanksgiving 5
Gospels Featuring Jesuss Teachings
The Gospel of Thomas 15
The Gospel of Matthew 27
The Gospel of Mark 64
The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles 89
The Acts of the Apostles 127
Gospels, Poems, and Songs Between
Heaven and Earth
The First Book of the Odes of Solomon 172
The Thunder: Perfect Mind 183
The Gospel of John 189
The Gospel of Mary 224
The Gospel of Truth 231
The Writings of Paul and an
Introductory Prayer
The Prayer of the Apostle Paul 243
The Letter to the Romans 246
The First Letter to the Corinthians 265
The Second Letter to the Corinthians 283
The Letter to the Galatians 296
The Letter to the Philippians 304
The First Letter to the Thessalonians 369
The Letter to Philemon 314
Literature in the Tradition of Paul
with a Set of Introductory Prayers
The Second Book of the Odes of Solomon 320
The Letter to the Ephesians 328
The Acts of Paul and Thecla 337
The Letter to the Colossians 347
he Second Letter to the Thessalonians 351
The First Letter to Timothy 355
The Second Letter to Timothy 361
The Letter to Titus 365
Diverse Letters with a Set
of Introductory Prayers
The Third Book of the Odes of Solomon 372
The Letter of James 379
The Letter to the Hebrews 386
The First Letter of Peter 401
The Letter of Peter to Philip 409
The Second Letter of Peter 414
The Letter of Jude 418
Literature in the Tradition of John
with an Introductory Set of Prayers
The Fourth Book of the Odes of Solomon 427
The First Letter of John 434
The Second Letter of John 439
The Third Letter of John 441
The Revelation to John 445
The Secret Revelation of John 467
A Companion to
A New New Testament
BASIC HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
FOR THIS NEW BOOK OF BOOKS
A Preamble 483
1 The Discoveries of New Documents from Old Worlds 485
2 The Books of A New New Testament: An Overview 491
3 Two Surprising Stories: How the Traditional New Testament Came to Be; How A New New Testament Came to Be 500
4 Whats New in A New New Testament? 519
5 Giving Birth to A New New Testament
and Retiring the Idea of Gnosticism 529
6 A Rich Explosion of Meaning 537
Epilogue: Whats Next for A New New Testament? 544
The Council for A New New Testament 555
Acknowledgments 559
Appendix I: Sixty-seven Major Writings of the Early Christ Movements 560
Appendix II: The Books of the Nag Hammadi Library 567
Appendix III: Study Guide 569
Appendix IV: Recommended Reading 582
Subject and Author Index 584
Scriptural Index 000
Reading Group Guide
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“[A] winning combination of sound scholarship, deep insight and a crystal clear prose style.” Los Angeles Times
The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your groups discussion of Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Elaine Pagelss fascinating exploration of how and why the New Testament acquired its present form.