Vincent Cunningham
speaker
266 appearances
43 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Vincent Cunningham’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
But it was brief.
You were out.
So how did you decide to make a life of scholarship in religion? You've now published... the latest book in what I consider a lifelong project. There's a real continuity to all these books. Why did you come to focus on Christianity and some of the lesser-known narratives of Christianity, books that aren't part of the official canon.
You've given your professional life to this, your intellectual life to this.
Describe that, because not everybody's had that. How did it change your life and your mind?
When you were a kid and had this kind of evangelical breakthrough, no matter how fleeting it was, did you think of Jesus as a real person existing in a real historical time or Among political currents, as well as think of him in terms of a kind of supernatural or religious presence.
It was a cinematic metaphor, but not real.
If you could, and I know it's an elementary question, but it's crucial to understand it if we're going to get at your work in a deeper way. But we know the New Testament, and we know that there are four Gospels. Right.
Before Gospels emerged and somehow became canonical in what we know as the New Testament, there was a discovery at a certain point of a gigantic jar by somebody who basically came across it. And broke it open, and inside were texts, some of which were used as, I hate to even think about it, half of them seem to have been burned up most likely, right? Used as kindling for the fire, yes.
But what survived are what's called the Gnostic Gospels. What are they, and how do they compare to the book of Mark and Matthew?
Why did they emerge and become the canon and the others fell away?
But why would they be considered heretical?
I'm talking with the religion scholar Elaine Pagels, and we'll continue in a moment.
One part of your new book that's already received some, let's just say, attention in the Catholic hierarchy long before publication is your investigation of the narratives of Immaculate Conception. Tell me... How this is still controversial and uncertain 2,000 years later.
Or any Joseph. Or any Joseph, yes.
How long has that been in the scholarly discussion, the possibility that Jesus might have been an illegitimate child, to use the old phrase?
In a direct way?
Is it an unspeakable thing among Catholic prelates and in Catholic academia to raise this question?
Who was that?
So it wasn't an entirely positive review.
Showing 61–80 of 266 · page 4 of 14
← Previous
Next →