Thirty years ago, David Remnick published “The Devil Problem,” a profile of the religion professor Elaine Pagels—a scholar of early Christianity who had also, improbably, become a best-selling author. Pagels’s 1979 book, “The Gnostic Gospels,” was scholarly and rigorous, but also accessible and widely read. She changed how a lot of people thought about the Bible. Pagels went on to write “The Origin of Satan,” as well as works on Adam and Eve and the Book of Revelation. Pagels's upcoming book, “Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus,” is a summation of her lifetime of study, as it takes on some of the central historical controversies of Christianity, including the stories of immaculate conception and the resurrection. The daughter of a scientist, Pagels “was living in a world in which science defines what you can see, and there’s nothing else.” Then, as a teen-ager, she was born again after seeing the evangelist Billy Graham preach. “This was about opening up the imagination,” she tells Remnick. “I did feel like the sky opened up.” Her time in the evangelical community was brief, but her fascination with belief never faded. “I have a sense that what we think of as the invisible world has deep realities to it that are quite unfathomable.”
Chapter 1: Who is Elaine Pagels and what is her significance?
Her new book out next week, a kind of culmination of her career, is called Miracles and Wonder. It takes on some of the central historical controversies of Christianity, including the stories of Immaculate Conception and the Resurrection.
Meeting Pagels again 30 years later, I was struck by just how focused she is on the topic of belief in Christian history and how the world of two millennia ago and the historical landscape, the world of the Jews and the Romans and Jesus, is to her so vividly alive. We first met, you're not going to believe this, 30 years ago.
And shortly thereafter, you published a book and I decided to write about you. You had suffered unimaginable loss. First, one of your children had died after a long illness. And then your husband, Heinz Pagels, had an accident and died while hiking. And you told me, and this is a quote from you at that time, I found that in times of grief, the church has little to say. It's just too remote.
How did those losses affect your relationship to faith at that time?
I didn't think of my work as a relationship with faith exactly. It was more a relationship with curiosity. I had given up on faith, you know, much earlier. My family wasn't religious. I mean, they would say the grandparents would call themselves Christians, but my father had given it up, you know, for science. He was a scientist. Yeah, he was a biologist. Darwin.
But you as a teenager.
Well, that was just an accident. I mean, religion was not on the spectrum for me. until somebody took me to San Francisco for something, and it turned out it was an evangelical crusade. I didn't know who this guy was, Billy Graham, but he was powerful, and the whole event was extraordinary.
You get invited to be born again and have a new family and start your life over, and I thought, that's great.
You describe this scene... It was, I think, at the old Cow Palace in San Francisco where basketball games were played. And you were so taken with Billy Graham, who was, I guess for younger people who are listening, don't know, but Billy Graham was the great evangelist of his day and filled Yankee Stadium and other such places. That's it.
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Chapter 2: What are the main themes of Pagels' new book?
It seemed like his voice. It seemed like my husband's voice. And I thought, how dare you ask? How dare you say it's fine with you? So you had a marital argument in his absence? Yes. At this late date, do you pray? Sometimes, yes. But not usually a lot of words. Meditate, maybe. So that wasn't the only experience with unexpected events like that.
Elaine Pagels, thank you so much.
Thank you very much, David.
Elaine Pagels is a professor of religion at Princeton University, and her new book is Miracles and Wonder, The Historical Mystery of Jesus. My colleague Adam Gopnik wrote a long, terrific, thoughtful piece about the book, which you can find at newyorker.com. And you can subscribe to the magazine at newyorker.com as well, newyorker.com. I'm David Remnick. Thanks so much for joining us this week.
See you next time.
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