Author of The Gnostic Gospels, professor and scholar ELAINE PAGELS is a preeminent figure in the theological community whose impressive scholarship has earned her international respect. The Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University, Pagels was awarded the Rockefeller, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships in three consecutive years.
As a young researcher at Barnard College, she changed the historical landscape of the Christian religion by exploding the myth of the early Church as a unified movement. Her findings were published in the bestselling book, The Gnostic Gospels, an analysis of 52 early Christian manuscripts that were unearthed in Egypt. The Gnostic Gospels won both the National Book Critic’s Circle Award and the National Book Award and was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best books of the 20th century.
Her subsequent bestselling books include Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, The Origin of Satan, Adam, Eve and the Serpent, and Reading Judas. Her most recent book is Why Religion?: A Personal Story.
Pagels earned an M.A. from Stanford and a Ph.D. from Harvard. She has a working command of Greek, Latin, German, Hebrew, French, Italian and Coptic. She has been profiled in TIME, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The New Yorker and Newsweek’s issue on “Women and Power.”
