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Deepens and refreshes our view of early Christianity while casting a disturbing light on the evolution of the attitudes passed down to us. How did the early Christians come to believe that sex was inherently sinful? When did the Fall of Adam become synonymous with the fall of humanity? What turned Christianity from a dissident sect that championed the integrity of the individual and the idea of free will into the bulwark of a new imperial order--with the central belief that human beings cannot not choose to sin? In this provocative masterpiece of historical scholarship Elaine Pagels re-creates the controversies that racked the early church as it confronted the riddles of sexuality, freedom, and sin as embodied in the story of Genesis. And she shows how what was once heresy came to shape our own attitudes toward the body and the soul.… (more)
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The discussion of the disagreements between Augustine and Pelagius (and the Pelagians) is fascinating and informative. Pagels is engaging when she is asking questions and analyzing. Her tendency to want to tie up all loose ends without offending anyone is annoying. Thus, her concluding sentence, where she attempts to say that all people, whatever their religious beliefs, are equal in the recognition of a "spiritual dimension in human experience." It sounds a bit like a Miss America contestant saying she wants world peace. I would add the criticism that her observation, however banal, may not be true.
Still, for a book that is designed to straddle the line between scholarship and popularization, Pagels does a good job. And her topic couldn't be more interesting. She traces the development of Christian interpretations of the Edenic myth of Genesis, and how they were used to formulate and express ideas about sexuality, politics, free will, and guilt. She accepts the Luke-Acts epic as though it were history, and even so, manages to demonstrate important facts about the history of early Christianity: its diversity (with a chapter on "Gnostic Improvisations") and its profound difference from the Augustinian orthodoxy that underlies nearly all modern Christianities.
Her treatment of Augustine is fascinating, and she claims to have been as surprised herself by the results of her research as most of her Christian readers will be. Although she was originally sympathetic to Augustine from her readings in his Confessions, On the Trinity and The City of God, her effort to reopen a conversation forcibly closed by papal authority in April 418 C.E. led her to the dialogue between Augustine and the Pelagian naturalist Julian of Eclanum. In contrast with the traditional secondary sources, Pagels finds Julian thoughtful and scripturally attentive. Augustine, whose Opus Imperfectum Contra Julianum has never been published in English translation, seems "idiosyncratic" and tendentious in his novel doctrine of congenital human depravity.
In Pagels' account, the combination of Augustine's theological innovations with the establishment of imperial Christianity resulted in the rejection of an earlier Christian ethos of freedom, and its replacement with one of guilt. This study deserves the careful consideration of everyone who thinks that they have read and understood Genesis 3:16-19, since hardly any readers, medieval or modern, have been able to approach the Edenic myth without the long Augustinian shadow of "original sin" cast upon it. Before Augustine, Justin Martyr could say to the prefect who condemned him to death: "Do what thou wilt: we are Christians." (49)
The first chapter looks at Jesus’ radical message and how later gospels and interpreters tried to soften it. Talk of marriage as indissoluble was contradictory to the customs of the Romans and the Jews, where promiscuity (for men), divorce and multiple wives were common. His message to his followers to leave their families was also an uncomfortable one. Paul’s sayings, which also were included in the New Testament, promoted an ascetic message of celibacy and renunciation. Pagels identifies books that today are no longer believed to have been written by Paul and finds a less harsh, pro-family message in them. The interpretations of early Christians pitted the message of asceticism against one of family, marriage and children, with both sides pointing to their analyses of Genesis. Pagels does a good job conveying how weird Jesus’ sayings would have been and describing the profusion of views and arguments. This section certainly was interesting and set up the rest of the book but mentions of Genesis were fleeting.
Next, she analyzes how Christians portrayed their religion when they were a persecuted minority – as a religion of freedom, equality and justice. Her choice of quotes is again enlightening but sometimes I wondered if the people that were described were real or apocryphal. In many cases, it was probably irrelevant – the message of brave Christian martyrs calmly sticking to their beliefs was the important one. Pagels clearly finds Marcus Aurelius a fascinating and admirable character; as in The Origin of Satan, she spends several paragraphs ruminating on his life. It’s not a tangent as his sense of duty is contrasted to the Christians’ but it does seem to be a running theme, as is the examination of the gnostic interpretations of the Genesis story. Some of them are out-and-out bizarre, many take an allegorical or psychological view of the story and some are almost close to Adam & Eve fanfiction. The split between the Gnostics and more orthodox Christians was another fight in the battle over who controlled the interpretation of Christianity.
A chapter on the emphasis on virginity and chastity also seems to be a bit off topic, but relates to how Christians differentiated themselves from the Romans and Jews and also used it as a measure of moral superiority.
The last two chapters examine how Augustine came to define the Genesis story for years to come. Earlier, Pagels emphasizes how Christians defined their religion of one of freedom and justice – citing the Adam story as one of the moral freedom that every person had. As Christianity became a widespread religion, infighting between Christians – rather than Christians defining themselves against other societies – became a source of conflict. John Chrysostom’s interpretations continue the idea of Christianity as a source of freedom and the Genesis story as one of a moral choice but that contrasted with the reality of the religion as the large, corrupt state religion. He believed the earlier Christian view of human nature as one that could choose good and that baptism washed away previous sins. Augustine’s interpretation is compared to that of Chrysostom and is largely negative about human nature in general. The Adam and Eve story to him was one of original sin that forever corrupted mankind. While earlier Christians had deplored the compulsion and violence used by the Romans, Augustine later came to approve of those methods. Pagels’ section on his conflict with Julian has quotes from both that rather make Augustine look bad. Pagels somehow makes theological debates very interesting but oddly the pages of straight history were dry and uninvolving. There were tangents but I didn’t mind them. Another good Pagels.
But still, his take on Original Sin doesn't strike me as the imposition on Judeo-Christian source material as it does to Ms. Pagels.
There's a lot of enormously interesting and entertaining material in this book, especially that Gnostic idea that the Serpent in the Garden of Eden was "obviously" the Good Guy, and Yahweh "obviously" the Bad Guy, a paranoid liar and jealous tyrant.
I've had occasion to reference this book quite a few times over the years. Read it, and you will too.
In Genesis 1, God gifted the power of earthly rule to Adam. Yet, in the late fourth and fifth centuries, this message began to change. Adam’s prideful desire for self-government led to the fall—I mean, the Fall—of mankind, and ever since, humanity has been sick, helpless, irreparably damaged. Human beings are incapable of self rule, not in any genuinely good way.
Says Augustine, “even the nature of the semen from which we were to be propagated” is “shackled by the bond of death.” Every being conceived through semen is born contaminated with sin. Christ alone is born without this sin, this libido. Because of Adam’s disobedience, “the sexual desire of our disobedient members arose in those first human beings.” These members are rightly called pudenda [parts of shame] because they “excite themselves just as they like, in opposition to the mind which is their master, as if they were their own masters.”
Okay, perhaps I have overemphasized Augustine and his hangup about sex. There’s more to the book, and Pagels is a good writer who manages to turn even this dubious topic into a fascinating read.
The most fascinating aspect of this book was the relationships she drew between three apparently distinct fields: sexual ethics, free will, and politics. Genesis 1-3 was used and abused by theologians and heretic-hunters in their attempt to explain the world. Pagels frees branded heretics like Valentinus and Julian to speak to these fields in their own voice, rather than in the caricatured lampooning of orthodoxy.
I do have problems with Pagels, specifically on her view of the Nag Hammadi documents. She seems to believe that they reflect a tradition as ancient as the canonical gospels. After reading documents like the Gospel of Thomas, I can’t help but understand them as secondary spiritualizations of a life and teaching that were far more concrete. Scholars like N. T. Wright have situated Jesus so firmly in first century Judaism, it seems impossible to believe he was a wandering mystic offering enlightenment.
That said, Pagels is a brilliant and honest historian who should be read by anyone with an interest in early Christianity.