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Loading... Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomasby Elaine Pagels
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. In Beyond Belief Pagels tells the story of the campaign Irenaeus, second century Bishop in Gaul, wages for a unifying set of beliefs to strengthen the Christian church. He argues for the primacy of the Gospel of John especially against the focus of the The Gospel of Thomas. This is well-written early church history with something of an agenda. As I was expecting a discussion or commentary of The Gospel of Thomas, I was disappointed - hence, the three stars. (I did appreciate the copy of *Thomas* included in my copy of the book.) (  ) LizzieD | Aug 21, 2009 |  The Gospel of Thomas is one of the most interesting and Elaine Pagels helps to understand it and its concepts against the canonical gospels. After reading The Gospel of Thomas I discovered that have things in common with Buddhism. (  ) MarioSantamaria | Apr 12, 2009 | This scholarly explanation of the creation of the Christian canon (which entailed omitting many first-hand accounts of Jesus's life, most notably that of Thomas), gives me greater appreciation of Buddhism. (  ) bordercollie | Mar 19, 2009 | Despite its subtitle, "The secret gospel of Thomas", the bulk of this book is about how the orthodoxy of Irenaeus gained control of the early church. There are some occasions where the author focuses on Thomas, and in particular the rivalry between the Gospels of John and of Thomas is well portrayed. But a reader who is expecting to find an exhaustive treatment of Thomas - despite the inclusion of the complete text of Thomas as an appendix - will be disappointed. That same reader will certainly enjoy a well-written encounter with Irenaeus, Valentinus and the many diverse arguments which followed the bursting forth of Christianity into the gentile world; and, in those terms it is a good piece of expository writing which unravels the various influences and movements with great clarity. I enjoyed reading it. I will probably return to it when I need to refresh my thoughts about the emergence of orthodoxy, the formation of the biblical canon, and the development of the creeds. But that's not what you think you're getting from the title in its present form. ( )1  pfjden | Apr 12, 2008 | The Gospel of Thomas was one of the "heretical" texts found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in the late 1940's. Of the many works found at that time, it has excited the most interest due to both its parallels and divergences from the four canonical Gospels. The synoptic Gospels tell a similar story, however, the Gospel of John is quite different in its style, themes, and interpretations of the meaning of Jesus. John is the only gospel to directly imply that Jesus was in fact God. Pagel's contention is that John may have been written to specifically "correct" the ideas about Jesus presented in the suppressed Gospel of Thomas. Thomas presents Jesus as divine, but encouraging others to look to the divine within themselves, to "drink from my mouth and become what I am." The Gospel of John was written to reinforce the idea, becoming orthodox in the first century, that one does not share in divinity, but comes to it through the sacrifice of Jesus, the one son of God. Pagels devotes much of Beyond Belief to describing how the church father Irenaeus sought to suppress all but the "authorized" Gospels as a means of fostering orthodoxy and eliminating innovation and error. Beyond Belief ends with the familiar story of Constantine and the Council of Nicea, which solidified the creed of the early church and established the authorized New Testament. 2 Makifat | Nov 15, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
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At the center of Beyond Belief is what Pagels identifies as a textual battle between The Gospel of Thomas (rediscovered in Egypt in 1945) and The Gospel of John. While these gospels have many superficial similarities, Pagels demonstrates that John, unlike Thomas, declares that Jesus is equivalent to "God the Father" as identified in the Old Testament. Thomas, in contrast, shares with other supposed secret teachings a belief that Jesus is not God but, rather, is a teacher who seeks to uncover the divine light in all human beings. Pagels then shows how the Gospel of John was used by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon and others to define orthodoxy during the second and third centuries. The secret teachings were literally driven underground, disappearing until the Twentieth Century. As Pagels argues this process "not only impoverished the churches that remained but also impoverished those [Irenaeus] expelled."
Beyond Belief offers a profound framework with which to examine Christian history and contemporary Christian faith, and Pagels renders her scholarship in a highly readable narrative. The one deficiency in Pagels’ examination of Thomas, if there is one, is that she never fully returns in the end to her own struggles with religion that so poignantly open the book. How has the mysticism of the Gnostic Gospels affected her? While she hints that she and others have found new pathways to faith through Thomas, the impact of Pagels’ work on contemporary Christianity may not be understood for years to come. --Patrick O’Kelley
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:25 -0400)
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