The Gnostic Gospels
by Elaine Pagels
Phoenix, $120
In December 1945 near Nag Hammadi, an Egyptian farmer unearthed an urn containing papyrus books later identified as the Gnostic Gospels. They included the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Truth. All copies of these writings were thought to have been destroyed on the orders of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in 367CE. Backed by Emperor Constantine, only 27 books later known as the New Testament, including the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were recognised by the early Catholic Church. All else was heresy - heresy that said Jesus was a mortal man who taught that God was within everyone to find and was crucified and died. No miracles. No virgin birth. No physical resurrection. Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton University, has spent much of her career studying the Nag Hammadi texts and The Gnostic Gospels, first published in 1979 to widespread praise for its 'clarity and unobtrusive scholarship', introduced the general public to an alternative early Christianity that took the resurrection as a symbolic act rather than a literal one, which was 'the faith of fools'.