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" Unlike many deities of the ancient Near East, the God of Israel shared his power with no female divinity, nor was he the divine husband or lover of any. "
Elaine Pagels
Divine
Israel
God
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" I had been taught that the separation between religion and politics happened in the Enlightenment. But there were people who tried to create a secular relationship to government 2,000 years ago, and those people were the Jews. "
Elaine Pagels
Relationship
Politics
People
" I study religion because I find it fascinating and problematic. But I struggle with the idea of what religion is, what being religious means. A lot of people assume that if you write about early Christianity, you must be some kind of Sunday-school teacher. "
Elaine Pagels
Struggle
You
Teacher
" At the end of the day I'll go to a yoga class. I used to say that my work was my yoga, because it stretches everything, expands and challenges everything you know and understand and are. "
Elaine Pagels
Day
You
Challenges
" What is clear is that the Gospel of Judas has joined the other spectacular discoveries that are exploding the myth of a monolithic Christianity and showing how diverse and fascinating the early Christian movement really was. "
Elaine Pagels
Movement
Gospel
Early
" The author of the Gospel of Judas wasn't against martyrdom, and he didn't ever insult the martyrs. He said it's one thing to die for God if you have to do that. But it's another thing to say that's what God wants, that this is a glorification of God. "
Elaine Pagels
You
Die
Insult
" The Romans weren't trying to kill all the Jews, but they did destroy Jewish resistance to Roman rule. Jerusalem was turned into a Roman army camp, and it was a total devastation. "
Elaine Pagels
Rule
Resistance
Destroy
" Orthodox theologians insisted that the rest of humankind were only transitory creatures, lost in sin - a view that would support what would become their dominant teaching about salvation, offered only through Christ, and, in particular, through the church they claimed to represent. "
Elaine Pagels
Rest
View
Lost
" Fundamentalism does mean reading quite conservatively and literally, saying 'the Bible is the word of God and we have to follow it. What it says is this.' "
Elaine Pagels
Reading
Saying
God
" The Gospel of Judas really has been a surprise in many ways. For one thing, there's no other text that suggests that Judas Iscariot was an intimate, trusted disciple, one to whom Jesus revealed the secrets of the kingdom, and that conversely, the other disciples were misunderstanding what he meant by the gospel. "
Elaine Pagels
Secrets
Surprise
Misunderstanding
" I realize that I cannot live without a spiritual dimension in my life. "
Elaine Pagels
Live
Life
My Life
" The Gospel of Thomas claims to be the secret sayings of Jesus. There are 114 of them, so it says many things, but the central message is that Jesus is the one who reveals the divine light that brought the universe into being, and that you and I also reveal that light. "
Elaine Pagels
Message
You
Gospel
" About the gnostic writers themselves and the setting in which they lived we know little, although gnostic Christians were influential enough to be denounced at length. "
Elaine Pagels
Enough
Know
Lived
" Startling as the Gospel of Judas sounds, it amplifies hints we have long read in the Gospels of Mark and John that Jesus knew and even instigated the events of his passion, seeing them as part of a divine plan. "
Elaine Pagels
Plan
Seeing
Events
" People who are comfortable with very clear boundaries and group definitions don't like the instability and ambiguity of people who say they are more advanced Christians, or they don't have to do what the bishop says. "
Elaine Pagels
People
More
Group
" For nearly 2,000 years, most people assumed that the only sources of tradition about Jesus and his disciples were the four gospels in the New Testament. "
Elaine Pagels
People
Years
Tradition
" What's different about the Gospel of Thomas is that, instead of focusing entirely on who Jesus is and the wonderful works of Jesus, it focuses on how you and I can find the kingdom of God, or life in the presence of God. "
Elaine Pagels
God
Find
You
" We don't actually know if the person who wrote the Gospel of John had a written copy of Thomas because we don't know exactly when it was written. "
Elaine Pagels
Who
Person
Because
" There is no evidence that the author of the Book of Revelation, John of Patmos, read anything that we think of as a New Testament book. I don't see any evidence that he knew what was in the Gospels, or the letters of Paul, which I don't think he would have liked at all. "
Elaine Pagels
New
Letters
Evidence
" The sense of a spiritual dimension in life is absolutely important, and the religious communities are also important. The question of believing in a set of creedal statements is a lot less important, because I realize the Christian movement thrived then and can now on other elements of the tradition. "
Elaine Pagels
Important
Life
Spiritual
" I realized that conventional views of Christian faith that I'd heard when I was growing up were simply made up - and I realized that many parts of the story of the early Christian movement had been left out. "
Elaine Pagels
Growing Up
Story
Faith
" So often, religion is identified in terms coined by Christianity as sets of belief. But I had the sense that it not only involves practice, but also emotion and levels of our experience that are almost precognitive. "
Elaine Pagels
Practice
Belief
Experience
" I have sympathy for anyone who finds consolation anywhere we can. And many people do find it in religious tradition as it has been. I mean, I love much of that tradition. But somehow, that just didn't speak to me in the way that it does to some. "
Elaine Pagels
People
Speak
Love
" What survived as orthodox Christianity did so by suppressing and forcibly eliminating a lot of other material. "
Elaine Pagels
Material
Other
Orthodox
" I just have a sense that, you know, I'm curious about what is religion about, you know? Why do some of us still engage it? It's not because it's a set of old beliefs or old ideas. Or even, particularly, the view that this is the only true religion. Many of us no longer accept those views. "
Elaine Pagels
You
Religion
Know
" People who study the way religions develop have shown that if you have a charismatic teacher, and you don't have an institution develop around that teacher within about a generation to transmit succession within the group, the movement just dies. "
Elaine Pagels
Teacher
You
People
" The Secret Revelation of John opens, again, in crisis. The disciple John, grieving Jesus' death, is walking toward the temple when he meets a Pharisee who mocks him for having been deceived by a false messiah. These taunts echoed John's own fear and doubt. "
Elaine Pagels
Crisis
Doubt
Walking
" The Book of Revelation is such a dream landscape that you can plug any major conflict in it. "
Elaine Pagels
You
Landscape
Book
" These ancient stories in religion speak to our desire. But they move us toward hope. "
Elaine Pagels
Religion
Desire
Move
" We use the word 'synoptic' to talk about Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and it really means 'seeing together,' because they all have a similar perspective. Matthew and Luke - whoever wrote those Gospels - used Mark as a focus and as a basic story. So all of them have a lot in common. "
Elaine Pagels
Together
Perspective
Story
" The Antichrist is often identified with the second beast in the Book of Revelation that arises from the land, the beast that tries to make everyone worship the power of evil. "
Elaine Pagels
Power
Beast
Book