The war, persecution and hubris that Nero brought to the ancient world also play into the book of Revelation. The four horsemen of John’s apocalypse represent scourges inflicted by empire, and John, a devout messianic Jew, considered the Roman emperor cult to be blasphemous. She explains that John of Patmos, working within an established literary tradition of apocalyptic symbolism, wrote a scathing anti-imperial tract that accuses the Roman government of colluding with Satan. Pagels begins her treatment of these questions with a summary of scholarly consensus about the last book of the canonical New Testament.
Who or what would serve as theological authority for doctrinal discernment? Only apostolic eyewitnesses to the Christ event? Could there be later revelations? Churches scattered across and beyond the Roman Empire had not yet formed consensus on how to express central doctrines such as the Trinity. Loose-leaf binders had not yet been invented, but they are in effect what the church had the canon of authoritative Christian documents had not yet stabilized. These spiritual books display the diversity of theologies and spiritual writings that swirled around the Mediterranean world in the early centuries of the Common Era. The astonishing cache of ancient writings discovered at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945 provides most of the Gnostic texts Pagels cites.
In this contest early church leaders and canonical scriptures come across as patriarchal, authoritarian and vindictive in contrast to the alleged inclusivity, generosity and feminism of Gnosticism. This readable and tendentious book repeats a formula that has become a winner in an era of spiritual self-empowerment: highlight parts of the canonical New Testament or early church orthodoxy that are most likely to ruffle modern progressive feathers and contrast those with selections of Gnostic writings that are most likely to resonate with contemporary preferences. Truth should not be so defined and confined!Įlaine Pagels’s Revelations could be a resource for a project to remove canonical boundaries. How unfortunate that our Bibles come on gilt-edged paper securely bound between leather covers. Penguin Buy from Buy from Amazonĭiscussion of Gnosticism at a recent gathering of local clergy generated a comment from one pastor that perhaps Christian scriptures should be kept in a loose-leaf binder so we can add and remove documents at will.
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