On today's show, we welcome Elaine Pagels, author of the new book Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus from Doubleday. Elaine is the Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Her previous books include Why Religion? A Personal Story; Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation; Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas; Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity; and, The Gnostic Gospels, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, and one of Modern Library’s 100 best books of the twentieth century.
Elaine was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979, a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981, and the National Humanities Medal, which honors those who have deepened the nation's understanding of the human experience, in 2015.
The New York Times Book Review writes of Miracles and Wonder: “The ‘quest’ for Jesus . . . has taken on many forms. Pagels takes the historical approach. . . . The depth of spirituality she uncovers is profound.”
Author photo courtesy of Barbara Conviser