Elaine Pagels
| Elaine Pagels | |
|---|---|
| Born | Elaine Hiesey February 13, 1943 Palo Alto, California, USA |
| Residence | United States |
| Fields | History of religion |
| Institutions | Barnard College |
| Alma mater |
Stanford University (B.A., 1964; M.A., 1965) Harvard University (Ph.D., 1970) |
| Known for |
Nag Hammadi manuscripts |
| Notable awards |
MacArthur Fellowship (1981) National Book Award (1980) National Book Critics Circle Award (1979) Guggenheim Fellowship (1979) Rockefeller Fellowship (1978) Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities (2012) |
| Spouse | Heinz Pagels (m. 1969; d. 1988) |
Nag Hammadi manuscripts
Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey (born February 13, 1943), is an American religious historian, best known for her writing on the Gnostic Gospels. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University.
Pagel has conducted extensive research into Early Christianity and Gnosticism. Her best-selling book The Gnostic Gospels (1979) examines the divisions in the early Christian church, and the way that women have been viewed throughout Jewish and Christian history. Modern Library named it as one of the 100 best books of the twentieth century.
Pagels was born 13 february 1943 in California. According to Pagels, she's been fascinated with the gospel of John since her youth, which she found to be "the most spiritual of the four gospels." Abandoning membership of an evangelical church after the death of a Jewish friend, Pagels remained fascinated by the power of the New Testament. She started to learn Greek when she entered college, and read the Gospels in their original language, which proved to be a new experience. She graduated from Stanford University, earning a B.A. in 1964 and M.A. in 1965. After briefly studying dance at Martha Graham's studio, she began studying for a Ph.D. in religion at Harvard University as a student of Helmut Koester and part of a team studying the Nag Hammadi library manuscripts.
She married theoretical physicist Heinz Pagels in 1969. They have two surviving children. Upon completing her Ph.D. in 1970, she joined the faculty at Barnard College. She headed its Department of Religion from 1974 until she moved to Princeton in 1982.
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