Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation

by Elaine Pagels

Paperback

Published February 26, 2013

About the author

Elaine Pagels is a preeminent figure in the theological community whose scholarship has earned her international respect. The Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University, she was awarded the Rockefeller, Guggenheim & MacArthur Fellowships in three consecutive years.
As a young researcher at Barnard College, she changed forever the historical landscape of the Christian religion by exploding the myth of the early Christian Church as a unified movement. Her findings were published in the bestselling book, The Gnostic Gospels, an analysis of 52 early Christian manuscripts that were unearthed in Egypt. Known collectively as the Nag Hammadi Library, the manuscripts show the pluralistic nature of the early church & the role of women in the developing movement. As the early church moved toward becoming an orthodox body with a canon, rites & clergy, the Nag Hammadi manuscripts were suppressed & deemed heretical. The Gnostic Gospels won both the Nat'l Book Critic’s Circle Award & the Nat'l Book Award & was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best books of the 20th Century.

Reviews

[Nancy And · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who am I to rate a book written by a Prinston University professor of Religious Studies? I give it four stars based on my own reading experience, rather than judge the book based on its scholarship, research and professional writing. My own experience was that I had some difficulty digesting all the history with trying to keep in mind all the Christian history, rulers and religious leaders in the first three centuries. I did learn that there are different interpretations of the book of Revelations and how the book came to be written and why it was included the New Testament. So, reading Pagels's work was definitely worth my time.