Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas
Search in google:
Spurred by personal tragedy, Elaine Pagels turns to a consideration of the Gnostic Gospels - in particular, the Gospel of Thomas. As opposed to the Gospel of John, which asserted that Jesus was an eternally existing aspect of God who came to earth to save humankind, the secret Gospel of Thomas agrees that Jesus was in some sense divine, but says that a streak of divinity can be found in all of us. The Church Fathers did not like Thomas's ideas, and attempted to suppress his Gospel as heretical. Pagels believes that Thomas's words lead to a more open, welcoming, and equitable kind of Christianity. If Beyond Belief is at odds with conservative theological certainties, it nonetheless speaks to Jesus's humanity - and to our own. The New York Times This packed, lucid little book belongs to that admirable kind of scholarship in which the labor of acquiring Greek and Coptic, Hebrew and Aramaic, the exhausting study of ancient fragments of text against the background of an intimate knowledge of religious history, can be represented as a spiritual as well as an intellectual exercise. — Frank Kermode
Ch. 1From the Feast of Agape to the Nicene Creed3Ch. 2Gospels in Conflict: John and Thomas30Ch. 3God's Word or Human Words?74Ch. 4The Canon of Truth and the Triumph of John114Ch. 5Constantine and the Catholic Church143Acknowledgments187Notes191Index227
