Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #426699 in Books
• Published on: 1989-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 189 pages

Customer Reviews

All things old are new again...
Elaine Pagels is perhaps best known as the author of the popular text, `The Gnostic Gospels', highlighting a lesser known arena in early Christian history. Her reputation is somewhat controversial, as is her writing, but one thing is certain - she is a good writer, interesting to read, and she will make her readers think. This particular book, `Adam, Eve and the Serpent' deals with issues surrounding sexuality and gender, a hot topic in the social and cultural situations of today, but similarly of concern throughout much of Christian history. There is a tug-of-war between `traditional values' (leaving aside that there are various traditions) and `revisionist' or `modern' ideas, and few are in agreement over where the boundaries should be drawn.

Pagels explores some of the ways in which these traditional roles of gender and patterns of sexual expression arose to become so powerfully ingrained in western Christian society. To this day, most people make the appeal to the early chapters of Genesis both as the paradigm for what God intended for the world as well as the explanation, if not the actual instance, of sin and evil encroaching upon the world. Pagels begins with a copy of the first few chapters of Genesis, and traces ways in which ancient Jewish and early Christian communities interpreted these chapters.

Each chapter in Pagel's book highlights a particular theme. The first chapter looks at the understanding of Jewish culture of the early Genesis stories that would have formed the world view of Jesus, Paul, and the other apostles and church leaders, all of whom were born and raised into this Jewish culture. Jesus and Paul do not seem to see original sin as being a sexual sin or act, according to Pagels, and humanity after Adam and Eve are still called to make a moral choice out of freedom that goes beyond sexuality.

Later chapters deal with the development of interpretation in light of the political and social situation, first as an oppressed minority, then later as a significant political presence in the empire. Pagels also devotes a chapter to looking at the Gnostics and their views toward gender and sexuality, the radicality of which sowed some of the discord between their community and the greater orthodox church. Pagels then devotes considerable space to the Augustinian development of ideas of sexuality, gender and human nature in relation to Genesis, as all subsequent Christian viewpoints in the West have some relationship, pro or con, to the Augustinian foundations. The prevailing idea of original sin as being sexual derives largely from Augustine (although some of it is based upon misinterpretation).

Pagels discusses briefly the issues of exegesis (interpretation) versus eisegesis (reading into the text, or projection) - it is often said that one can find most anything one wants in the bible by interpretation; Pagels has been charged with this as well. However, as an explanation of the ways in which certain texts were understood and passed on, Pagels is a good voice to include - her scholarship and research support is sound, and her interpretations fit within reasonable limits. This is a book that introduces the reader to ideas perhaps unknown, intriguing, and certainly worthy of conversation.

So Much For That Simple and Unified Body of Early Christians
Elaine Pagels' knowledge of the development of Christianity during its first four centuries is very much in evidence in ADAM, EVE AND THE SERPENT as she describes the evolution of diverse interpretations of the Genesis creation stories held be succeeding generations of the new sect. The author writes with clarity and she has the ability to make difficult material seem understandable to those of us who are not academics.

In this book I learned more about the incredible assortment of beliefs prevalent within the early church. The vision of a simple and unified body of beginning Christians has apparently always been just a myth.

Pagels at her lucid and stimulating best
Over the last twenty years, Elaine Pagels has consistently been one of the most interesting and thought-provoking writers on the diversity within early Christianity. She's at her stimulating best with this work, which is basically a history of how Genesis 1 - 3 was interpreted in the changing cultural and political circumstances of the first four centuries or so of the church. What emerges, perhaps most strongly in the last two chapters, is a fascinating picture of diverse, even competing, interpretations. Out of this ferment, one particular viewpoint - that of Augustine - comes to predominate, infused with pessimism about human nature and society, and gloomy as to the prospects for human willpower overcoming 'sin'. Against this view, Pagels sets more optimistic voices. While clearly not unsympathetic to the explanatory and psychological power of Augustine's ideas, the author makes a very clear and compelling case for recovering important insights from the thinking of maligned or forgotten figures such as Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum - the latter worthy of attention not least for his views on the positive value of the natural world. A really clear and engaging read, and a fascinating study in the politics of biblical interpretation.