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From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
At the root of our fears concerning freedom,
By
This review is from: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity (Paperback)
Pagels unravels a tangle of collective feelings about good and evil, like an archaeologist of the Western mind. She explores the history of ancient concerns - What dangers must we fear? What limits on ourselves must we observe, or lose our souls? To these fearful questions, answers have accumulated in our minds for at least 4,000 years. Pagels sifts the residue of ancient texts, exposing the choices we have made. In the growing legend of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, she finds a powerful cautionary tale. If the original sin was seeking knowledge of good and evil, what does that say about sanity? There are many ways to interpret this tale, but how was it actually interpreted by religious and political leaders over the course of history? Pagels documents the rise of a religious doctrine against the perils of freedom.For peace and unity to prevail, most leaders of Jewish, Christian, or Muslim communities have felt it essential that ordinary people must doubt their own ability to know right from wrong. They needed to see that free will was the root of evil, and obedience the cardinal virtue of religion. As Augustine put it, "... obedience ... is, so to speak, the mother and guardian of all the virtues of a rational creature. The fact is that a rational creature is so constituted that submission is good for it, while yielding to its own rather than its Creator's will is, on the contrary, disastrous." (The City of God, 14:12) So the people must cease trusting their own minds, and turn for guidance to a higher authority. But which external authority should they follow? In this great inquiry, as usual, Pagels combines the roles of textual analyst, literature critic, anthropologist, and even social therapist. Her work remains important and relevant decade after decade. --author of Correcting Jesus
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Village Reader Review,
By A Customer
This review is from: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity (Paperback)
Jesus interprets Genesis 1 to 3 in a radical new way, and the subsequent four centuries of orthodox and Gnostic Christians resulting thought process leads to modern ideas on relationships. In first century Jerusalem there was conflict between the pagan Rome and Jewish culture and religion. There were also a struggles between Jews that had an accommodative posture toward Rome (led mostly by the upper classes and Priests that had the most to lose) and those, mostly more conservative and rural, that resisted Roman influence. In modern terms, Jesus was a resistance leader. Pagels argues the conflict was partly due to Jesus' interpretation of Genesis. In Genesis 1:28, the basis for marriage was procreation - and by Jewish law, marriage without children was grounds for divorce. Christ turned the law upside down. When asked what the grounds for divorce were, his answer, in Matthew 19:4-6, is that there are none. "This answer shocked his Jewish listeners and, as Matthew tells it, pleased no one". After the crucifixion, but long before the Reformation, two groups competed for the heart and soul of Christianity - the orthodox and Gnostics. The same Scriptural texts supported radically different viewpoints. Orthodox Christians read Genesis as "history with a moral" - and their viewpoint was "a proclamation of moral freedom". Pagels implies this led to the development of the rights of man, democracy and equality under the law. Gnostics believed that Genesis was a "myth with a meaning". They argued that Genesis could not be read literally because it didn't make sense. There were two different creation texts which didn't agree (Genesis 1:26, 27 and 2:7); they questioned if Adam and Eve could hear God's footsteps (Genesis 3:8) and wonder why God an omniscient God would ask "where are you?" (Genesis 3:9). They looked for a deeper meaning to scripture. For four centuries orthodox and Gnostic waged a philosophical battle for the heart of Christianity. Orthodoxy won, and only now, nearly sixteen hundred years later, are some of the early arguments and texts being reexamined, after the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1945 and the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. This well written, probing, thought provoking book is a part of a reexamination of the development of religious thought.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Work About an Often Overlooked Subject,
This review is from: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity (Paperback)
I have been doing alot of thinking about the (supposedly!) inherent sinful nature of sex. This book, as no other I have found, deals with this subject.Does humankind live in a world that has fallen due to one man's (Adam's) sin? Or is the world good (sex included) as God designed it to be from the beginning? How did people come to believe that celibacy was superior to sex (i.e., the in-built natural sex drive)? Pagels answers these and other questions in this remarkable book. A must read for anyone concerned about the origins of the various positions of historic Christianity regarding human sexuality.
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