Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus

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From a renowned National Book Award-winning scholar, an extraordinary new account of the life of Jesus that explores the mystery of how a poor young man inspired a religion that reshaped the world. From a renowned National Book Award-winning scholar, an extraordinary new account of the life of Jesus that explores the mystery of how a poor young man inspired a religion that reshaped the world. Early in her career, Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work in The Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culmination of a decades-long career, she explores the biggest subject of all, Jesus. In Miracles and Wonder she sets out to discover how a poor young Jewish man inspired a religion that shaped the world. The book reads like a historical mystery, with each chapter addressing a fascinating question and answering it based on the gospels Jesus's followers left behind. Why is Jesus said to have had a virgin birth Why do we say he rose from the dead Did his miracles really happen and what did they mean The story Pagels tells is thrilling and tense. Not just does Jesus comes to life but his desperate, hunted followers do as well. We realize that some of the most compelling details of Jesus's life are the explanations his disciples created to paper over inconvenient facts. So Jesus wasn't illegitimate, his mother conceived by God; Jesus's body wasn't humiliatingly left to rot and tossed into a common grave-no, he rose from the dead and was seen whole by his followers; Jesus isn't a failed messiah, his kingdom is a metaphor- he lives in us. These necessary fabrications were the very details and promises that electrified their listeners and helped his followers' numbers grow. In Miracles and Wonder, Pagels does more than solve a historical mystery. She sheds light on Jesus's enduring power to inspire and attract.

Reviews

Few scholars on the planet have entranced, enthralled, and educated readers about early Christianity as much as Elaine Pagels. Now she turns her gaze to the very core of the Christian faith, the mysterious life of Jesus himself. Miracles and Wonders will delight readers with Pagels endless curiosity, keen insights, and poignant reflections.
Bart D. Ehrman, author of Misquoting Jesus and host of the Misquoting Jesus podcast

This a brilliant and necessary book. Sober, wise, respectful, and fearless, Elaine Pagels account of her exploration into the history and meaning of Jesus is akin to having a long, rich, and illuminating conversation with a friend who has read everything and is eager to share what shes learned.
Jon Meacham, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Soul of America

Provocative, gracious, reverent: a great historian of religion gives us an account of the life of Jesus, one of history's most towering figures. Scholarly and inquisitive, but also contemplative and respectful, Pagels story is for believers and non-believers alike.
Tara Westover, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Educated

With her vast learning worn lightly, easily, Elaine Pagels offers a luminous and profound historical meditation on Jesus and the gospels. Interpreting a jumble of ancient sacred stories with utmost care and respect, she discerns the patterns that finally bring hope and even redemption to an afflicted world -- a major reason these stories live and inspire faith.
Sean Wilentz, George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University

With Miracles and Wonder, Elaine Pagels, one of our nations greatest historians of religion, has penned an intimate and deeply researched history of the life and significance of Jesus. With clarity and care, she unsettles and reorients the reader. She shows us that the enduring power of Jesus rests in the outburst of hope that emanates from the stories about him. Hope we so desperately need in our own dark and trying times.
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again: James Baldwins America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

Author Bio

ELAINE PAGELS is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. In 2015 she received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama, and earlier in her career was awarded a Rockefeller, Guggenheim, and MacArthur fellowship in consecutive years. As a young researcher at Barnard College, she changed the historical landscape of the Christian religion by exploding the myth of the early Church as a unified movement. Her findings were published in the bestselling book The Gnostic Gospels (1979), which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award. Her subsequent books include Why Religion Revelations, Reading Judas, Beyond Belief, The Origin of Satan, and Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. She has been profiled in Time, The Atlantic, Vogue, The New Yorker, and Newsweek's issue "Women and Power."