Pagels Update
It was an interesting night. Pagels is a good public speaker and very passionate and excited about sharing her research and translating it into such a way that nonspecialists can find it accessible. The thing that she said that really stuck with me is that she is not lobbying to have the so-called Gnostic writings put into the canon, nor is she saying these should be read in the course of public worship. What she is saying is that historians of the early Christian movement need to take the writings seriously when constructing narratives of Christian origins.
Anyway, the lecture was a very surface look at the Gospel of Judas and touched on some other Gnostic themes. The discussion afterward in our bus was pretty good, but because of the size of the group it was hard to include everyone in one big conversation, so lots of little ones were going on. Some people took it as a chance to ask me how I felt about certain ideas like heaven, hell, the creeds, the canon, the Lutheran confessional documents, and other things they might not otherwise ask. So that part was fun for me…answering questions from folks and then asking questions in return.
I will say one more thing about the presentation by Pagels that I have noticed at many lectures where academics speak and then open the floor for questions. I think there is a cosmic law that those who least need to have a microphone given to them are the very ones who end up with it. Either the question was answered earlier or people take time to make their own observations that they mistakenly believe the rest of us (presenter included) give a damn about.
September 7, 2007 at 11:45 am
“What she is saying is that historians of the early Christian movement need to take the writings seriously when constructing narratives of Christian origins.”
but they do.
I suspect she’s against is a narrative of christian origins that presumes anything but that the earliest communities were completely discrete, perhaps even genetically distinc from one another. LTJ argues that the diversity of traditions existed but not out of contact with one another and emphatically not as descended from separated geneses. For someone like Pagels or Burton Mack, the claim that christianity had its genesis in the person of Jesus Christ (resurrected or not) is ultimately suspect. and any argument to the contrary, even if made from evidence, is labeled crypto-theology.
September 7, 2007 at 3:18 pm
those who least need to have a microphone given to them are the very ones who end up with it
Yup!
And if they’re Californian they decide it’s time for some group therapy…
September 7, 2007 at 8:10 pm
And if they are from Oregon they in fact are Gnostics and decide it is time to ritually purify the unwilling speaker.
Peace,
Chris
September 8, 2007 at 5:28 pm
My theory is that the folks who THINK they are the smartest ones in the room spend the last fifteen minutes of the presentation planning their questions so they can PROVE that they are erudite and provocative and splendid. Unfortunately, they don’t always meet their own expectations.
September 10, 2007 at 4:02 pm
My experience is that whenever I happen to be the one who gets the microphone I’ve gone through about four steps of reasoning to get to my question which I manage not to mention, so that even if my question happens to be insightful in any way I’ve managed to cover up any clues that would let anyone but me understand why it might have been and the speaker is left making some general comments to try to politely gloss over the fact that my question was completely unintelligible.
IOW, I’m probably one of those people who should least have the microphone.