Beyond Belief Quotes

“Many of us, wishing to be spared hard work, gladly accept what tradition teaches. But the fact that we have no simple answer does not me that we can evade the question.”
― Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas

“The hardest and the most exciting thing about research into Christian beginnings has been to unlearn what I thought I knew, and to shed presuppositions I had taken for granted.”
― Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas

“The author of the Gospel of Matthew, for example, apparently reading Isaiah’s prophecy in Greek translation, took it to mean that “a virgin [parthenos in Greek] shall conceive.” Justin himself acknowledges that Jewish interpreters, arguing with Jesus’ followers, pointed out that what the prophet had actually written in the original Hebrew was simply that “a young woman [almah] shall conceive and bear a son”—apparently predicting immediate events expected in the royal succession.”
― Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas