Miracles and Wonder

From the award-winning author of Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work on the Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culmination of a decades-long career, she explores her most ambitious subject, the life of Jesus himself. The story Pagels tells is thrilling and tense. Not just Jesus comes to life, but his desperate, hunted followers as well. They were writing in wartime and under occupation, she reminds us, endangered for spreading the gospel of a man who was executed as an insurrectionist.; Some of the most electrifying details in the Gospels, Pagels writes, may have been crafted by his disciples to avoid persecution and explain inconvenient facts. So Jesus wasn’t illegitimate; instead, his mother conceived by God.; Jesus’ body wasn’t humiliatingly tossed into a common grave; he was seen alive and whole by his followers. He wasn’t a failed messiah; his kingdom lives in us. Drawing on a lifetime of study and Pagels’ own personal journey, <Miracles and Wonders< ;beautifully depicts this lost world and captures Jesus’s enduring power to inspire and attract.

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Elaine Pagels

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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.

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.