Dr. Elaine Pagels | St. Luke's | Saturday, March 7, 2020, Part 2

so if you've been enjoying what we've been doing so far and you're ready for more Elaine Pagels just warmly welcomed her back up to Mike we need a Mike oh here it is oh well thank you so much I love sharing this work as you can tell and and I don't know this handout is is this the whole Gospel of Thomas I think so 114 sayings you know I thought about that question about about people without gender and I think the point of the text is to speak about our connection and understanding of other people is deeper than those issues that's what I understand this to be saying so are we going to talk about the book that's what I think we'd be interesting to talk about I just wrote a book I never thought I would write because it's very personal as scholars don't do that usually but I had to in a certain point and I wanted to also write about you know I I was a little uncomfortable with talking about a lot of tragedy last night I don't like tragedy and and we all have a lot of grief you don't need to know you know what I mean didn't want to write a grief memoir it's not that I wanted to write about why religion why I do this why I love this the study of the history of religion how it can open up things have spiritual things and also problems in our culture you know and so so that's what this book is about and shall we do that shall we sit is it okay to sit can you hear us well enough if so I'll do that good so tell us about the book how I mean how did it come to be why did you say okay despite the fact that I don't want to write a grief memoir I do need to put this down and I've got a million other questions so but start there the genesis of the book and what was the tipping point about your writing it well you know people have asked me and I put this at the very beginning of the book are you religious or is this just some kind of intellectual exercise and I thought I don't know what you think intellectual exercise is but like physical exercise if you do it it really matters and anything that's written with passion whether it's about Shakespeare or World War two or what's going on in this country today people are writing with passion if I mean if not just don't bother to see what to read their stuff so yes it's it mattered a lot to me and and they said well are you religious and I just sort of said incorrigibly that's why I had to figure this stuff out and think about it and and and also in regard to what we were talking about last night with science and religion when I met my late husband he he was a theoretical physicist he said why religion I mean why don't you do something that has to do with impact in the real world and I said why do you do elementary particles anyway we were both trying to understand something fundamental and and we sort of came to an understanding of that but also I you know having been brought up to think religion was on its way out I didn't know why I was so engaged with it so and I think it has a lot to do as I said last night with the emotional power of these traditions for better and for worse you know they've been used in many ways I mean they articulate values of the culture thousands of years ago and do we still have to live by them and why those and we're just talking to somebody about the secret Gospels and I want to say it's not that we that we now throw away the others this just opens up a much smaller I mean Christianity is wide you know goes from Pentecostal us Rush and Orthodox Christian Science Catholic you know you name it Orthodox churches throughout the world a huge huge variety but beyond Christianity there's there's a lot the Christianity as we've come to know it as it's been passed down in traditions that identify as Orthodox there's a lot more that we didn't know and that really helps me understand the shape that it took and has taken and also I think if it doesn't change in every generation this would have died I mean we don't worship Zeus anymore at least I don't know anything so you know if these traditions don't speak to us and and keep transforming they will become obsolete and so I'm I'm interested in how that's been happening here great so I'm gonna throw out a metaphor here to structure my questions let's think of your book as a tapestry with some mighty beautiful threads they go through it and let me ask just ask you about two or three threads okay well you know the hardest part ed was to was to take the voice in which I usually write as a historian you know and and weave it into a personal voice because I've always known that my work and my life are connected and the issues that I'm talking about here are issues that I had to deal with that came up as important issues so weaving those two together was hard but also that's that's the way these issues emerge and that's why I think they matter so I wanted to do that and I really had a hard time doing it also I'm not used to writing about my own life in a public way I mean why bother who wants to who cares about that but of course it's only as it connects with other people's experience that it would matter exactly so one thread I'd love for you to kind of trace is what happened to the young California teenager who was singing with great meaning and feeling just as I am at a Billy Graham concert crusade what happened to that person can you kind of take us from her and tell us about the integrity of her and how she wound up in the White House getting Barocco button receiving an award from Barack Obama can you trace that that's a big surprise I mean I don't know that wasn't part of the plan although I loved it but you know I said I went to that EV Angelica crusade my family as I said wasn't was kind of you know nominally Protestant okay and but but religion wasn't important and that experience of the Billy Graham crusade it was a powerful emotional transformation it opened up a sense of imagination of a world of cosmological energies Jesus and Satan his whole world that's explored in biblical sources and stories and and it and and those also become templates for the way we live I mean I actually thought later about reading The Wizard of Oz you know or seeing the movie of The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy goes out with her little dog and goes into suddenly leaves Kansas into a very strange and dangerous world with a Wicked Witch and The Wizard and Glinda the Good and the whole story and and I thought that was a very powerful book when I was 8 or 9 and 10 and you know out on an adventure and the Billy Graham because I don't I'm not comparing them exactly but talking about how we how the imagination opens up our horizons and so that what Billy Graham's invitation he said a couple things at that crusade that I didn't expect he said first he said this this is he said what I'm gonna say is not is gonna distress those intellectuals and academics and and and it did he talked about this country in a way nobody i heard had had done he talked about a sinful nation I wasn't expecting that I was brought up my grandparents were Dutch immigrants and this is the best country in the world I still think it's where I'll surely want to live and be an American but but not only that it was the moral standard of all goodness in the world right and he talked about nuclear weapons and how science was being worshipped and this country was trying to get bigger nuclear weapons after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killing hundred thousand people Japan and I thought whoa yeah I thought science was you know the apex of human wisdom that's what my father did that's what all the smartest people did right yeah and they created those weapons and they're building bigger ones and that doesn't mean they're all bad it just means wait a minute there's a qualification here and then he talked about the Bible being used in America to support slavery and segregation for 250 years and I thought oh yeah well this was California and I was not very aware of that at that time we were allowed to be ignorant in certain kinds of boring communities like Palo Alto but I just wasn't looking I wasn't looking hadn't been taught to look so I was really stunned by what he said about America and then he said and so I was really taken aback and unmoved and then he said but you know you can be born again you can start over you can have a totally new life now you're 14 that is perfect I just thought yes yes I want to have a new life and be a new person and be on a huge adventure out there in the universe so it was great it and and the bonded nough sand the connectedness of that church and the values they spoke about were very powerful for me for about a year until they weren't and they weren't at a point well and part of it I must say part of my problem I mean I've angelical Christianity is a lot of power I'm sure many people here know that and his preaching did but it's also based on fundamentalism which is quite American the idea that everything in the Bible has to be taken literally this is not what you find in the Fathers of the Church from the second century on they know these stories are what Mary Ann Moore said about poetry she said poetry is imaginary gardens with real toads in them so these are stories that are often imaginary but there are realities in them that with which we content so you know the the Bible has was not habitually taken literally for 2,000 years but it has been a great deal in this country and that's one of the difficulties with a lot of evangelical Christians not all but what happened was that one of my high school friends was in an automobile accident and was killed when he was 16 and shocked all of us who knew him and loved him and the other people in in that accident and I went back to my of angelical Church in shock and they said oh it's terrible was he born again and I said no he was Jewish and they said well then he's in hell and I thought wasn't Jesus Jewish I mean I was really shocked and so I walked out of there and I never went back I just thought whatever drew me there I didn't belong there now I just couldn't go couldn't be there so I had to leave it and that's when I tried everything else and went off to try to become a professional dancer and failed so but but that's but something had had ignited there and I thought there's something powerful about that stuff yes which I was told there was no spiritual dimension in the world in where I grew up it didn't exist it was all illusion and I was missing it I heard it in the music and the poetry and the dance but I didn't but I was living in it what seemed like a flat earth so I was looking for something that spoke about a spiritual dimension and that's what I went looking for and and that's I think a lot of people are like that and they don't find it in the churches that claim to represent exactly what Jesus taught and I don't mean just one kind I mean whether it's all of them to do that so just to stay with the spiritual dimension so I love your naming it that way so what did you do with your love and appreciation for and respect for the spiritual dimension when you walked out and went through all of those things went to New York study with Martha Graham what how did this spiritual dimension within you transform to be standing there in the White House well first of all whatever we're calling a spiritual dimension doesn't have to go through religion right right absolutely I have so many friends who find in music in dance in science in love of nature in helping other people there are many ways people explore a spiritual dimension besides in religious traditions so I went and found and there were other people looking for new kinds of communities like the musicians that I met so but later I just thought what was it about that so I went back to try to find out and that's when I thought oh it's a much bigger world than than I ever thought there was and the about Christianity and and that and this this text really spoke to me and many others and as I said I wouldn't throw away the Gospel of Mark it's one of my favorites is powerful but if you add this one to it you've got a lot more openness so a parenthetical question about that in your own personal life have you simply added the Gospel of Thomas the gospel of Mary thunder on and on to your Canon in your heart and in your mind how does that work I know you I know you you've told me so many times I prefer poetry to theology so I read no I'm asking you a theological question but everybody in this room I think every person is putting together their structure of meaning and you've done that yeah I think that's that's really crucial and and probably we need to you know and it may not even be something we can articulate it doesn't have to be articulated to be lived but yeah I mean I found this work a kind of yoga a kind of spiritual practice I was looking for something and you know and and that as I say I work on the text because they work on me mmm these texts and and others but it isn't just these it could also be certain kinds of music and poetry and and so much else I mean I don't think of religious traditions separated from the rest of the world I in fact I find it very much in literature and poetry and again and ritual yeah and yoga and yoga well sure and and friends yeah so I do love love to ask you about another thread that's in your yoke it has to do with being a woman and being in a woman in academia when you started can you tell a little bit about that journey well yeah sure I mean well you know I would I went as an undergraduate I was at Stanford which is co-educational and so when I wanted to go to graduate school and not be brainwashed by going to a religious school the the one that wasn't religious school then was the Harvard doctoral program not in the Divinity School because I don't do theology schools really that much not that will not that gracefully right but but there was this program and and that's when I discovered this so I applied to the graduate program and I got a letter from the Dean which I never forgot I it is something like well Jim is so-and-so you know ordinarily we would admit a student with your qualifications however we only can admit seven students to our doctoral program and we cannot give one of those places to a woman because they always quit in our experience they leave before they get the doctorate so so we can't do it I'm sorry but if you're still serious next year we will offer you admission I thought serious right this is just a whim of course it was crazy so it was frustrating and I spent another couple years reading Greek because I figured I'd need more Greek you never have enough Greek speaking native language like Greek so then I went there and and it was hard I mean that place was set up for men and by men and for men and women weren't supposed to talk and it's very competitive and cutthroat and least it was then in graduate school they're not everywhere not Princeton we have a different we have a different ethos but anyway that was that was Harvard and it was tough a lot of ways but but but but they're the people who were changing the field were there and they had access to these texts so I learned what I learned what I could do and I learned what I wanted to find out so that I loved and I went on to do it and there were so many other issues that came up about about you know issues of gender and sexuality issues about politics issues about the origin of evil and Satan which we talked a little about this morning I love this work because you also have I also want to say when I teach my students about the early history of Christianity I want to say you know I'm not selling this I'm not necessarily an advocate for Christianity I there are things about it that I do love or I wouldn't do it but it's not my job to say it's all wonderful because there are aspects of it that are corrosive and dangerous and and harmful to people and have been for centuries or millennia or are now and didn't used to be because they came out of a culture which was completely different so we have to and and it's liberating to think about how we we make those decisions you know I've been talking to my students someone who said I just didn't dare think about these questions last week we were talking about the story of Noah and and the story of ham and and one of my students who's biracial said well I've always been told the Bible endure slavery but I just didn't bother with it because I didn't want to know and I said well it's not that the Bible endorses slavery the Bible is a compilation of a lot of things and there are texts there that take it totally for granted yes and there are texts there that have been used for thousands of years to endorse certain kinds of harm terrible harm to people and so knowing that we have to pick and choose you know they say that's heresy picking and choosing cafeteria Christianity who do you think you are well I know who I am and I have to pick and choose the word for choice and Greek is high racists from which we get the word heresy so Bishop said picking and choosing is wrong it is high racist well it's choosing you have to choose you know if you're here today you're not somewhere else if you're in this kind of community you're you've chosen this one and not many others or this one with many others or whatever but we have to choose obviously all the time and and in these traditions we can't just swallow them whole because they're in digestibility that's what this work is about so the quote unquote Gnostic Gospels have is one way of describing your central academic life and yet I loved your saying that we've been through at least three or four different levels of understanding of what they are and what they what they do and when they were created etc and you've been central Elaine to saying no that was a misinterpretation I think it's better to see them this way that way that way um that is a that's been a help to all of us certainly has been a help to me and it also on the process level I'm very interested in emotional psychological and development and how that impacts our faith it also was that kind of to use a lack of a better term finding your voice and saying this is what I believe and that is one part of the gathering last night in today is for you to talk about how you got to the place of saying this I now know not to mean that you won't change your mind tomorrow but how did you get to that how what was the process that's an interesting question I've been thinking about how that happens with people and also what I I came to to feel as you know and said something about it last night that all this talk about belief is not necessarily the central question right right I think of these traditions not just Christianity but Buddhism Hinduism Judaism Islam having a great deal to do with practice with attitudes with ways of treating people with chant prayer worship celebration I got into it less interested in what I believe and I I can't help saying I think belief is overrated and I thought about that when I wrote the book beyond belief which is 25 years after the Gnostic Gospels I thought I think I know these texts a lot better now but it was after you know after my husband and I had lost our son had died at six and a half of a very rare disease which nobody knows why and I thought I didn't believe anything at that point because oh your faith must have been very young well no I've never felt further away from faith when in a situation of extreme warning and I don't know if other people have that some people find their faith strengthened I just didn't know what they meant by faith at that point I was struck by there's a story I read in a book about Orthodox Christianity by Saint Mary of Paris he was a saint in the Orthodox Church Mary of Paris was a very devout creative Russian woman who lived in Paris in World War two and she started collecting clothes for people who didn't have them she started finding ways of helping people who were desperate during the war she was writing poetry she was head of a group of Russian Orthodox people in Paris and at a certain point her six-year-old daughter died I don't know what happened she didn't say and she she said meaning has lost all meaning and I totally got it well yet after that the story went on to tell how when Jews were rounded up in the middle of Paris in a square to be to be deported with German soldiers all around them preventing them from escaping she went into the square and she persuaded some parents to let them - let her hide their children in the garbage bins and they did that and the children were not deported to Auschwitz and she found families for them she did that for other people's children she knew she couldn't do it for her own and later actually she and her son were both convicted of crimes against the Nazi regime and were taken to Auschwitz themselves and finally she actually volunteered to go into the the cremation whatever it was taking somebody else's place I don't know how she did that and and but I'm just saying that was a very powerful story and and and there was a sense of when you're dealing with the importance of a human life and when you're grieving the loss of someone you love as she was what people do as Viktor Frankl wrote in that brilliant book of his man's search for meaning he said you don't just find it it's not just lying there in the gutter he said sometimes you have to create meaning and she created meaning by saving other people's lives at the expense of her own I don't know if I could do it but I'm just saying the people like started Mothers Against Drunk Driving or parents whose children have died of gun violence in this country or those high school students who talked about it so incredibly after parkland you know saying all the adults get out of here we're gonna talk it's just an amazing thing they did I mean it was horrible what they lived through but they didn't want it to happen to other people and so people who stand up for each other and for all of us I mean that's finding meaning and and I think that's that's very important and and yeah I wanted to write about all of that and also about the fact the way that this work comes out of a of a life because they're very much connected yeah I'm gonna put the question again to you in a with a different metaphor one of the things that because the limitation of our time together you were not able to get into this morning you I'm sorry you did get into it and there's more to be said and that is the power of the inner light and how these hidden Gospels simply talk about how powerful that reality is in humanity can you speak about a moment or two where you had an epiphany that you really did have this inner radiance and you needed to bespeak it in your unique way during your academic life I'm not talking about your personal grief now I'm talking about in that that academic journey you've been on I mean your books have a unique voice I mean you are a partner with Karen King and so many other wonderful people and yet pardon the metaphor Elaine Pagels has a brand and it's because there was somewhere along the road I think I'm assuming I'm not your therapist but I would be you know because I I practice without the benefit of a license when did it happen when did you say I need to say this this has my name on it well I don't know the whole the whole work has been that yeah it's just it just keeps changing you know and what what said so I was never thinking I would write a book about about these stories but but they're just part of the story you know and I also realized that your privacy is totally protected in a way because even though something happens to one person it only connects with anybody else as it resonates in terms of their own experience so I don't know I just I love this work and I don't know how to answer that question okay as for as for that wonderful meeting with the real president that was very moving I had always wished I could meet him would never imagining it would happen and and was very moved when they said you know this this comes from your country not from your colleagues on it okay and so walking into that room with with this president who was so gracious witty generous totally in command of the situation I just had to say to him thank you for bringing on her back to this country because I was so disturbed about the war in Iraq which Bush allowed to happen which killed so many people and I'd been working in the Middle East and at the time thought how do you turn the entire Arab world against the United States how do you do that he was doing that and radicalizing I mean hatred for America I've been in Egypt a lot he chipped loved America but no more and so that was one thing and it was a glorious day because it's celebrated and the president had chosen people in the arts who looked like America it was a very wide spectrum of musicians and people who'd contributed under my name it said Elaine Pagels prison University and I thought I thought well that's a funny way to misspell Princeton and it really isn't that bad but then I discovered the person receiving the award after me had started a university in San Quentin prison California and so it was being given to that project and and it was wonderful and there were many others who were making a significant difference in the world and and it's wonderful to see that happen and I hope we see it again so we do I think need I need to ask you a question about the loss of your child on the loss of your husband I'm gonna frame it this way so when you and I were speaking of the phone about constructing this weekend I said I'm really Elaine interested in inviting you to say this I now know and in this I now hope and your response was hope has been very important to my life and without revealing who it was you said that someone who was very close to you in response to these tragedies gave in to despair and you made a commitment at that point to be a person of hope not despair do you mind unpacking that yeah I mean this is just after our son died and and this was a very rare disease he had wonderful trial my husband I decided that I did go to a psychiatrist then and he said well why don't you think of your students as your children and I thought I'm not that sick No I said that's not gonna work not good for them not good for me so we had we we didn't have more children and so we adopted two children because I thought that's about creating meaning I thought we couldn't give our passionate love to that child that we adored so we would just scrounge around to get any child we possibly could and try to give it what we wanted to give to him to to these other children so we adopted two and babies and a year after that as you know my husband was killed in an accident a hiking up in the mountains where he had hiked for the 22 years we were married and and it was just absolutely devastating and I thought if anything could destroy me it would be that you know just driving too fast up those mountain roads I I thought you know did I really care if I just went over the cliff like I realized it was a dangerous time and I did see another member of the family just sink into despair because there was no sense of a spiritual dimension in her life and I thought I know I could sink like that like a stone right then but I had these two little kids you know one was three months old and one was a year and a half and you know you've got to take them to the dentist and you better make sure their shoes are on and you know I mean all that stuff so anyway I couldn't do that I felt it was no honor to my late husband to to allow that to happen so I went on you know and and and thinking I couldn't but somehow what I wanted to write about was not about grief because I you know about grief everybody knows about grief everybody can tell plenty of stories about that what I that that that all happened more than 25 years ago never occurred to me I would write about any of it but what I wanted to say at this point after that lovely day with the honor there and then the one at my university and and there were my adopted children and they were alive and well and hey they're going on with their lives and I thought you know this is this is what I wanted to share oh and you know this I'm sure but it helps to be reminded sometimes that that we can get through things we think we can't get through and I sure didn't think I could get through that any of that at that point but people do I mean it sometimes some don't but there's there's a possibility of getting through things we think we can't get through and and that strikes me as amazing I'm so surprised and happy to have a life that I love now you know that surprises me that surprises me and I and I think it's amazing so I that's what I wanted to share it I love it I have the same feeling um one of the things we haven't covered we're in good shape you and I've referenced this in one-on-one conversations and even we were whispering about it in terms of we looked at gender and you said and there are a lot of other issues that would be important to address if we had the time and they're gonna be two or three threads I bring together I promise you in this question one out I just want to introduce you a little bit to the to the heart of this place when I came I was trained and ordained here 35 years ago but when I came back yeah it was this is the Church of my soul and if when I came back as in a room rector 13 months ago I was amazed to determine learn that the church had already determined that the one book one church book for Lent then was going to be your friend James Caan's the cross and the lynching tree and all of us learned so much in that about how silent and there by complicit white Christianity was with a lot of our heroes being silent during lynching times in America not his heroes no no no no I'm sorry I was confessing yeah you know I'm talking about yeah I know they're not Jim what you didn't get what you were not able to get to in your PowerPoint presentation was a deep theological critique of one understanding of the cross and he does that in an amazing way so I would we all became fans of James cone last lat this lent were studying Howard Thurman during that up but you were a colleague of his just to give us a taste of what he was like to be a colleague and then anything you want to say about his statement and those three or four pages that just absolutely critiqued one understanding of the cross and said there's this other love based understanding of the cross and justice based well you can't be around a man like that and not learn a lot he we've been friends from the time we met you know I was about 27 when we met and he was in his 30s at Union and we knew each other's families and we're friends for decades and decades and then much closer later and he he told me after about 40 years after we met that he would never discuss race with me because I didn't know anything about it and I was insulted I thought I'm I know I know what are you talking about where he was right I didn't I didn't know anything about it I really didn't growing up in California you know I sort of knew what people who think they're liberal know white people so I learned a lot and and he was writing in criticizing people who talked about the crucifixion as a negative story because he was saying this is how black people survived lynching this is how we got through this is that sense that even when the worst things happen you can still go on and and he talked about how that happens and and the power of those traditions was utterly stunning in fact I can show you some of them this is not what James did but but it's a different understanding of what the life and death of Jesus means this is a I'll just be really brief it's called the true gospel and it's I think it claims to be the secret teaching of the Apostle Paul believe it or not the gospel of truth and it tells a myth about the creation of the world and it's about how when all things came forth from the father they all search for him but they couldn't find him they wandered in anguish and terror in the dark like lost children all the beings in the world were lost when they came into the world and and so the father sent Jesus into the world to teach all of the beings in the world who they really were to to teach them what was written in their heart which is that they came from him but that when Jesus descended into the world the rulers of the world Paul says this is in first Corinthians didn't recognize him so they crucified and tortured him but the divine source defeated their conspiracy and turned the most horrible crime into a means of Revelation and this book says that suggest that the the eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine says he discovered themselves in him he discovered them in himself and they discovered him in themselves and that the meal is a of finding that the divine source is within you and it talks here about the death of Jesus not because not because of atonement for sins simply although it can be read that way in John another way of reading it was to say that he came here to show us who we are and to show us that although we cannot know the source of God we can know that we're connected with the source and with all beings and that we all go back to him it's it's a very powerful text and says if you don't know if you don't know that we're all from that source this this text says you live in a nightmare of fear and danger but if you know that you're connected with a divine source then you have to act in a way that shows it it says speak the truth to those who search strengthen those who stumble extend your hand to those who are sick this is what you do I'm using the images of James not of James coda William Blake obviously Cohn would not have used them but he talks about the death of Jesus not simply as a sacrifice for how sinful we are that that interpretation doesn't have to be negated but there's another one I mean it says if you come into this world as a human you die that's just what happens and Jesus came to teach us who we are it's a very different thing I think that maybe William James can take us into a different place but again to speak of James Cole we came to know each other very well and he he wrote about the cross and the lynching tree in a way that nobody else could I don't like theology much because so much of it is abstract I can't read Kelvin and kelvins Institute's have you ever tried that I can't read a lot of preaching it's a lot of the same old words but his his was about the life we live about the political life we live about the social life of human beings and how people treat each other in the world that makes total sense and so that that's a very different thing and and so I felt that I learned a huge amount through the gift of knowing James coming thanks that was perfect so we're gonna have some Q&A and and end at noon so we can let you sign some books and may I say when was he wrote a final book which is if you haven't read it it's called oh gosh what is it called somebody Google said it wasn't gonna tell nobody ah said I wasn't gonna tell nobody but I couldn't keep it to myself and that book when I was running my book I said why did you what did you write about why you write because other people gonna write about you and they are doing that doing films and he said oh I've already done that I said you've done part of it but not you really haven't done it so he wrote a book a very deep humble simple beautiful book about how he came to do the work he did said it wasn't gonna tell nobody he wasn't either but he does and it's it's very moving yeah and it's it's a very personal book as well a new one came out after his three months after his death so yes anyway that's just something you should know absolutely so before we open this up is there a question Elaine that I need to ask you and I have it and that you'll get on the plane and say Edie bacon is such an idiot because he didn't ask me this question so now I would blame myself if I haven't said something so is there something we beat we have it sounded yet probably tons of them but I I'm curious about what comes up in other people's minds because that will raise some of those issues that you're good so raise your hands please we've got 30 minutes of Q&A and here comes the questions will lead us stand please and ask your question and put it like a ok yeah thank you let's imagine that you and a team of your brightest female students we're given unfettered access to the vaults of the Vatican to all what the vaults of the Vatican what would you go looking for well I think there are lots and lots of other sources that we don't know but we have plenty here to look at one of the problems is that they're put in a collection called the Coptic gnostic library and we edited all of this stuff 51 texts were found and and they're in five volumes they're really big we have a lot of stuff but it was marginalized by the term Gnostic because that basically means yeah they're the wrong ones and and really these are early Christian sources most of them and they expand the way followers of Jesus were interpreting the story but they also there are Egyptian texts there are texts of spiritual dialog between a master and of disciple who's trying to seek spiritual understanding and all of the images used are of the god Hermes and the god Thoth a Greek god Hermes who mediates between the human world and the divine world and the Egyptian god Thoth who was identified with him and this is a ancient text there's another one that sounds so much like a Buddhist meditation text except it's taught by an angel with a Hebrew name and she says you have to sit in meditation for a hundred years and then and then you learn something and then you do it again just feels like a hundred years but anyway there are many texts that we already have that really need exploration and some of my students not just women but one of them who's a a brilliant rabbi is about to defend his dissertation and he's using the gospel of Mary and some other texts to talk about Jewish and early Christian literature in that period we need to open all that stuff up it's been marginalized far too long I don't know what else we could find but if they ever let us do that another question right here it's coming to you thanks Liz I had read some time ago a book the Jesus sutras about that Jesus had gone to the east and to what is now China and there are these documents that were etched in some kind of stone and they had gotten buried and archaeologists had found them and if you could comment on that you mentioned the Jesus sutras I don't know enough about them I wish I did we do know that the Gospel of Thomas well the disciple Thomas was said to have gone to India you know and there is a there's Thomas Christians in India now they've become quite Orthodox Greek Orthodox I believe so I think there were traditions going back and forth when I read the Gospel of Thomas you know people who know Buddhism will say you know this sounds a lot like some of the Buddhist sources and I think it does so what I'm thinking nuts I happen to think Jesus was a provincial rabbi and probably didn't go to India because it's a long trip for someone like that though many people did but I do think the teachings went there and came back and were proudly influenced by Indian tradition we know that there were Buddhist missionaries in Egypt at the time and the Fathers of the Church called them heretics those are heretics like all those others so there's probably a great deal of cultural interchange and and cultural mixing in these sources there clearly is thank you for that there's a question oh yes I'm interested in the source of the Gnostic Gospels themselves they seem so strange to Christian to Orthodox Christian ears like most of us I just want I don't know much about it but I know that in early in well Jesus being Jewish and he was influenced by the apocalyptic times being a call and I recently colonized people and there was a lot of withdrawal I understand I've limited knowledge about the history but none like you but there was a kind of a withdrawal it went a lot of social movement within Judaism at that time at the time of Christ I'm saying and I wonder to what extent Jewish apocalypticism has influenced the Gnostic Gospels or the teach of the sayings that were recorded there I'm sure it's probably mixed up with a number of threads it's a good question you know these texts were discovered in 1945 the same practically the same year the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in in in the in the deserts in Judea and the essence well I don't know if they were Essenes or not essence is taken from the word Hasidim process possibly on being holy once they were a group of devout Jewish men who retreated from ordinary life and lived in a kind of what looks like to us a monastic community a celibate community of men living in the desert devoted to God and devoted to worship and they were deeply protesting against Jews collaborating with the Romans who had taken over the the worship in the temple in Jerusalem and so that the chief priest was now appointed by the Roman governor figure that one out and the Roman governor had the chief priests garments in his palace so only the appointee that the Romans approved could be chief priests and he was naturally Pro Roman he was working with the Romans and had a police force of five five thousand men to keep peace in Jerusalem that was his job as the Romans understood it so I do think that it's very likely that Jesus and John the Baptist and the message of the coming God is coming his kingdom is coming the world is about to be changed was influenced by the teaching of the men in that community who collected copied what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls right it sounds a lot like John the Baptist sounds a lot like them so does Jesus and his preaching there were also secret teachings in that so we're now looking more at the Dead Sea Scrolls and these texts as well there was something else in your question that was really interesting and I'm trying to think what it was pardon me colonizing people I well people who are under stress and well well they were they were colonized not exactly they were occupied by Roman forces how did those texts get into those caves well that was where the community lived and and they were suspected of of plotting revolution against Rome because there were many many Jews who were in the name of God in the name of our common Liberty trying to start a revolution against Roman domination of Judea which failed and when it did the Romans went to that community of men in the Dead Sea and slaughtered everybody because they were either stockpiling weapons or not but they were intensely anti-roman and these are the NAG Hammadi texts no these are the Dead Sea Scrolls okay that's the desi I'm so sorry but Jesus of course was was executed on the same charge it's it's part of that history my question is about the NAG Hammadi texts oh yes so how did they get oh the nag hammadi ticks well they were you know it's when Anthony giuse sent a letter out saying destroy all of those secret texts you'd like so much he was writing to two monks and they were Egyptian monks and nuns who lived in monasteries that had started in about the year as soon as it became legal to become a Christian a former soldier in the Roman army McComas started a monastic settlement in Egypt and then expanded to a ten or twelve monasteries throughout Upper Egypt and there were other monasteries that were founded by others and other networks of Christians and Athanasius was trying to unify all these diverse networks and and spiritual leaders and teachers into a single Catholic Church under his own authority he became the richest man in Egypt because he now controlled the gains the grain supply at a certain point and was the Emperor's man in Egypt he wanted complete control so he sent a letter to the monasteries they get rid of those secret Gospels I suspect mainly this is my guess why because they suggest you can find a way to a to God apart from the Catholic Church of which he was the bishop they suggest you can get there by on your own and that's not a message that they wanted communicated right and these bunks were were studying these texts and and reading them as devotional texts in the monasteries and also of course Orthodox Christian communities Greek Russian Ethiopia have always have always had preserved mystical traditions especially for the monks and the clergy and the bishops so that's what was going on in Egypt and those were the people who preserved and loved these texts the most perfect other questions there's one in the back there's one here go ahead and give Wade his list okay yes so first of all I adore you absolutely for you and I am here and this book means the world to me um a couple questions that I have while raising your two children what type of religion how did you raise them mm-hmm and how did you teach spirituality I thought it was very interesting last night with Mel Connor talking about how the majority of people nowadays are leaving churches but yet they're more spiritual than they've ever been and I was reading an article last night after I left talking about how people are picking and choosing what they think is great from Buddhism and Christianity and Judaism and making it their own or every different religion so my two-part question for you is did you teach multiple religions to your children and allow them to choose did you teach one religion to your children and what are they practice today that's a great question I know you have children you're raising so and many of us do or have when I went to Princeton and from New York after I was widowed I had to go where I had a job and and so I thought and I needed a spiritual community I don't think you can just do it in the air most of us can it's I mean you can you can but it's very supportive to have a community right so I thought well it would have to be either the Quakers because the way they understand what they're doing what George Fox taught about the inner light struck me as as something I resonate with a great deal either the Quakers or the Episcopalians because I had found this church in New York which was a kind of spiritual home when I needed one very much so I went to the Quaker meetinghouse it was built in 1725 in Princeton it's just a mile walk in the woods and I love the Quaker tradition but these Quakers talked a lot I mean the Holy Spirit was really active especially among people who had nowhere else to talk in public so and there was no music and for me I don't know music is the VIS is the most direct access more than what more than other words so I went to the Episcopal Church there and sat down and started listening to an amazing choir singing and that that was it then I could start actually there it was the only place I could really cry because I just didn't want to cry otherwise I thought it would never stop so but there I could just sit and cry for an hour because I couldn't not with that amazing music so my children grew up in that church my daughter was in the choir and she said she said yes the music helps my heart and my son was baffled by it and thought people were eating bodies and he's not a great fan of it but they both have a sense of of what a spiritual dimension means so I didn't teach them better than religions but when they were in middle school I was just saying what they should do in middle school when people are saying 12 or 10 talk about Buddhist tradition Muslim tradition Jewish tradition they should know about the these are cultural languages you know and I really think that should be taught but we don't have enough teachers and public schools have problems with institutionalizing religious I know the problems is too difficult so I brought them up in that tradition and they don't participate in it much but they know about it and I think it's powerful I really loved what Mel Conner said about a Sabbath dinner with the children where they bless the children I thought you would have loved to have that - wait wait yeah okay so thank you so much for being here this is really inspiring and so glad to hear you speak in person I love that you're showing us all these texts that were not included in the Canon this wide array of great spiritual writings and the way I understand it is that these people didn't know they were writing Scripture or these stories weren't meant to be Scripture but I mean it's almost like Paul's email got hacked and we got half of the New Testament or you know that that people these are just these were the writings right so with this canonization all of a sudden we have this you know pristine little bound book and these things that are left out I love that you've looked at pre canonical texts I wonder if you could forecast like post canonical texts hopefully great things have been written since the canonization what would you put forward as four texts to be considered for the 2025 version of the Canon well that's such a great question canon was created not to be the only books but the books to read in church liturgically right so they're the basic books and that's probably a good reason to have the narrative Gospels mark Matthew Luke John read in that context because they're a lot easier to read with the Gospel of Thomas with the students I mean some of them say wow I love this what this about doesn't make any sense so these texts are require a different kind of perception almost some people happen to be on that wavelength and others aren't so I wouldn't create something for worship because I'm not somebody who who creates liturgy it's a great question no I can't resist it I don't know I think we all have our own can enlist I mean for me it there are many poems there's a lot of music certainly the Gospel of Thomas the gospel of truth the gospel of Mary these are texts that I think are are very valuable for Christians to know oh and yes that's a great you know what a lot of scholars are doing right now and I'm just reading a wonderful book by a scholar called the the literary imagination in Jewish tradition and she's talking about as you said these things were written as Scripture they were written as memoirs of the Apostles and then you know they're later put into a closed canon there's no real need for a closed canon I mean it was kind of an innovation in the second century in Jewish communities when they said okay these 22 books and followers of Jesus said these 27 books but why a closed cannon you know one could have a much more open cannon and recognize that much of what is not defined as cannon might be for you that of course then you can get into the danger orthodoxy avoids a danger of everybody being on a totally different page it gets really messy so to create communities we do choose you know certain kinds of sources but many scholars are saying why do we take the Bible as if it were really set off in different colors then every that all the other writings of the time and so we're looking much more at the context of what's being written and why the process of canonization worked as it did it's a really wonderful question Elaine in that vein could you share with us the poet's that you kind of gravitate to return to well there there are lots of them okay I think of John Donne and Dylan Thomas and Mary Oliver okay yes you may I'm Mike will come to you and here's let's go to Carol right there and I might just coming to you now go I just wanted to know if you have read Marie halls Mary Magdalene speaking of poetry no oh yes of course oh yes it's funny and that's another part of this this new book I wrote I have to say it's a story about Marie how before when I was thinking about writing a rather personal book I was having tea with Marie how and I said Marie you wrote this beautiful poem called Annunciation it's about the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary and Mary has an overpowering sense of love coming toward her in this poem it's called Annunciation so I used it in my class because I teach a wonderful I think it's a wonderful class okay sorry it is it's called who was there is Jesus and what we do is we look at the early sources and we look at poems and music and films and interpretations of Jesus not just what is in the first century but in the 21st century and all the centuries in between and with all kinds of different perspectives so I use Marie's poem when we talk about the birth of Jesus and a lot of other things and I said Marie that's a wonderful poem how did you come to write it now Marie is one of nine children in a Catholic family and her name happens to be married and she said oh well it happened to something like that happened to me but of course I couldn't say that and I said why not she said that's the last taboo and I said Oh writing is if you had a spiritual experience yourself yeah I said I'm gonna write about that because I would bet there a lot of people in this room I'd sure like to hear about who have had experiences what I'll call them experiences I can't explain and I had some of those and and and many people have of something that seems to come from another dimension like Marie's sense of of having for a moment a sense of overpowering divine love coming toward her she had that and she couldn't write about it as if she had and I thought well I'm gonna write about experiences I can't explain yeah and I don't know if they're coming from you know some source there it certainly feels that way sometimes they sometimes there are spiritual experiences or mysterious experiences that seem more real than this reality sometimes right but I don't know what to make of them exactly they are very mysterious so I'm not trying to say they are or aren't this or that I was taught to when I you know to be a rationalism you know there's just wish fulfillment that's just fantasy if you think you have a visit from somebody who died you're just wishing you did you know and that they would say that who knows who knows what happens so I decided to put some of those in the book without trying to explain them because I think we have them and it's that kind of experience that that does seem to be a hint of some other kind of reality and probably there are many kinds of which were quite ignorant thank you for that question about marina Bill Wilson and now we're talking at the break about how important it is sometimes to restate the obvious earlier argue were talking about cultural languages such as Christianity and Judaism and and Buddha and so forth but cultural language is not the same as a faith system or a faith now that's pretty obvious but somehow I tend to lose sight of that pretty much in my life what do you mean well believing something and knowing something are quite different I think and having a faith is more like knowing than believing and the believing is like the cultural things that we can see identify talk about practice and so forth yes it's it's the language is tricky here you know very much this word faith it's translated belief or faith I mean pista I'm thinking of Greek pista you can transit either way to meet belief often sounds like do you believe in God you know how do you concept' is it like a conceptual thing do you know to me and that interest me a lot less than what you're talking about I think which is a deeper kind of awareness to know from the heart yeah it's like when people ask CJ young whether he believed in God and he said no I don't believe I know no I I wouldn't I would I wouldn't presume to say that kind of thing in that way but but you're talking about knowledge of the heart and I think that is quite different yeah this this derives from a question that I had during the earlier thing it's like we're struggling with this here today learning more about our own faith in God and our belief and coming to grips with who we are as a purple of the light and my question was do those people of other cultural languages have the same struggles as we do that's a good question I mean obviously I don't know what those but when I was working on this course with my colleague Jesus and Buddha I didn't do much about Buddhism I mean my ignorance was huge and all I knew was compassion and meditation right well I realized when he was teaching enormous cultural differences views about time and afterlife and reincarnation and hell realms and Heaven realms and demons and all kinds of cosmological and cultural beliefs that are to me were very foreign but when it came to some when it came to really the heart of it which is how do you treat other people the Sermon on the Mount which says Luke says very bluntly that Jesus said what you give is what you'll get that is that your actions in regard to another person will come back and have a consequence in your life for good or for harm depending on on your own actions and that view of karma and the Sermon on the Mount which is in the context of divine judgment very different from a Buddhist view somehow that that that moral core all most of the traditions seem to really resonate that's what I thought was very interesting and that's not mental knowledge at all that's much more fundamental thank you no it isn't but it's articulated and very different I mean Jesus speaks about the day of judgment the end of the world and Buddha is speaking about the way action works let's see if there's a last question right here thank you coming to you you're not well oh there's not one kind I mean when I spoke about walking that church it's it's this really ancient spiritual music it was Palestrina was chant if you if you saw the film Amazing Grace that's another kind of powerful music but there's music that isn't overtly religious that also has that in it lots of it music that many people sing so I don't have a single answer for that at all but thank you for the question thank you so I have an idea about closing I love to close with gratitude so I'd like to invite some silent breathing and the request or the invitation is for you to find the deepest thing that's happened last night and this morning for which you're grateful and then at a certain point I'll simply ask us to yell it out popcorn way one word or two or three words nobody will get the microphone nobody will tell us about their walk with the Lord or anything like that I know so first some deep breaths please for what are you grateful Oh letting I was gonna say coming here you know there's all this stuff about getting on airplanes it's scary the airports were maybe 25% what they usually are maybe that's an exaggeration but it's scary to get on an airplane yeah we did it it came with a wonderful partner and and I'm just so happy to be here this is wonderful and I just felt that that fear disappear thank you we're deeply grateful for your life for your work and for your sharing thank you we're adjourned [Applause]

Channel: St. Lukes Atlanta

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Length: 82min 37sec (4957 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2020