Miracles and Wonder, Elaine Pagels
Miracles and Wonder, Elaine Pagels
4 Rating(s)
List: $23.00 | Sale: $16.10
Club: $11.50

Miracles and Wonder
The Historical Mystery of Jesus

Bestseller

Author: Elaine Pagels

Narrator: Eunice Wong

Unabridged: 8 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/01/2025

Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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.

“This a brilliant and necessary book. Sober, wise, respectful, and fearless." —Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America

"Pagels’ story is for believers and non-believers alike.” —Tara Westover, author of Educated

"The depth of spirituality she uncovers is profound.” —The New York Times Book Review

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.

About The Author

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."

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ron on April 16, 2025

From where I sit, Pagels was always writing in one way or another about Jesus. But in the preface of her new book, “Miracles and Wonder,” she says, “Only now, after reflecting on the themes, texts, and enigmas of Christian tradition for decades, have I felt ready to engage the stories of Jesus direc......more

Goodreads review by Michael on April 24, 2025

Pagels is a serious scholar of religion at Princeton. Her book on the Gnostic Gospels is a classic. In this book she explores the central questions about Jesus. Was Jesus an actual person? Did he have a virgin birth? Did he perform miracles? What did he teach? How and why was he crucified and was he......more

Goodreads review by Brian on April 02, 2025

Many thanks to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of Elaine Pagels excellent new book Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus. Pagels, the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University, has examined writing related to the New Test......more

Goodreads review by Phil on April 20, 2025

This is an unusual but interesting book. Elaine Pagels is a well known historian who has written many books on Christianity. Her approach is largely, but not altogether, historical. She adopts a sympathetic tone toward “believers” and a slightly superior tone toward “rationalists.” Even so, her appr......more

Goodreads review by Jane on May 03, 2025

Pagels is attempting in this book to reexamine the major aspects of Jesus' life, taking into account all that we know about the major mystery's of his life -- his birth, resurrection, the miracles, his oneness with God. In her brief conclusion, she admits that there is a lot we will never know, and......more

Quotes

“Pagels, rehabilitating aspects of Christianity on terms that a secular scholar can respect, revels in the contradictions and the inconsistencies not as flaws to be explained away but as signs of the faith’s capaciousness.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

“The ‘quest’ for Jesus . . . has taken on many forms. Pagels takes the historical approach. . . . The depth of spirituality she uncovers is profound.” —The New York Times Book Review

"[Pagels's] vast knowledge has always been tempered by deep humility. . . . [Here is] an opportunity to hurry along with a scholar of tremendous graciousness and think together about some of the most profound and inspiring stories ever told. Regardless of what you believe -- or don't believe -- this is an author hoping to convince you of nothing but the "outburst of hope" conveyed by the multitudinous voices of Jesus's early followers." —The Washington Post

"Using the tools of the historian as well as the literary critic, she tries to unearth the [gospel] writers’ concerns and influences. . . . recontextualizing the old stories gives them an unexpected poignancy." —The Atlantic

"Miracles and Wonder explores mysteries about Jesus with detective zeal. . . . illuminating and essential work." —Los Angeles Times

“Pagels’s book advances a refreshingly honest reminder about why the stories of Jesus . . . haven’t gone away.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

"[T]his title is notable not just for the depth and breadth of Pagel’s scholarship but for the way she becomes part of the story. There is almost a yearning to her quest for answers that personalizes her writing. . . . Part history, part mystery, all enlightening." —Booklist (starred review)

"No matter how familiar readers are with the gospels, the stories Pagels has woven together offer new takes on who Jesus was and what it means to bring facts to faith with clarity and curiosity." —Library Journal

“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 she’s 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 nation’s 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 Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List