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Peacemaker

Registered: 02-2007
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Elaine Pagels: Naughty Naughty


Ms. Pagels has some splainin to do:

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=43736

The Forum: The Pagels Imposture

by Father Paul Mankowski, SJ
special to CWNews.com

Apr. 26, 2006 (CWNews.com) - Two weeks ago, at the height of the Gospel of Judas mania, a Google News search of "Elaine Pagels" plus "expert" scored 157 hits; she was the media's prime go-to person for a scholarly read on the import of the Coptic manuscript. Pagels was most often cited in stories such as the following from the NYT:

quote:

Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton who specializes in studies of the Gnostics, said in a statement, "These discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion, and demonstrating how diverse -- and fascinating -- the early Christian movement really was."



I am going to demonstrate that Professor Pagels's media reputation as a scholar is undeserved, her reputation as an expert in Gnosticism still less so. The case for the prosecution will require some careful reading. Those who want to follow along with the sources at their elbow should find a copy of Pagels's 1979 book The Gnostic Gospels (NY: Random House). Those who have some Latin and a library handy may want the Sources Chrétiennes edition of Irenaeus' Adversus Haereses (ed. Rousseau & Doutreleau, Paris: Cerf, 1974, 1982) and can bookmark page 278 of Vol. 211 and page 154 of Vol. 294.* Others can get most of the gist from the translation available in Vol. 1 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), with a finger in pages 380 and 439. OK, to work.

Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels is in large measure a polemic against St. Irenaeus (approx. 130-202 AD), Bishop of Lyons and a Father of the Church, and is aimed in particular against the defense of ecclesial orthodoxy offered by Irenaeus in his work Against Heresies -- which was written in Greek but which survives, for the most part, in an ancient Latin translation.

In a chapter called "One God, One Bishop," Pagels is concerned to show that the doctrine of monotheism and the hierarchical structuring of the Church were mutually reinforcing ploys designed to consolidate ecclesiastical power and eliminate diversity -- specifically, the diversity that Pagels finds in the Gnostics whom Irenaeus was at pains to refute. Pagels claims that Valentinian Christians (disciples of the Gnostic Valentinus) "followed a practice which insured the equality of all participants" and put the bishop Irenaeus in a double-bind situation by ignoring his orders. Says Pagels (page 43: brackets, ellipsis, and emphasis are Pagels's):

quote:

What Irenaeus found most galling of all was that, instead of repenting or even openly defying the bishop, they responded to his protests with diabolically clever theological arguments:

"They call [us] 'unspiritual,' 'common,' and 'ecclesiastic.' ... Because we do not accept their monstrous allegations, they say that we go on living in the hebdomad [the lower regions], as if we could not lift our minds to the things on high, nor understand the things that are above."



Pagels's quotation of Irenaeus is tagged by an endnote reference which, on page 162, reads "Ibid. [Irenaeus AH], Quotation conflated from 3.15.2 and 2.16.4." To put it mildly, an interesting method of citation. Let's look at the sources.

The first part of Pagels's quote comes from Book III, Chapter 15 of Against Heresies, where Irenaeus is arguing for the genuineness of the whole of the New Testament, here against the Valentinians:

quote:

Hi enim ad multitudinem propter eos qui sunt ab Ecclesia, quos communes et ecclesiasticos ipsi dicunt, inferunt sermones, per quos capiunt simpliciores et illiciunt eos, simulantes nostrum tractatum, uti saepius audiant. [They give speeches to the crowd about those from the Church, whom they call "common" and "ecclesiastic," through which they entrap the simple and entice them, counterfeiting our teaching, that they might listen to them more often.]



From this sentence Pagels takes only the words communes et ecclesiasticos ipsi dicunt, omitting the larger context. Note that the "[us]" which Pagels inserts in her quotation refers not, as her context requires, to bishops, but to all the Catholic faithful: those who belong to the Church. After the ellipsis, her quote resumes midway through a sentence found in Book II, Chapter 16. In this chapter, Irenaeus is primarily concerned neither with the authenticity of Scripture nor with the Valentinians, but with the doctrine of creation propounded by another Gnostic heresiarch named Basilides. Once more, let's examine the text:

quote:

Etenim hoc quod imputant nobis qui sunt a Valentino, in ea quae deorsum Ebdomade dicentes nos remanere, quasi non adtollentes in altum mentem neque quae sursum sunt sentientes, quoniam portentiloquium ipsorum non recipimus, hoc idem ipsum qui a Basilide sunt his imputant. [For that which the followers of Valentinus impute to us -- claiming that we remain in the lower Hebdomad, as if we could not lift our minds on high or perceive the things that are above, since we reject their own extravagant discourses -- this very thing the followers of Basilides impute to them.]



We note that the last phrase is omitted and the order of the preceding clauses reversed to disguise the non sequitur -- and for a very good reason: Irenaeus actually says that the same allegations made against the orthodox by the Valentinians are made against the Valentinians by their fellow Gnostics, the disciples of Basilides, and that's an embarrassment to Pagels's notion of the Gnostic-Catholic divide. To recapitulate: Pagels has carpentered a non-existent quotation, putatively from an ancient source, by silent suppression of relevant context, silent omission of troublesome words, and a mid-sentence shift of 34 chapters backwards through the cited text, so as deliberately to pervert the meaning of the original. While her endnote calls the quote "conflated," the word doesn't fit even as a euphemism: what we have is not conflation but creation.

Re-reading Pagels's putative quotation, you may have noticed that the word "unspiritual" corresponds to nothing in the Latin. It too was supplied by Pagels's imagination. The reason for the interpolation will be plain from the comment that immediately follows (page 44 in The Gnostic Gospels). Remember that she wants to argue that Irenaeus was interested in authority and the Valentinians in the life of the spirit:

quote:

Irenaeus was outraged at their claim that they, being spiritual, were released from the ethical restraints that he, as a mere servant of the demiurge, ignorantly sought to foist upon them.



Put simply, Irenaeus did not write what Prof. Pagels wished he would have written, so she made good the defect by silently changing the text. Creativity, when applied to one's sources, is not a compliment. She is a very naughty historian.

Or she would be, were she judged by the conventional canons of scholarship. At the post-graduate institute where I teach, and at any university with which I am familiar, for a professor or a grad student intentionally to falsify a source is a career-ending offense. Among professional scholars, witness tampering is no joke: once the charge is proven, the miscreant is dismissed from the guild and not re-admitted.

The Gnostic Gospels, like those portions of Pagels's later work with which I am familiar, is chock-full of tendentious readings and instances where counter-evidence is suppressed. The example of "creativity" here discussed may fairly be called a representative specimen of her methodology, and was singled out not because it's the worst example of its kind but because it's among the most unambiguous. No one who consults the source texts could give Pagels a pass, and that means she forfeits the claim to reliability as a scholar. Attractive as her ideological sympathies may be to many persons -- including many academics -- she does not deserve to be ranked with serious textual scholars like Claremont's James Robinson, and her testimony on the accuracy of inventions such as Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code cannot be solicited without irony.

I am not calling for academic sanctions but, more simply, for clarification. Pagels should be billed accurately -- not as an expert on Gnosticism or Coptic Christianity but as what she is: a lady novelist. Her oeuvre is that of fiction -- in fact, historical romance. Had New York Times reporters sought Barbara Cartland's views on discoveries in Merovingian religion or paleography, most of us would find it odd, but we'd expect them to make it plain that was romance, not history, in which she had the right to an opinion.

Paul Mankowski, S.J.
Pontifical Biblical Institute
Rome
April 23, 2006

*Also available with facing German translation in Fontes Christiani 8/2 (ed. Norbert Brox, Freiburg: Herder, 1997). The benchmark critical edition remains that of W. Wigan Harvey, Sancti Irenaei Libri Quinque Adversus Haereses, Cambridge, 1857. The pertinent passages may be found in Vol. 1, page 306, and Vol. 2, pages 79f.; they display no significant textual differences from the edition of Rousseau & Doutreleau, or indeed from Migne (PG 7, pp. 760, 918).
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Re: Elaine Pagels: Naughty Naughty


I was under the impression that Miss Pagels was describing the viewpoint from the outlook of those with Gnostic beliefs, in which case she would be quite right in how the words were seen and taken...

As for historians adding phrases and twisting the words of others, every take on history or the word of another is treated the same. You should be used to that by now... give a group of people a page of text, and no two will see the exact same thing.

I was also under the impression that her take on the Gnostics basically stepped out and said 'these people make up their faith as they go along, adding to it over time'. I think that the author of this sat back and said, I don't like that she is acclaimed as an expert and she has views like she does about the Bible, and the beliefs that I hold so dear...

That is just my take, though.

Lauchlin
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Peacemaker

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Re: Elaine Pagels: Naughty Naughty


No, I'm sorry, but this:

quote:

To recapitulate: Pagels has carpentered a non-existent quotation, putatively from an ancient source, by silent suppression of relevant context, silent omission of troublesome words, and a mid-sentence shift of 34 chapters backwards through the cited text, so as deliberately to pervert the meaning of the original. While her endnote calls the quote "conflated," the word doesn't fit even as a euphemism: what we have is not conflation but creation.

Re-reading Pagels's putative quotation, you may have noticed that the word "unspiritual" corresponds to nothing in the Latin. It too was supplied by Pagels's imagination.



is just not on. When historians "add phrases" we are no longer dealing with history, but with manufactured propaganda, which is something we should never get used to. We aren't talking about a unique interpretation of a page of text here, but about the welding together of two unconnected phrases seperated by 34 chapters to make a point that the actual historical record does not support.

Last edited by TomThumb, Mar/19/2007, 11:13 am
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Re: Elaine Pagels: Naughty Naughty


I understand what you mean, Tom, but many biblical interpretations in favour are done in the same way, from what I have seen... You know, a person said 'this' at one point, implying that 'this other' is the true meaning of this other thing.

To tell you the truth, I wouldn't be so sure she 'manufactured' anything. In all actuality she seems to have extrapolated from what the original had said. An embellishment, but not a horrid one. Adding the word unspiritual here makes little difference, as that is what the statement implies, anyhow.

quote:

They give speeches to the crowd about those from the Church, whom they call "common" and "ecclesiastic," through which they entrap the simple and entice them, counterfeiting our teaching, that they might listen to them more often.



This, to me, is stating that they are using their teachings against them, and twisting their meaning - to me this could imply a statement of them being unspiritual, as in not of the holy spirit, or something along those lines. To me, this barrage is as much grasping at straws as was 'The Secret Tomb of Jesus'.

quote:

For that which the followers of Valentinus impute to us -- claiming that we remain in the lower Hebdomad, as if we could not lift our minds on high or perceive the things that are above, since we reject their own extravagant discourses -- this very thing the followers of Basilides impute to them



This statement, as well, is very much about the Valentinians, or at the very least has implications about their ideas - it is implying again, only in more forceful terms that they are not a truly spiritual group.

It is not good to twist words just because you do not like the implications. I know your source bespeaks the topic vehemently, but in the end, the message is the same - the valentinians bespoke that they were not truly led by the holy spirit, among other things.

So she might be guilty of embellishment, but not altering the actual meaning.

Lauchlin
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Re: Elaine Pagels: Naughty Naughty


We should have more respect for the rigor involved in historical work, and demand that historians abide by the strictures of their craft. Most importantly, every statement must be sourced, and sources must be used accurately, without sleight-of-hand. Simply put, to impute to sources things they did not say but that we wish they had is an abuse of sources. This is where Pagels historical work is illegitimate. On the level of basic truth, Ireneaus never said what Pagels claims he said. Pagels did not simply embellish the meaning of the original. There is not even only a single original statement in play here; there are two completely different originals, two separate sentences addressing two separate subjects making two separate statements which have been dishonestly conflated to make a third statement found nowhere in Pagels' source material.

Sentence one refers to how the Valentinian's refer to ordinary worshipping Christians as "'common' and 'ecclesiastic'"; sentence two details how Basilides attacks the Valentinian doctrine of the creation. She has carpentered what Ireneaus supplies to us as the Valentinian indictment of ordinary Christians with what Ireneaus supplies to us as Basilides indictment of the Valentinian theory of creation to make a third statement reputing to be a Valentinian indictment of the Christian hierarchy, and has then gratuitously added the word "unspiritual", found in neither quote, by way of insult.

Her use of source material here is illegitimate if you care at all about the truth or historical craft. If we cannot trust Pagels to accurately tell us what people have said in public documents then how can we trust her to tell us the truth about the meaning of events? If we are willing to let people impute anything to a historical source, then we are willing to be told anything and history, which is the search for historical truth, ceases to have any meaning as a discipline. People did or did not say certain things: certain things did or did not happen: the truth matters.
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Re: Elaine Pagels: Naughty Naughty


quote:

Sentence one refers to how the Valentinian's refer to ordinary worshipping Christians as "'common' and 'ecclesiastic'"; sentence two details how Basilides attacks the Valentinian doctrine of the creation.



As far as I am concerned both of these statements support each other. What a person says at one time does not negate what they say in another. What the statements are implying is that the valentinians believed they were the ones that were truly spiritual, if you look at the original or Pagel's interpretation.

quote:

a third statement reputing to be a Valentinian indictment of the Christian hierarchy



Isn't this what the valentinians were doing? They were speaking about how their views were the proper ones...? And how the Basilides looked at the Valentinians the same way the Valentinians were looking at the Christians?

Where exactly is the change in meaning...?

Last edited by TomThumb, Mar/21/2007, 12:43 pm
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Re: Elaine Pagels: Naughty Naughty


Oops- I went to reply with a quote and i hit edit emoticon That's all fouled up...

Anyhow:

Let's recall what Pagels is asserting: She was not arguing in this instance that the Valentinians alone considered themselves to be spiritual. She was claiming that the Valentinian's opposition to the early Catholic Church was based on opposition to the Church's hierarchical structure, that the Valentinian's were a sort of democratic religious brotherhood opposed to hierarchy of any kind who were refusing to follow orders from Church officials, eliciting Ireneaus' response. She supplies this conflated quote to support her contention. Neither source quote has anything to do with Church hierarchy or is in any way a response to the flouting of Church authority. That is dishonest, and it saddens me that you don't understand this dishonesty.




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Re: Elaine Pagels: Naughty Naughty


To make this clearer for everyone, I'll produce the original quotes in context. According to Pagels, the Valentinians have ignored the orders of the Bishops, responding instead with "clever theological arguments", which causes an exasperated Irenaeus to cry out:

""They call [us] 'unspiritual,' 'common,' and 'ecclesiastic.' ... Because we do not accept their monstrous allegations, they say that we go on living in the hebdomad [the lower regions], as if we could not lift our minds to the things on high, nor understand the things that are above."

Now consult the source documents and see if they conform to Pagels version of events:

quote:

1. But again, we allege the same against those who do not recognise Paul as an apostle: that they should either reject the other words of the Gospel which we have come to know through Luke alone, and not make use of them; or else, if they do receive all these, they must necessarily admit also that testimony concerning Paul, when he (Luke) tells us that the Lord spoke at first to him from heaven:"Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me? I am Jesus Christ, whom you persecute," Acts 22:8, Acts 26:15 and then to Ananias, saying regarding him: "Go your way; for he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name among the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him, from this time, how great things he must suffer for My name's sake." Acts 9:15-16 Those, therefore, who do not accept of him [as a teacher], who was chosen by God for this purpose, that he might boldly bear His name, as being sent to the forementioned nations, do despise the election of God, and separate themselves from the company of the apostles. For neither can they contend that Paul was no apostle, when he was chosen for this purpose; nor can they prove Luke guilty of falsehood, when he proclaims the truth to us with all diligence. It may be, indeed, that it was with this view that God set forth very many Gospel truths, through Luke's instrumentality, which all should esteem it necessary to use, in order that all persons, following his subsequent testimony, which treats upon the acts and the doctrine of the apostles, and holding the unadulterated rule of truth, may be saved. His testimony, therefore, is true, and the doctrine of the apostles is open and steadfast, holding nothing in reserve; nor did they teach one set of doctrines in private, and another in public.

2. For this is the subterfuge of false persons, evil seducers, and hypocrites, as they act who are from Valentinus. These men discourse to the multitude about those who belong to the Church, whom they do themselves term "vulgar," and "ecclesiastic." By these words they entrap the more simple, and entice them, imitating our phraseology, that these [dupes] may listen to them the oftener; and then these are asked regarding us, how it is, that when they hold doctrines similar to ours, we, without cause, keep ourselves aloof from their company; and [how it is, that] when they say the same things, and hold the same doctrine, we call them heretics? When they have thus, by means of questions, overthrown the faith of any, and rendered them uncontradicting hearers of their own, they describe to them in private the unspeakable mystery of their Pleroma. But they are altogether deceived, who imagine that they may learn from the Scriptural texts adduced by heretics, that [doctrine] which their words plausibly teach. For error is plausible, and bears a resemblance to the truth, but requires to be disguised; while truth is without disguise, and therefore has been entrusted to children. And if any one of their auditors do indeed demand explanations, or start objections to them, they affirm that he is one not capable of receiving the truth, and not having from above the seed [derived] from their Mother; and thus really give him no reply, but simply declare that he is of the intermediate regions, that is, belongs to animal natures. But if any one do yield himself up to them like a little sheep, and follows out their practice, and their"redemption," such an one is puffed up to such an extent, that he thinks he is neither in heaven nor on earth, but that he has passed within the Pleroma; and having already embraced his angel, he walks with a strutting gait and a supercilious countenance, possessing all the pompous air of a cock. There are those among them who assert that that man who comes from above ought to follow a good course of conduct; wherefore they do also pretend a gravity [of demeanour] with a certain superciliousness. The majority, however, having become scoffers also, as if already perfect, and living without regard [to appearances], yea, in contempt [of that which is good], call themselves"the spiritual," and allege that they have already become acquainted with that place of refreshing which is within their Pleroma.



quote:

3. How much safer and more accurate a course is it, then, to confess at once that which is true: that this God, the Creator, who formed the world, is the only God, and that there is no other God besides Him—He Himself receiving from Himself the model and figure of those things which have been made—than that, after wearying ourselves with such an impious and circuitous description, we should be compelled, at some point or another, to fix the mind on some One, and to confess that from Him proceeded the configuration of things created.

4. As to the accusation brought against us by the followers of Valentinus, when they declare that we continue in that Hebdomad which is below, as if we could not lift our minds on high, nor understand those things which are above, because we do not accept their monstrous assertions: this very charge do the followers of Basilides bring in turn against them, inasmuch as they (the Valentinians) keep circling about those things which are below, [going] as far as the first and second Ogdoad, and because they unskilfully imagine that, immediately after the thirty Æons, they have discovered Him who is above all things Father, not following out in thought their investigations to that Pleroma which is above the three hundred and sixty-five heavens, which is above forty-five Ogdoads. And any one, again, might bring against them the same charge, by imagining four thousand three hundred and eighty heavens, or Æons, since the days of the year contain that number of hours. If, again, some one adds also the nights, thus doubling the hours which have been mentioned, imagining that [in this way] he has discovered a great multitude of Ogdoads, and a kind of innumerable company of Æons, and thus, in opposition to Him who is above all things Father, conceiving himself more perfect than all [others], he will bring the same charge against all, inasmuch as they are not capable of rising to the conception of such a multitude of heavens or Æons as he has announced, but are either so deficient as to remain among those things which are below, or continue in the intermediate space.



In extract one, Irenaeus is responding to the claim that there is a hidden doctrine of Jesus, available only to the spiritually advanced. In extract two he is mocking the Gnostic doctrine of creation, which posits a series of emanations, each lesser and more corrupt then the last, all inferior to the Source; emanations which the truly enlightened must transcend in ascending back to the Source. Irenaeus is showing how at any time a new grouplet can pop up saying that the old grouplet didn't ascend all the way back because they didn't know the proper number of heavens, a phenomenon which could repeat itself ad nauseum.

Now where in here is there anything about Irenaeus being galled by people "responding to his protests", what in here points to a Valentinian opposition to a hierarchical priesthood, and how can these two sentences be validly spliced together?

Last edited by TomThumb, Mar/21/2007, 3:36 pm
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Re: Elaine Pagels: Naughty Naughty


Both passages are related, as they denote the stance of the Valentinians against the Church. Need there be more connection than that? I think her object was to demonstrate how the man did not appreciate their stance. By the quotes you provide, he does seem to be quite insulted that they would say such things against the church.

As well, in speaking of how the Church is being spoken of in such a manner, it does imply that the Valentinians have scorn for the way the Church is being run, and that they see the Church as being the false faith, the false spiritual path.

I think when someone writes about these things, people feel a need to debunk them if they don't agree with what they describe. These passages are linked in reference, in that they deal with the stance of the valentinians, and how Irenaeus responded to their actions...

I really and seriously do not see the difference. Yes, I understand that you don't like the word she added, but I don't see how it changes the meaning. All it would do, really, is strengthen the posture that Irenaeus did not appreciate the words they spoke. Isn't this what she was trying to imply? Not necessarily specific to the hierarchy imposed, but the greater functioning of the church itself, through trying to badmouth its constituents. If it is postulated wrongly that they were viewing themselves as a 'democratic church', why concentrate so much on this simple point of clarifying Irenaeus view on what they were saying?

Sorry, but I am just not getting the point you are trying to bring across. I feel bad that this makes you feel sad, but in all reality I think we need to branch away from the semantics of the one word, as it does not seem to take from the meaning of what she was describing, from the quotes provided.

Lauchlin
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Re: Elaine Pagels: Naughty Naughty


Lauchlin, I just have one quick question and then I am not going to bother with this anymore.

1) Do you not understand that Pagels thesis requires the "us" in "They call [us] 'unspiritual,' 'common,' and 'ecclesiastic" to be "us bishops" and not "those who belong to the Church"? That is key to Mankowski's article and should have been the grounds for discussion. We've had this long back and forth, and I'm starting to doubt you've ever grasped this central point.


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