Our first book is Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels. We will discuss this book September 8 and 22.

Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels) ranges panoramically over the history of early Christianity, demonstrating the religion's initial tremendous diversity and its narrowing to include only certain texts supporting certain beliefs. At the center of her book is the conflict between the gospels of John and Thomas. Reading these gospels closely, she shows that Thomas offered readers a message of spiritual enlightenment. Rather than promoting Jesus as the only light of the world, Thomas taught individuals that "there is a light within each person, and it lights up the whole universe. If it does not shine, there is darkness." As she eloquently and provocatively argues, the author of John wrote his gospel as a refutation of Thomas, portraying the disciple Thomas as a fool when he doubts Jesus, and Jesus as the only true light of the world. Pagels goes on to demonstrate that the early Christian writer Irenaeus promoted John as the true gospel while he excluded Thomas, and a host of other early gospels, from the list of those texts that he considered authoritative. His list became the basis for the New Testament canon when it was fixed in 357. Pagels suggests that we recover Thomas as a way of embracing the glorious diversity of religious tradition. As she elegantly contends, religion is not merely an assent to a set of beliefs, but a rich, multifaceted fabric of teachings and experiences that connect us with the divine. Exhilarating reading, Pagels's book offers a model of careful and thoughtful scholarship in the lively and exciting prose of a good mystery writer.

Our second book will be The Gospel of Mary of Magdala by Karen L King. We will discuss this book October 13 and 27.

The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, a second-century gospel that was discovered in the 19th century and not published until 1955, shows Mary to be the apostle (yes, apostle) to whom Jesus revealed deep theological insights. King, a professor at Harvard Divinity School and author of What Is Gnosticism?, argues that the Gospel prefers inner spiritual knowledge to exterior forms such as the law and that it reveals some of the gender conflicts and spiritual divisions of the early Christian movement. King places translations of two extant fragments of the Gospel of Mary side by side, so readers can see the slight differences that appear in the originals. (Because approximately 10 pages of the Gospel are still lost, scholars believe we only have about half of its original material.) In the brief text, the male apostles are afraid and despondent after Jesus' post-resurrection departure, so Mary tries to cheer them by revealing some of the esoteric teachings that Jesus imparted to her alone. But the teachings cause discord, as Peter and others refuse to believe that Jesus would have given such "strange ideas" to a woman. ("Did he choose her over us?" a petulant Peter asks.) The bulk of King's book takes up various issues raised by the text-questions about the Son of Man, law, women's authority, visionary experiences and the body. This is a serious scholarly study with the apparatus of an academic book, including Coptic facsimiles of the papyrus, and Coptic and Greek phrases sprinkled throughout the text.

Our third book will be The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart by  Peter J. Gomes. We will discuss this book November 10 and December 8.

Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard and longtime pastor of Memorial Church there, has been cited by Time as one of the seven best preachers in America. He laments, however, that he and his fellow ministers across the nation "preach regularly from the Bible to congregations that know so little about it," despite the outpouring of biblical translations, exegetical books and other analytical aids. His mission in this cogent exercise in nonsectarian Christian apologetics is to help reverse the current decline in biblical literacy by reclaiming the Bible from theological stodginess and lay laziness. The book is divided into three parts called "Opening the Bible," "The Use and Abuse of the Bible" and "The True and Lively Word," which refer, respectively, to didactic, polemical and pastoral approaches. The unified result masterfully clarifies what the Bible really says about homosexuality (very little), women as full faith partners (much more), racial harmony (lots, both explicitly and implicitly) and anti-Semitism ("Christianity's Original Sin"). But, whatever the subject, Gomes wants Bible readers to think about intrinsic meanings in Old and New Testament scripture.