Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus
Some of the passages in this illuminating and essential work are tough going ... But it’s worthwhile hanging in: As the chapters unfold, the plot thickens ... I realized that while I knew a great deal more about the origins of Christianity than when I began, the mystery of Jesus himself had deepened. Perhaps that’s how it’s meant to be. But the moral of the story is clear: Christ’s story is an iconic tale of hope emerging from darkness.
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Pagels asks different questions about New Testament miracles. She is less interested in whether Jesus performed them than in what accounts for their power. Her larger quest is to understand the enduring appeal of Jesus to so many people ... In some cases, recontextualizing the old stories gives them an unexpected poignancy.
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Pagels, who has written many imposing and engrossing books on early Christianity, is back with a kind of culminating work ... [A] reasonable middle ground, one that acknowledges both the constructed nature of the texts and the oddities and frictions that point the way out of pure textuality.
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