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Beyond Belief
- The Secret Gospel of Thomas
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
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Publisher's summary
Critic reviews
"Exhilarating reading, Pagels's book offers a model of careful and thoughtful scholarship in the lively and exciting prose of a good mystery writer." (Publishers Weekly)
"A fresh and exciting work of theology and spirituality." (Booklist)
"With the winning combination of sound scholarship, deep insight and crystal-clear prose style that distinguishes all her work, Pagels portrays the great variety of beliefs, teachings and practices that were found among the earliest Christians." (Los Angeles Times)
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New Testament scholar N. T. Wright reveals how we have been misreading the Gospels for centuries, powerfully restoring the lost central story of the scripture: that the coronation of God through the acts of Jesus was the climax of human history. Wright fills the gaps that centuries of misdirection have opened up in our collective spiritual story, tracing a narrative from Eden to Jesus to today.
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Jesus' life matters, not just his death
- By Adam Shields on 03-17-16
By: N. T. Wright
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The Misunderstood Jew
- The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus
- By: Amy Jill Levine
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
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In The Misunderstood Jew, scholar Amy-Jill Levine helps Christians and Jews understand the "Jewishness" of Jesus so that their appreciation of him deepens and a greater interfaith dialogue can take place. Levine's humor and informed truth - telling provokes honest conversation and debate about how Christians and Jews should understand Jesus, the New Testament, and each other.
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Courageous
- By Tad Davis on 07-27-17
By: Amy Jill Levine
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Unbelievable
- Why Neither Ancient Creeds nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today
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Five hundred years after Martin Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses ushered in the Reformation, best-selling author and controversial bishop and teacher John Shelby Spong delivers 12 forward-thinking theses to spark a new reformation to reinvigorate Christianity and ensure its future. Spong contends that there is mounting pressure among Christians for a radically new kind of Christianity - a faith deeply connected to the human experience instead of outdated dogma.
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great
- By Brian Diffley on 03-27-21
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How Jesus Became God
- The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
- By: Bart D. Ehrman
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- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
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In a book that took eight years to research and write, leading Bible scholar Bart D. Ehrman explores how an apocalyptic prophet from the backwaters of rural Galilee crucified for crimes against the state came to be thought of as equal with the one God Almighty Creator of all things. Ehrman sketches Jesus's transformation from a human prophet to the Son of God exalted to divine status at his resurrection. Only when some of Jesus's followers had visions of him after his death - alive again - did anyone come to think that he, the prophet from Galilee, had become God.
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Wishing for a bit more meat on the bones
- By Darwin8u on 04-09-14
By: Bart D. Ehrman
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Lost Christianities
- The Battles of Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
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The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human.
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The Early Church(es)
- By Margaret on 01-06-14
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Understanding the Bible
- By: John R. W. Stott
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
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Understanding the Bible will provide you with a foundational comprehension of the entirety of Scripture with a focus on broadening your vision of Jesus Christ.
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Excellent exposition of the Christian faith
- By GW on 02-25-12
By: John R. W. Stott
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Decoding Nicea
- Constantine Changed Christianity and Christianity Changed the World
- By: Paul Pavao
- Narrated by: Alan Sisto
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
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The Council of Nicea was not clerics in a dark and ornate hall. It was brawls in churchyards; it was emperors and governors fighting to save the empire; it was political intrigue as the governments of church and state blended into a volatile stew. It was the way a fringe group of peace-loving communal worshipers of a crucified Palestinian prophet conquered the Roman Empire.
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Who mixes fact with fiction?
- By 3allvalve on 12-28-17
By: Paul Pavao
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David Lynch
- The Man from Another Place (Icons)
- By: Dennis Lim
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
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At once a pop culture icon, cult figure, and film industry outsider, master filmmaker David Lynch and his work defy easy definition. Dredged from his subconscious mind, Lynch's work is primed to act on our own subconscious, combining heightened, contradictory emotions into something familiar but inscrutable. No less than his art, Lynch's life also evades simple categorization, encompassing pursuits as a musician, painter, photographer, carpenter, entrepreneur, and vocal proponent of Transcendental Meditation.
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Essential listening for Lunch fans
- By Michael P. Mesaros on 08-14-18
By: Dennis Lim
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Swear to God
- The Promise and Power of the Sacraments
- By: Scott Hahn
- Narrated by: Brian Keeler
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
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Written in an accessible style, Swear to God is a testament to the seven sacraments, which Hahn sees not as boring rituals, but as powerful reminders of our covenants with God.
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Swear to God
- By LW on 07-03-24
By: Scott Hahn
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The Jesus Dynasty
- A New Historical Investigation of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity
- By: James D. Tabor
- Narrated by: James D. Tabor
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
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Based on a careful analysis of the earliest Christian documents and recent archaeological discoveries, The Jesus Dynasty offers a bold new interpretation of the life of Jesus and the origins of Christianity. The story is surprising, controversial, and exciting as only a long-lost history can be when it is at last recovered.
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Provocative book
- By Dan on 08-27-06
By: James D. Tabor
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Must read for all practicing Christians
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In this new translation of the Gospel of Thomas, Leloup shows that the Jesus recorded by the "infinitely skeptical and infinitely believing" Thomas has much in common with gnostics of non-dualistic schools. Like them, Jesus preaches the coming of a new man, the genesis of the man of knowledge. In this gospel, Jesus describes a journey from limited to unlimited consciousness. The Jesus of Thomas invites us to drink deeply from the well of knowledge within, not so that we may become good Christians but so we may attain the self-knowledge that will make each of us, too, a Christ.
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Not the Book of a Thomas at all
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Great story but...
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"These are the hidden sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down." With this opening statement, the Gospel of Thomas, legendary Apostle to the East, introduces a startlingly profound list of Jesus' ancient Wisdom sayings. Similar to the collections of quotations copied by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Thomas' Gospel contains a hundred and fourteen sayings, half of which don't appear in the New Testament. Once known from only a handful of ancient sources, third-century Greek fragments of this Gospel first turned up at the end of the nineteenth century – but ...
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AI voices are torture
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The Gnostic Gospels Collection
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Gnosticism was a wide-ranging religious movement of the first millennium CE—with earlier antecedents and later flourishings—whose adherents sought salvation through knowledge and personal religious experience.
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Same story!
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The Gnostic Gospels
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The selections made in this volume shed light on these esoteric doctrines, revealing intimate conversations between Jesus and his disciples. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene throws new light on his relationship with this favorite disciple. The Gospel of Thomas contains concentrated mini-parables, containing deep inward and symbolic meaning, many of which are not found in the New Testament. The texts chosen are relevant to many of the perplexities of contemporary life and deal with the questions of good and evil, sin and suffering, and the path to salvation.
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Great information, however now outdated
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The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
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Perhaps no figure in biblical scholarship has been the subject of more controversy and debate than Mary Magdalene. Although she is discussed in the gospels of Philip, Thomas, Peter, and Bartholomew in the collection of writings known as the Gnostic gospels that were rejected by the early Christian church, there is no better insight into this mysterious and influential woman than Mary's own gospel.
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Insightful look into early Christian Gnosticism
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In a book that took eight years to research and write, leading Bible scholar Bart D. Ehrman explores how an apocalyptic prophet from the backwaters of rural Galilee crucified for crimes against the state came to be thought of as equal with the one God Almighty Creator of all things. Ehrman sketches Jesus's transformation from a human prophet to the Son of God exalted to divine status at his resurrection. Only when some of Jesus's followers had visions of him after his death - alive again - did anyone come to think that he, the prophet from Galilee, had become God.
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Wishing for a bit more meat on the bones
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The success of books such as Elaine Pagels's Gnostic Gospels and Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code proves beyond a doubt that there is a tremendous thirst today for finding the hidden truths of Christianity - truths that may have been lost or buried by institutional religion over the last two millennia. In Forbidden Faith, Richard Smoley narrates a popular history of one such truth, the ancient esoteric religion of gnosticism, which flourished between the first and fourth centuries AD, but whose legacy remains even today, having survived secretly throughout the ages.
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An absolute must for understanding Gnosticism.
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The Meaning of Mary Magdalene
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Mary Magdalene is one of the most influential symbols in the history of Christianity - yet, if you look in the Bible, you'll find only a handful of verses that speak of her. How did she become such a compelling saint in the face of such paltry evidence? In her effort to answer that question, Cynthia Bourgeault examines the Bible, church tradition, art, legend, and newly discovered texts to see what's there.
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Forever Changed
- By Ed Jansen on 11-02-15
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The Dead Sea Scrolls
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Whether complete or only fragmentary, the 930 extant Dead Sea Scrolls irrevocably altered how we look at and understand the foundations of faith and religious practice. Now you can get a comprehensive introduction to this unique series of archaeological documents, and to scholars' evolving understanding of their authorship and significance, with these 24 lectures. Learn what the scrolls are, what they contain, and how the insights they offered into religious and ancient history came into focus.
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A comprehensive overview of the Qumran Scrolls
- By Jacobus on 09-25-13
By: Gary A. Rendsburg, and others
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Jesus Before the Gospels
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Throughout much of human history, our most important stories were passed down orally - including the stories about Jesus before they became written down in the Gospels. In this fascinating and deeply researched work, leading Bible scholar Bart D. Erhman investigates the role oral history has played in the New Testament - how the telling of these stories not only spread Jesus' message but helped shape it.
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Insightful, but with limited depth
- By Jacobus on 05-28-16
By: Bart D. Ehrman
What listeners say about Beyond Belief
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- S. Howell
- 07-03-19
Love This Lady! So Brilliant”
This is the second book of hers I have finished. I have three or more waiting. I was a conservative minister for 20 years and when preparing for the ministry, studied many of the things she talks about. But like Paul Harvey, I never got this side of the story of the early church. I feel like a window has been opened, and fresh air just poured into the room. I have driven my wife crazy reading her sections of one of her books. So very happy that I stumbled upon this diamond. It makes me sad that so many churches Catholic and Protestant, because of their views on women’s place in the church have missed out on so much that women have to offer. It is a wealth of information, from women like her, waiting for all of us to open our eyes to see and learn.
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5 people found this helpful
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- dbernelle
- 03-12-16
Great Understanding of the Gospel of Thomsa
This book brings a very deep understanding of the acceptance (& rejection) of the Gospel of Thomas and other Gnostic writings (or at least the writings which were lost until Nag Hammadi) in both their teachings and the views of Christian teachers down through history. These writings serve to remove some of the "control" which it seems natural for some humans to feel compelled to introduce regarding the Christian beliefs. Many of the Nag Hammadi writings simply echo the beliefs that would (& are) found among modern Christians of these times - showing that then or now, Christians are a diverse group of believers. As has been said, "Even though two Christians may sit side-by-side on the same pew, in the same church, this still does not guarantee that they hold the very same beliefs regarding the details of Christ." Surely this proves that Christianity is not dead, yet very much alive. Thank you, LORD, for the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi!
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-10-06
Pagels vs Irenaeus
This book should have been titled Pagels vs Irenaeus.
The premise that she tries to support is that there was a great deal of diversity in the early Christian church. Irenaeus and Bishop Polycarp, among others, felt that the diversity was threatening the viability of the Christian faith. They moved to remove the diversity to present a more unified front to the very real threats and persecutions. After the Nicean Creeds and the legalization of Christianity the church fathers took this stance further. This evolved into a program to eradicate all divergent philosophies.
I feel the reason that Dr. Pagels chose to write this book was to put words to her own personal struggle. Her struggle is: that she does not want anyone to get in between God and herself. Indeed, this does sound like a valid course of action but I wonder if it really does not speak to a notion of pride. It is far simpler to live ones spiritual life without comment or interference from others. This is especially true if the other person has an air of authority.
If Pagels accepts the canonical representation created by John and Irenaeus she could only get to God through their Christ. Christ, for her, seems to be the embodiment of their credo and thus filters out all access to God except through their interpretation. Scholars likely love to debate this, but for me it really is less material.
I come away from this book wondering about, how to navigate the complex web of very human individuals - trying to be spiritual. Without these interactions I doubt spirituality can really exist. Now, I am left to reconcile the risk of disingenuous external authorities to the vagaries of self deception.
Would I recommend this book to others? Yes I would. I may not agree with her points and the methods she uses to win the reader to her way of thinking but it is well worth the read.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Greg
- 07-06-21
Great book, terrible narration
I read and enjoyed this book by Elaine Pagles about four years ago. For various reasons I wanted to listen to this audio recording and refresh my reading. I continue to be fascinated by Elaine Pagels’ writing but was seriously disappointed by the poor narration. The narrator didn’t bother to research how to pronounce some of the most basic words in this text. For example, she pronounces Mohammad Ali as “Muhamed ALL-eye.”
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- SciFi Fan
- 12-18-22
Extremely interesting discussion
Very interesting discussion of the origins and subsequent distortions of the Jesus movement from his death to now. Much pairs with the conclusions I had surmised.
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- Buford
- 06-08-04
Gospel of Thomas is somewhat a misnomer
The book is less an exploration of the Gospel of Thomas than an exploration of the competing movements and ideas that were present in the early Christian Church. It begins by comparing the gospels of John and Thomas using a unique, to this listener anyway, hypothesis but moves quickly to a broader view of the first three centuries of Christianity. It is none the less an excellent representation of the impeccable research and sensitivity of Elaine Pagels.
The listener is brought to see the importance of the Nag Hammadi texts to the understanding of First-Third Century "Gnosticism" and what would have been lost had these documents not been hidden some 1600 years ago. The question occurs: What documents might not have been preserved and thus lost from these formative years of Christianity? Based on the importance of the Nag Hammadi texts, we are intellectually poorer for any that might have been lost.
The book is very easy to follow. The narrator does an excellent job in reading the text with authority and understanding. It is, technically speaking, a very good presentation.
I certainly recommend it to those who have interests in this area of historical research.
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88 people found this helpful
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- gsrayburn
- 06-15-19
Beyond Belief
Excellent presentation of the history of early Christinity. Dr Pages is a brilliant historian and an excellent presenter.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Steven Hazel
- 11-01-20
Careful scholarship and still extremely engaging
Dr Pagels is one of my favorite scholars, and this book provides much needed insights into the ways that the Gnostics viewed themselves. Very interesting read with a heartfelt personal touch. Narrator was very clear and paced. I wish there were more scholars like Ms. Pagels.
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- Chi-Hung
- 03-04-09
It has very little to do with Thomas!
I actually liked Pagel's work, I read two of her books before, Gnostic gospels and Reading Judas, the problem with this volume is that it is exceedingly misleading, not only that many of the materials here came from researches and arguments from her other books, but only approximately two chapters actually has anything to do with the Gospel of Thomas, the rest are early church history and polemnics. So if you already have the Gnostic Gospel, you can pretty much spare yourself this one.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Denise
- 02-26-19
Clarity
A great book if you want to understand the understanding of those who were on the forefront of Christianity; their intentions, motivations and self interest branded as religion.
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