the rest of the soldiers who are not dedicated to funerals dropped everything and put on their combat close. >> his latest book is a duty. to watch the rest of the talk, visible booktv.org and search for his name or the book books e in the search box at the top of the page. [applause] good afternoon. i am the chairman of national dominance of humanity in behalf of my colleagues who welcome you to the building we are funded. before we start, could we just acknowledge the wonderful work, the congress -- the staff. [applause] >> and it is my honor to have the chairman to have her with us

for this special session, elaine pagels. i just want to make sure i highlight a number of point from her biography. she is a heritage of the nation of professor religion of princeton university and a phd from harvard and the recipient of a fellowship which is commonly known as a fellowship. she was awarded the national humanity title in 2015, this is the highest award that the federal government gives, our agency that dominates those individuals to the president. her research has been broadly supported by the humanity in dominant especially the library which is a translation of

earning greek christian writing, it was discovered in egypt in 1945. after that, she is author of numerous distinguished and successful books including gospels in which one when the national book award. beyond belief, the secret gospel accounts, she has published widely on early christianity and continues to pursue research, interest, here though we are talking about a different book, a more personal book, and the trend unexpected no more. so first i might begin with that question that many of people of faith had that in their childhood, what was your experience? >> i'm very happy to talk about this. first of all, i want to say thank you to you and john and

the other people at the national investment. it's been so much for that date of receiving the award from president obama it was a great joy. [applause] >> it is very different, i just decided i wanted to write my own story, not the kind history and done before. about why somebody would study the history of religion and why i love it. that's what this book is about. >> absolutely. and your husband was a scientist and a lot of people talk about, how do we reconcile science and religion and i'd love to hear your insights onward we differ those forms and where they

overlap. >> that refers to what do you say about family, my family was cultural partisan, my father had given up a ferocious presbyterian. once he discovered darwin he said forget about it, no one within the education knows about the religion. so he was kind of shocked when i started to become involved. to think it has impact in the real world. [laughter] so why do yo study that. anyway we discovered we were each fascinated to find something about our lives and about human culture. science him in the gym, we

always were cautious because so many people in these countries have imagined that christianity or any other religious tradition was to be taken literally into the people who love it and take it literally, this oversees not move that way at all. these are embolic systems that they speak about, hope and imagination and how we find meaning in the questions are some different. >> absolutely, again for those who interpret scripture whether the bible or the fig tour, we have these traditions for the set books. tell us how it makes it a more complicated question, if you mind explaining what the extra

works are. >> this book starts in a place that was surprised by some of my critics who think that i'm against religion, sometimes been called elaine payin pagan becaui say what we know about christianity, how does it start, what we know about jesus and the others anyway. i was amazed to discover that our professors had file cabinets with gospels i never heard of like the gospel of thomas and peter and philip and mary magdalene, what are these and we realized they were written very early i other gospel in the new testament. but to teach us about centuries in these are the wrong ones,

there's a good gospel in the back gospel, actually it's not that at all, the gospel is the new testament claim to teach what jesus taught publicly and when he is talking about crowds of people and thousands of people, the gospel of thomas, philip and mary magdalene and said jesus taught to certain people that he felt right deeper spiritual levels just as any country rabbi like jesus in the testament with the teacher of the rabbi. and if you talked about what the others did, he would've taught one way to large complication and another to private disciples, if you see will gospels claim to teach a but they were centered and they all declared heretical and they were discarded, destroyed and found

only in 1925 in upper egypt, it was the 70s and 80s when i was in graduate school before they were brought in for the first time. >> again, this area and the funding has supported the analysis and also the piece of that. so good things are going on, you are saying something in terms on sunday would be a difficult message to hear, pushback and the scholarly community, also, you were a young female scholar saying that you don't have 20 books, can you take us back to how much of the prospective that was related to how women were treated at the time? >> one of my professors was in

oxford, he said women are very interested in this stuff and they're very gullible and bad judgment. we did that in the new testament. and he would only say what is different about these other gospels, what is it about the bishop, and the major differences, in that jesus is unique and enormously important and you have to believe in jesus, that the whole point. the other gospel speaks about jesus but they speak about him as someone who helps them find yourself and your truth and what struck me when i read the gospel, jesus says if you bring forth what you continue will bring forth what will save you,

if you do not bring forth what is in you what you do not bring forth will destroy you. i thought you don't have to believe that. it just happens to be true. this is about finding what you understand intuitively and deeply as true. it is not about incorporating a bunch of police that somebody else hasn't circulated. >> the southern rider in the statement may be your own and it comes out over the same tradition. but it's also important, one thing i appreciate when you hold these decisions, it talks about creation for example the book of genesis which can have two creation stories. rather than be dismissed and say that the mythology, you make the point that is practical and what

you mean by that? >> people like my father with christianity in different churches said the world was created in 70s and we take it off that way. other people say it your own story. and he would've said that too. it was when i was in africa in the student that i met the foreign minister who wrote a book about the creation stories in the tribe and when i read the creation stories that he wrote, they were very practical, about what men do, woman do, why we die, the shape of our bodies, work, relationships within the

tribe, and at one second i thought, that is strange, the jesus story is also very practical, it talks about why we die, men and women and gender in what is right. at least as as people thought, and then it's important to understand that particular cultural pattern and we have to accept their values entirely but thinking about them is exciting. >> absolutely, why religion -- but, you wrote from a place of loss. and there was a transition moment of course, and it was your husband a year later.

so when you relating that part with your sons with open heart surgery, you write and appoint that you sensed you are not alone and i just wonder if you're comfortable talking abo about. >> it is interesting, with religion yet to be careful of what do you say sometimes. and i was going to write about what i call experiences that i cannot explain. and actually talking with a friend, a poet on how and she was brought up in a catholic family and her name was mary and she wrote a beautiful poem about the virgin mary with the virgin gabriel and gabriel pierce and

says 0, what happened to me something like that, i had an experience of loving presence and i said, well -- she said of course i cannot say that, and i said why not. and she said that is the last to be. and i said really, i'm going to write about that. and you have some kind of experience that you don't explain people have experiences, and you know what i'm talking about, my son on his first birthday was having open heart

surgery and as presbyterian and the staff and hospital did not want. separate this was 25 years ago, so had to sleep on the concrete floor where you cannot sleep at all. and i was there by myself at three in the morning and i had a sense that there were other people and i do sense that there was a circle of women. they were there in the room with me, it seemed that they were physically there, soy somehow added my father and my mother who were in california at the time and i felt very peaceful after that. so the next morning we took the

food and they willed him up to surgery, i wrote a note to my friend and i said you know i had this experience last night they were here in the hospital and there were these women and when i got home a few days later i had a note saying monday will be in sister circle in california praying for you. and i said i had no noise you that there was a sister circle or that they had one. who knows if they had one, i cannot explain it i just know it happened. and that's experience are talking about. i decided i would include those. now people you think she's off the deep end. [laughter] i find that as part of the experience in the tradition. >> i think sometimes we didn't

know about scholarship and we cannot put ourselves, and i love how you weave the two together and re-create these painful moments where your son, your husband in your lives together in the lives of the minds and anxieties, and we do a few years later, from what you're saying, when your son does, and you say what years after that moment, do you review this "after words"? >> i don't know how to answer that right, when people think about, you believe in god, do believe in this, do believe in that, i had believes -- sometimes i think it's overrated, because we think about beliefs because so many of

us are doing with christian tradition and for centuries they come off a set of beliefs, but these traditions are much more than that. they are back experiences of people have, how as a culture, society, how we make transitions that are typical, like transitions for birth, to adolescent, traditions in marriage, traditions and death, how does traditions move us toward taupe and toward positive responses to change which can be difficult of course as we all know. but so many other functions than

simply believing. i hope and imagine, i cannot say i believe that. but i don't disbelieve it either. it is a different kind of reality is seems to me. some of the other things every mysterious. >> you use that word in the book, and these mysterious elements, what about freezing it in many questions, a lot of people are trained to find meaning in you pivot that and say, religion may create meaning and i'm just wondering if you mind, we can turn over to audience of people want to start coming up. >> people talk about finding

meaning. one thing i heard, as you mentioned, the death of a child. and one reason i read about it because it happen and it was a very powerful experience, of course but also it is something of all kinds of walks, but many people experience it and never talk about or write about it. i could not have. it was 30 years after the loss of her son and the death of my husband which was an accident. so, it was necessary to write about it, second, i realized that one of the things that happen when a child is

particularly, the size, grief and devastation that people often feel guilty, we can fill guilty about any kind of death we experience especially anyone close to us, but as a child, you as a parent have an obligation to keep the child alive. and if you cannot do that, they had nothing to do the, you may have done everything that you can to keep the child alive and nevertheless to fill guilty. the day after happen, if it had anything to do with you it would not happen that way. i thought that's pretty obvious but it doesn't feel obvious. but i did not realize that a cultural tradition and skills i wanted to write to other people who had such experiences to try

to dissolve in the guilt on top of the other that one experiences. i was re-enforced of tradition. looking at the bible, there is a story about david and after king david had been married, beautiful wife, before they are married and become a mother, she has a recent son and -- the infant dies, because of the parents were guilty of a sexual transgression. so the bible teaches that these things should not happen if you

or i or anyone has done something wrong. and part of the study of religion, is not the encourages us but to allow us to think about it, criticizing and say yes or no, it is not about that. it is waiting on your control intellect go of the tradition that have heard people and harmed people in the way the viewer invented. >> i don't think we have anybody to ask questions you. so, the husband -- did that make

it harder to be in church in those groups with the tradition monastery of other groups that mattered that there's client and a point of view of a parent that is lost a child, did you find support groups with religions or organizations? and that this was a potential, i just wonder if you might reflect on how to get to the experience j today. >> that is a really hard question. anyway you possibly can, they helped family and people you love, that is primary.

and they must've been a great help, i never felt further from safe then and the time of grief, what ever faith is it was not what i had at the time at all. but, i was studying religion and it became kind of a yoga, i was struggling with the question and talking about finding me, people would say you have such spiritual lessons from the death of your child. and if say in the lesson to me is worth my child's life, that seem to me completely wrong way to articulate it because whatever list, people create these. i don't think we just find it

line around, i thought about the book -- the book about all -- [inaudible] men searching for meaning, and in the book he writes about suffering of experiencing and most of us have inflicted on purpose, unbelievable suffering and how the death camps in bor borowitz, the one that you can get through, things you imagine you cannot live through is by creating and that can be very

personal and different lives. in our case, in case of my husband and myself at the time, we were devastated so we cannot live without children, so we do not have children of our own so we adopted two children and we thought we cannot give the love that we gave to her son to them, so we adopted an infant daughter and infant son who are now in their 30s, just beginning 30s and that was a way of finding meaning, it did not make her son's death meaningful, it allowed for different kinds of meaning. so for example, when mothers who lose a child to a drunk driver as created, people whose

children have died through gunshot, have been fighting gun violence in this country, that some people find meaning and that's what i mean by creating meaning, the religious tradition as part of the way we do that. >> we will take a question here in them will go over here. >> the whole history of religion, as god exists, it would not be that difficult for god to demonstrate the answers as to many questions. you prefer that path? >> i've never had the option. [laughter]

i do history and is not counterfactual. we live with the mysteries in a kind of love them. that they are fact. and would i like to understand them? sure. i don't think our brains are quite equipped for that. our experiences somehow that we find joyful. thank you for the interesting question. >> i find it very helpful that this is the way you talk about religion and tradition, as a lifelong catholic for the last 20 years we've been struggling with how i can continue in religion and some of the things,

i find myself in church every sunday and think i don't believe that, i don't believe that. but i also want to continue and it seems to me, this is my question to you, how we could be more progressive in examinations and interpretations, it would help someone at times. . . . >> i do love these traditions so when they say are you religious.

i say oh yes incredibly religious. i love the music, i love the worship the sins of prayer. i've been brought up protestant but i've spent time in a catholic monastery in colorado it's monks who obey deep sense of spirituality. they never asked me if i was catholic. they knew i was a heretic. [laughter] but they were such presence of a spiritual people and they speak of contemplative prayer at the monastery. rhonda my teachers taught a prayer and he didn't bother it's do you believe in this party believe in that. anyone who knew as much at he had, he had such a spiritual path. the original meaning of the christian tradition, they called it the way.

that's what it's called in the greek in the new testament. it's not an end. it's a path. i look at it that way. explore the history of tradition and think about it as an explorer. i don't think you could swallow all of christianity. his 2000 years of tradition. it's indigestible. [laughter] there at so much of it. if it catholic or a liberal catholic or conservative. you could be a christian scientist or a baptist or pentecostal or episcopalian or methodist. russian orthodox, there are so many ways to do that. i think each rhonda us, for me i am kind of person who has to

keep thinking. i think it's a way and a path. it's not an arrival for me. it at something we can keep doing. in the church that i go to, when i go to church as it happens to be an episcopal church, i have to say yes and no to it. there's a lot about christian tradition that damages people. so many attitudes about sexuality that are traditional in church. it can be very damaging to people who are conforming to thousands of years ago ways of perceiving gender. i think there are things to which each rhonda us might say yes and no. in some people say at just self-indulgence. they say no this is the path. i think it's a great one. i go and worship and i listen to

the music i love the liturgy. i don't think you have to believe it all. to love those traditions and love some more than others. thank you. thank you for raising that question. i think it's in a very important one. [applause] >> personal thank you so much for being here. my question at, you explained your value and about your text and sources may be more complicated. in my opinion, that the advanced course. people who are basically religious, they could do something else and so the rest

of the people in my generation, i don't even move that you can accept conventional bible stories. willie observed then in these moments of important transition like marriage we don't have a shared vocabulary. in many cases, at appropriate there were not using exclusively christian language in our settings. there are multicultural celebrations. i am wondering what your observation at in terms of where we are driving our socially shared values from today. because it's not from conventional at him. it seems like a brand and that scares me. then the second question at do you have any advice for people

in society today who feel that lacking of socially held in shared values of where they get it if it's not in the religion that they share it's those around them. >> really important questions. i think it's true that if you look at say the new testament, the values that i realize i care deeply about, are those that articulated in relationships to other people. loving your neighbor, to care for people in need, these are very fundamental and if you look at a sports team, you see it's about sharing and working together cooperating, collaborating, caring for each other. i think this values are thereto. for some people they come in the forum of jewish tradition, muslim tradition, christian

tradition and they don't have to come in that forum. sometimes we can actually create our own rituals. i've done that is it too. i sort of add them to the others. what i like about the secret tradition at they show us some of what at lacking. rhonda them at the presence of women among the apostles. the gospels of mary maitland shows is the completely perspective about women. they just aren't part of the ordinary tradition. some people find them it's in traditions and some of them don't. you raise a very important question. do you have ways of creating rituals or do you like that. >> move i just like excessively ask everyone i meet. [laughter] it makes most people

uncomfortable. >> i love the question. that's one reason i study the history of religion. because it shows you different ways that people have done that. this euros teaching it's a colleague, his specialty at buddhism. we called it jesus and buddha. we had a hundred students intercourse. i was talking about jesus and he was talking about buddha. we were talking about what each culture understands in the continental value. this quite exciting. because buddhist traditions have different qualities, cultural traditions, different views of death and live in the meaning of particular events. it's quite different. i find exploring this traditions as a way of finding ways that

people do that. i'd encourage you to explore some of the history of these traditions. because rhonda the questions when i was writing this book, kept staying to myself, not just why religion, that's a problem memory question of my entire work. why at religion still around in the 21st century. i was told it was going to die out. it hasn't quite died out. and the question at why not. i think because it embodies and carries and articulates values that deeply matter to people. so exploring those can be a way of dealing it's the question that you ask. that is a really important question. thank you. >> i think we only have time for one more question.

can we have a short question please. >> thank you very much for providing the book. towards the end of the book at obviously to the reader that is not a how-to book unfortunately. [laughter] in the last 40 or 50 pages, often have from your experience, i was wondering about the topics you explored either academically or spiritually or otherwise. >> yes, the text that we stumbled upon in graduate school are obviously tax that speak about experiential events.

the gospel of thomas at about bringing forth it's in within you and experience and at very close to kabbalah which is the jewish tradition of mysticism. which are only written down about a thousand to 15 hundred years later. because jewish teachers talking about deeper events, mystical experiences. but yes, they do go into those kind of experiences. and yes i think that's where these kind of works lead. use of the book at about religion but you don't answer the question. no i don't. it's an exploration and i am still investigating. [applause]

>> in the final sense of the book, you say parts sometimes heal. hearts heal. >> it's about the work i do and why do it and why i love it. we've been talking about that. but i also had to write about experiences that i had to put behind me because they were overwhelming, the death of our son through an illness and the sudden death of my husband. we've been married 22 years. i was devastated and we had just adopted two children. i cannot imagine surviving that. soy to put those experiences out of my consciousness in a way. it felt like a black hole in

space. there was nothing. you just get swept into a vortex and he don't come out. so i can go there. we have those experiences, usually they don't go away, they are still there. so when the children were out of the house and a more space and time to think, those experiences come back and then it seems to me like i need it to engage them in order to fully experience my live. so the book at partly about those griefs. but it's about much more than that because i didn't want to write about grief. everybody here knows about grief. i didn't want to write a grief memoir. what i wanted to write about was only the joy of the work i do, but the surprise and i move many of you move this, the surprise that you can live through things that you think you can't live

through. you think you could ever survive and find joy again. that's not true. i things amazing to be alive and having experiences of joy. being here and writing the book places it in a certain perspective and communicating it's so many people here. it's another forum of that joy so thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you for the joy you brought us. thank you for reminding us that complexity can go into the shaping of joy. that the mind it's not separate from joy. we thank you for the body of your work that causes a distinguished career. please join me in thanking elaine.

[applause] [inaudible conversation] and noah cspan2 to book tv more television for serious raters. serious readers. [inaudible conversation] >> good evening everyone my name at elizabeth. i like to welcome you all these evening.