Elaine Pagels on “The Historical Mystery of Jesus”

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: Elaine Pagels on “The Historical Mystery of Jesus”

Host: David Remnick
Guest: Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton
Date: December 30, 2025

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Overview

This episode features a deep, personal, and scholarly conversation between David Remnick and renowned scholar Elaine Pagels about the evolution of Christian narratives, the historical figure of Jesus, and enduring questions about faith, belief, miracles, and grief. Pagels, celebrated for her groundbreaking work on the Gnostic Gospels and early Christianity, speaks candidly about her intellectual journey, personal loss, and engagement with the enduring “historical mystery” surrounding Jesus.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Elaine Pagels’ Early Encounter with Faith and Loss

• Pagels describes her upbringing in a non-religious, scientific family, with religion barely on her radar.
• As a teenager, she attended a Billy Graham crusade, experiencing a brief but powerful evangelical conversion.
  • “You get invited to be born again and have a new family and start your life over. And I thought, that's great.” (Pagels, 02:34)
• Her experience soured after her evangelical church told her a Jewish friend who had died would be in hell.
  • “I just felt like I'd been socked in the stomach. And I just walked out. I never went back.” (Pagels, 04:56)
• The loss of her child and husband deepened her questions about the usefulness and nature of faith:
  • “I found that in times of grief, the church has little to say. It's just too remote.” (Remnick quoting Pagels, 01:30)

Transition to Religious Scholarship

• Pagels distinguishes her scholarly curiosity from conventional faith:
  • “At that time, I didn't think of my work as a relationship with faith exactly. It was more a relationship with curiosity.” (Pagels, 02:04)
• She was drawn into religious scholarship by the transformative, imaginative aspect of faith experiences—even ones she ultimately left behind.
  • “It opened up elements of my experience that nothing else did.” (Pagels, 05:31)
  • Describes faith as “opening up the imagination,” comparing it to the wonder of The Wizard of Oz (06:01).

Jesus as Myth and History

• Pagels reflects on initially perceiving Jesus as a mythological figure, not a historical one.
  • “I didn't think of him as a real person. I thought of some grand mythological drama going on in the sky.” (Pagels, 07:44)
• She discusses the standardized four Gospels and the exclusion of others (so-called Gnostic Gospels):
  • “We knew there were far more than four, but four became part of a canon, which means a standard.” (Pagels, 09:13)
  • The canonized Gospels contain narrative, while others were often just sayings—private teachings to disciples (Pagels, 09:55–10:58).
  • Gnostic texts were considered heretical partly because “you can't confirm what's said” (Pagels, 11:01).

Miraculous Narratives & the Immaculate Conception

• Discussion of the controversies around the virgin birth and Jesus’ parentage.
  • Only two of the four canonical Gospels mention the virgin birth; earliest sources do not.
  • “The earliest account we have doesn't say that at all. ... There's no father of Jesus. It's clear that the neighbors think that he might have been an illegitimate child.” (Pagels, 12:52)
• Elaine explores possible historical explanations, including the presence of Roman soldiers near Nazareth and the cultural assumptions about sexual assault during times of occupation (15:20).

Miracles, Myth, and Modernity

• Comparing ancient and modern receptivity to miracles:
  • “I would say less inclined now, yes, because ... all great men were somehow also credited to have a divine being somewhere in their genealogy.” (Pagels, 16:49–17:27)

The Nature of Belief and Practice

• Pagels separates religious belief from religious practice and communal identity:
  • “I really think belief is far overrated.” (Pagels, 18:36)
  • In Judaism and Buddhism, practice and participation are more central than doctrinal belief (18:42–19:41).
  • She identifies as “sort of” Christian by heritage, but also deeply drawn to other traditions, including Buddhist meditation groups.
  • “Jesus seems like he was a historical person, but he's not just that. There are myths woven into the stories ... not just a history at all.” (Pagels, 20:13)

Death, Grief, and the Invisible World

• On the afterlife:
  • “I don't know. I don't know. It leads me to at least have an open question.” (Pagels, 21:15)
• Engages with Tanya Lerman’s idea that practice and openness, rather than belief, are central to experiencing the divine or transcendent (21:50–22:52).
• Shares a profound personal experience after her husband’s death:
  • She felt she could “ask” her late husband a question during deep meditation, and received an internal response:
    • “A voice came into my head, not auditory. This is fine with me. It's you I think about now. ... But who said that? ... It seemed like my husband's voice.” (Pagels, 24:19–25:34)
• On prayer and meditation:
  • “Sometimes, yes [I pray], but not usually a lot of words. Meditate, maybe.” (Pagels, 25:41)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the emotional gap left by organized religion in grief:

  “I found that in times of grief, the church has little to say. It's just too remote.”
  (Remnick quoting Pagels, 01:30)

• On transformative religious experience:

  “I did feel like the sky opened up. ... It was like something happened.”
  (Pagels, 03:59)

• On exclusion from evangelical church:

  “Well, then he's in hell. And I just felt like I'd been socked in the stomach. And I just walked out. I never went back.”
  (Pagels, 04:56)

• On why explore Christian origins:

  “There was something transformative about it [conversion] and it was important. Like it opened up elements of my experience that nothing else did.”
  (Pagels, 05:31)

• On canon formation:

  “We knew there were far more than four, but four became part of a canon, which means a standard.”
  (Pagels, 09:13)

• On personal religious orientation:

  “I would say Christian. I love that tradition in some ways. And Jesus seems like he was a historical person, but he's not just that.”
  (Pagels, 19:56–20:13)

• On belief vs. practice:

  “I really think belief is far overrated.”
  (Pagels, 18:36)

• On the possibility of the afterlife and the invisible:

  “I have a sense that what we think of as the invisible world has deep realities to it that are quite unfathomable.”
  (Pagels, 21:31)

• On mystical experience during mourning:

  “I thought I could. Suddenly, after we meditated for an hour, I had the idea that I could ask my husband a question. ... And a voice came into my head ... It seemed like my husband's voice.”
  (Pagels, 24:19–25:34)

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Important Timestamps

• Elaine Pagels on personal loss and faith – 02:04–04:58
• Evangelical conversion and departure – 02:34–04:58
• Imagination and the power of myth – 06:01–07:44
• Gnostic Gospels & canon formation – 09:01–11:01
• Virgin Birth controversy & historical context – 12:52–16:37
• On belief, religious practice, and identity – 18:36–20:13
• Afterlife and the invisible world – 21:09–22:52
• Personal mystical experience after loss – 24:19–25:34

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Conclusion

This thoughtful conversation traverses personal, historical, and theological terrain. Pagels invites listeners to reconsider the boundaries between faith, imagination, scholarship, practice, and mystery. Her own experiences—intellectual, emotional, mystical—bring fresh illumination to the enduring questions about Jesus, belief, and what it means to deeply engage with traditions both old and new.

Transcript

[Narrator/Producer]

This is the new yorker radio hour, a co production of wnyc studios and the new yorker.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. 30 years ago I published a piece in the New Yorker with the title the Devil Problem. It was a profile of Elaine Pagels, a scholar of early Christianity who had also become improbably a best selling author. Pagel's 1979 book The Gnostic Gospels was scholarly, but it was also accessible outside the academy and very widely read. She changed how a lot of people, Christians and those we might call Christian, curious, it affected how they thought about the Bible itself. Pagels went on to write the Origin of Satan as well as works on Adam and Eve and the book of Revelation. Her latest book is called Miracles and Wonder, and it takes on some of the central historical controversies of Christianity, including the stories of immaculate conception and the Resurrection. For many years, Pagels has been a professor of religion at Princeton. When we spoke earlier this year, I was struck by how focused she has remained on the topic of belief and how the world of two millennia ago, the world of the Jews and the Romans and Jesus, is to her so vividly alive. We first met, you're not going to believe this 30 years ago. And shortly thereafter you published a book and I decided to write about you. You had suffered unimaginable loss. First, one of your children had died after a long illness, and then your husband, Heinz Pagels, had an accident and died while hiking. And you told me, and this is a quote from you at that time, I found that in times of grief, the church has little to say. It's just too remote. How did that loss or those losses affect your relationship to faith?

[Elaine Pagels]

At that time, I didn't think of my work as a relationship with faith exactly. It was more a relationship with curiosity. I had given up on faith, you know, much earlier. My family wasn't religious. I mean, they would say, the grandparents would call themselves Christians, but my father had given it up. You know, he was a scientist. Yeah, he was a biologist, Darwin.

[David Remnick]

But you as a teenager, well, that.

[Elaine Pagels]

Was just an accident. I mean, religion was not on the spectrum for me until somebody took me to San Francisco for something and it turned out it was an evangelical crusade. I didn't know who this guy was, Billy Graham, but he was powerful and the whole event was extraordinary. And I, you know, you get invited to be born again and have a new family and start your life over. And I thought, that's great.

[David Remnick]

14 you describe this scene as it was, I think, at the old Cow palace in San Francisco where basketball games were played. And you were so taken with Billy Graham, who's. I guess for younger people who are listening, don't know, but Billy Graham was the great evangelist of his day and filled Yankee Stadium and other such places. That's it.

[Elaine Pagels]

Quickly, from everywhere, Jesus come. That's it.

[Audience Member/Interjection]

Come on.

[David Remnick]

There are many people streaming down every aisle here. Hundreds of people here in the Car palace. And there are many of you sitting.

[Elaine Pagels]

In your living room, room at home.

[David Remnick]

You'd like to be here and come down this aisle and stand here and give your life to Christ.

[Elaine Pagels]

You can.

[David Remnick]

Right where you are. And you were so swept away as a teenager. Then in the course of the evening, you were called to Christ.

[Elaine Pagels]

Yes. I mean, he had, you know, this 6,000 people singing and, you know, you can have this experience with God and all this. And I was just totally captivated. He was charismatic and he surprised me. The whole thing surprised me. But I did feel like the sky opened up. You know, it was like something happened.

[David Remnick]

But it was brief.

[Elaine Pagels]

Well, it lasted until, you know, the church I went to told me something I couldn't stand. It was. A friend of mine in high school had been killed in an automobile accident. And I went back to this evangelical church of which I'd been a part for a year, quite intensely. And I said, my friend has been killed in an accident. And they said, that's terrible. Was he born again? And I said, no, he was Jewish. And then someone said, well, then he's in hell. And I just felt like I'd been.

[David Remnick]

That was out. You were out.

[Elaine Pagels]

Socked in the stomach. And I just walked out. I never went back.

[David Remnick]

So how did you decide to make a life of scholarship in religion? You've now published the latest book in what I consider a lifelong project. There's a real continuity to all these books. Why did you come to focus on Christianity and some of the lesser known narratives of Christianity? Books that aren't part of the official canon? You've given your professional life to this, your intellectual life to this. Why?

[Elaine Pagels]

Because I had some kind of powerful experience with that conversion. It didn't last. I mean, I left that group, that whole evangelical perspective on Christianity didn't work for me. But there was something transformative about it and it was important. Like it opened up elements of my experience that nothing else did.

[David Remnick]

Describe that, because not everybody's had that. How did it change your life and your mind?

[Elaine Pagels]

It's about the imagination. I mean, I was living in a world which, you know, science Defines what you can see. And there's nothing else. Right. That's at least what I was brought up hearing. But this was about opening up the imagination. I always thought about it later as the way I felt about the wizard of Oz as a child. Right. Just suddenly I was out there with Dorothy. You know, the Wicked Witch gets killed, and there's Glinda the Good, and there's all of this action going on, this adventure, which is internal but very powerful. And that book's become a template for my life when I was maybe 8 years old. And these stories of Jesus do that as well. And it did it for me in that moment. And even though I left it, I thought, wait a minute, why are religions still part of culture? I mean, it is true that there's no culture that doesn't have some form of claims about invisible beings and how we interact with them. So I thought, could it be Buddhism? Could it be Judaism? Could it be Islam? Or is it Christianity? So I decided I wanted to find out, how does that work? And why do people continue those traditions even long after they're discredited rationally?

[David Remnick]

When you were a kid and had this kind of evangelical breakthrough, no matter how fleeting it was, did you think of Jesus as a real person in existing in a real historical time among political currents, as well as think of him in terms of a kind of supernatural or religious presence?

[Elaine Pagels]

That's an interesting question. And it makes me realize that I didn't think of him as a real person. I thought of some grand mythological drama going on in the sky. You know, there's God and Satan and Jesus, and you're in part of a drama. That's why I mentioned the wizard of Oz. I mean, it's part of a imaginary.

[David Remnick]

Cinematic metaphor, but not real.

[Elaine Pagels]

Yeah, well, I didn't think about that. He wasn't real. I just thought whoever that might have been, this was now some grand drama played out in the universe, and that's how it felt.

[David Remnick]

If you could. And I know it's an elementary question, but it's crucial to understand it if we're gonna get at your work in a de way. But we know the New Testament, and we know that there are four Gospels, right? Four gospels emerged and somehow became canonical in what we know as the New Testament. There was a discovery at a certain point of a gigantic jar by somebody who basically came across it and broke it open. And inside were texts, some of which were used, as I hate to even think about it, half of them seem to have been burned up, most likely Right.

[Elaine Pagels]

Used as kindling for the fire. Yes.

[David Remnick]

But what survived are what's called the Gnostic Gospels. What are they and how do they compare to the book of Mark and Matthew? Well, and so on.

[Elaine Pagels]

When those gospels now in the New Testament were written, there were others as well. We know that because people at the time said, oh, well, there's the Gospel of Truth and there's the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Matthew and. And the Gospel to the Egyptians, you know, they name these. And some of the earliest writers say, well, there are genuine gospels, and then there are terrible ones. Avoid those. They're written by heretics. They will lead you astray. So we knew there were far more than four, but four became part of a canon, which means a standard. Right.

[David Remnick]

Why did they emerge and become the canon and the others fell away?

[Elaine Pagels]

I think they became the canon because they talk about actual narratives of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. These others are not that they usually consist of sayings, just teachings which are different from those in the New Testament. The ones in the New Testament, as Mark points out when he writes about them, are the public teaching of Jesus, what he taught when he was out with crowds on the hills of Galilee. And that's repeated in Luke and Matthew as well, also in the Gospel of Thomas. But these other gospels, which are called Gnostic for all the wrong reasons, by the way, it was partly my fault. Claim to give private teaching that he gave secretly to certain disciples, the way any rabbi teaches today. Right. There's one thing to the congregation that's preached, and that teacher will say different things to his closest followers and sort of advanced level students.

[David Remnick]

But why would they be considered heretical?

[Elaine Pagels]

Because you can't confirm what's said, I suppose.

[David Remnick]

I'm talking with the religion scholar Elaine Pagels, and we'll continue in a moment.

[Audience Member/Interjection]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported by AT&T. AT&T believes hearing a voice can change everything. And if you love podcasts, you get it. The power of hearing someone speak is unmatched. It's why we save those voicemails from our loved ones. They mean something. AT&T knows the holidays are the perfect time to do just that. Share your voice. If it's been a while since you called someone who matters, now's the time. Because it's more than just a conversation. It's a chance to say something they'll hear forever. So spread a little love with a call this season. Happy holidays from AT&T. Connecting changes everything.

[Elaine Pagels]

On the next on the media 2025 a year like no one's ever seen before. And the war against the press got faster and furiouser.

[Narrator/Producer]

We welcome independent journalists, podcasters, social media.

[Elaine Pagels]

Influencers and content creators to apply for.

[Narrator/Producer]

Credentials to cover this White House.

[Elaine Pagels]

A rollercoaster ride on the next on the media from wnyc.

[David Remnick]

One part of your new book that's already received some, let's just say, attention in the Catholic hierarchy long before publication is your investigation of the narratives of immaculate conception. Tell me how this is still controversial and uncertain 2,000 years later.

[Elaine Pagels]

Well, we're talking about virgin birth story, which you find in two out of four New Testament Gospels that Jesus was somehow conceived in some spiritual way without the intervention of any man or any semen or any Joseph or any Joseph. Yes. The claim that Jesus was spiritually conceived in some way is a stunning claim, and it's always raised a lot of questions which are never answered. And the earliest account we have doesn't say that at all. It just says, Mary, his mother was a rural woman in Nazareth. She had a lot of children. There's no man ever mentioned in her life. There's no father of Jesus. And it's clear that the neighbors think that he might have been an illegitimate child. And that's an early.

[David Remnick]

How long has that been in the scholarly discussion, the possibility that Jesus might have been an illegitimate child, to use the old phrase?

[Elaine Pagels]

Well, I think it's in Mark's narrative in a direct way, indirectly. Mark doesn't say that, but the neighbors say, who is this? Who does he think he is? He's just Mary's son. He's a carpenter. Why is he out there preaching as if he was some kind of prophet? Why is he trying to heal people and he can't do anything in his hometown because they scorn him. But as early as the end of the first century, when Matthew is being written, there are critics in the Jewish communities who reject those claims about Jesus, that he's not the Messiah. The whole thing is a false trail.

[David Remnick]

Is it an unspeakable thing among Catholic prelates and in Catholic academia to raise this question?

[Elaine Pagels]

It's not because the person with whom I was most familiar, actually, he wrote the review of the Gnostic Gospels on the front page of the New York Times Book Review.

[David Remnick]

Who was that?

[Elaine Pagels]

Raymond Brown. But what it said is these texts were rubbish in the first century. They're still rubbish.

[David Remnick]

So it wasn't an entirely positive review?

[Elaine Pagels]

No, not at all. It was written by a Catholic scholar, and he.

[David Remnick]

He thought you were making a mountain out of A molehill?

[Elaine Pagels]

Well, he thought I was making a sacred book out of trash.

[David Remnick]

Yeah.

[Elaine Pagels]

And he wrote a huge text, the largest one and the most comprehensively researched there is. It's about the virgin birth of Jesus, the birth of the Messiah. And he considers the possibility that Jesus birth involves something different from some miraculous event, not supernatural. Yes. He says some people say that Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier. He wasn't even Jewish. But he said that's impossible because there were no Roman soldiers until after the Jewish war. But that's not true at all. He didn't know about the insurrection of Judas the Galilean, which brought many Roman troops into the huge city of Sephorus, which is a three and a half mile walk from Nazareth, and that those soldiers were stationed there after they burned the entire city down and enslaved the inhabitants for harboring a Jewish revolutionary against Rome. And it's now well known among scholars of military history of the time that those soldiers were very disorderly and that any young person, male or female, who'd spent time with a Roman soldier was assumed to have been sexually assaulted.

[David Remnick]

You know, as I was reading this book, I asked myself if we are today in the modern world more or less inclined to believe in miracles than the contemporaries of Jesus.

[Elaine Pagels]

I would say less inclined now, yes, because, as you know, I'm sure people who wrote about the Roman emperors. Julius Caesar had an ancestor who was Venus, and Augustus had a divine ancestor. He was called Son of God on the Roman coins. And all great men were somehow also credited to have a divine being somewhere in their genealogy, which adds a special sauce to their humanity and makes them more than human.

[David Remnick]

You've said that you left the faith as a teenager after briefly entering it. You've been through everything in life and more that has to offer, whether it's life and loss and love and it's loss and all these things, and have had an incredibly rich, scholarly, intellectual life. Does religion as such play any role in your life beyond its being a source of your intellectual commitment and study?

[Elaine Pagels]

Well, yes. It is not what people call organized religion.

[David Remnick]

You don't go to church?

[Elaine Pagels]

I have sometimes and sometimes I do.

[David Remnick]

Because in what spirit?

[Elaine Pagels]

Well, only if it's powerfully engaging, if the music and the service is powerful. It can be almost any kind of service, whether a Christian service, it can be a bar mitzvah, it can be a Buddhist ritual. There's a quality about sacred time and experience that evokes some element of experience that I can't articulate really, but it's.

[David Remnick]

Not Belief as such.

[Elaine Pagels]

It's not belief, actually, David, I really think belief is far overrated.

[David Remnick]

Tell me about that.

[Elaine Pagels]

Well, after the advent of Christianity, you know, which in the fourth century, as you know, it becomes a code of beliefs, like, I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Maker. Okay, that's it. And so later, people would talk about different traditions and they'd say, well, what do Jews believe and what do Muslims believe and what do Buddhists believe? Well, belief isn't really the point so much in Judaism. The point is, are you orthodox, Are you secular, Are you reform? To what degree do you practice or not? And in Buddhism, it's much the same. It's about the prayers, it's about participation in certain rituals.

[David Remnick]

Well, Judaism also is the one that I know where it's closest to me. It's also a matter of its being a civilization and a language and what language is and a great deal more. It's not just, do I believe in God? Do I not believe in God?

[Elaine Pagels]

Exactly. It's a set of values and ethical.

[David Remnick]

Tradition or set of arguments.

[Elaine Pagels]

Yes, a set of arguments. But it also has very deep emotional support in the practices that people do.

[David Remnick]

So is it too banal to ask you if you are a Christian or not?

[Elaine Pagels]

Well, it's a hard question. I mean, yes, I feel identified with Christian tradition from the way I grew up. And it speaks to me as sort of. Sort of like English, you know, that's the language I grew up with. And I find it compelling in many ways. But it's not the only kind of tradition that compels me. I mean, I'm engaged with some friends in New York in a Buddhist meditation group, which we meet often, and other traditions as well. But, yes, I would say Christian. I love that tradition in some ways. And Jesus seems like he was a historical person, but he's not just that. There are myths woven into the stories. There are elaborations, there are miracles. There are signs and symbols that play in the stories. It's not just a history at all. These texts are called Good News because they're publications of the message of Jesus, which is, God is going to come into the world and transform it, and your world can be transformed. Come and be part of that transformation. And the world, which now contains so much suffering and pain, will sort of explode into a glorious new reality.

[David Remnick]

What does all your study and experience lead you to think? What happens after we die?

[Elaine Pagels]

I don't know. I don't know. It leads me to at least have an open question. I mean, I assumed until some time ago that after we die, you know, it's sort of that's it. What Steve Jobs was said to say, just lights out. But even stories I've heard about his death suggest that at some point he suggested there was something else. And maybe that's just the thing people need when they go into death to allow them to do it. But there may be something else. So I have a sense that what we think of as the invisible world has deep realities to it that are quite unfathomable. I think about this in the way that Tanya Lerman at Stanford wrote a brilliant book called How God Becomes Real. She's talking about Jewish tradition, she's talking about Muslim tradition, about witchcraft and about Christianity, various kinds. And she says people don't just talk to invisible beings because they believe they're there. They actually engage in practices like prayer, meditation, opening themselves up to a larger sense of expectation of what's real. And as they practice that, they become susceptible to envisioning more reality than the visible world or seeing the transcendent.

[David Remnick]

And you include yourself in that?

[Elaine Pagels]

I do, I do, and Tanya does herself in the book. So it need not be spirits and gods. It could be the beauty of nature, the way it transforms people, or of art or music that seems to open up a wider reality than the visible. So, yes, I'm now bizarrely open to that.

[David Remnick]

Do you think about death a lot?

[Elaine Pagels]

No, not too much. Except. Except when I bring it up as we get older. Yes, it does come in.

[David Remnick]

It does cross the mind for some.

[Elaine Pagels]

Reason, and, you know, it's very interesting. But I had some experiences with people I love who died that I couldn't explain at all and totally didn't expect. I didn't. I thought this was. I couldn't imagine it would happen. But what were they? Well, even after my husband's sudden death, mountain climbing accident, it was just an utter, total shock. I went to a Trappist monastery in Colorado where I happened to have gone with musicians who were playing music for the monks from the Juilliard Quartet. Robert Mann and I got to know the monks and I often went there and meditated in this very beautiful well of silence in the chapel. I couldn't be a Catholic, it just sort of against my Protestant resistance to that kind of authority. But there was something very deep and powerful about those experiences with those monks. And after my husband's death and after planning the funeral in a very spiritually deprived Protestant church in town, I went out there and meditated with one of the monks who is an amazing Man. And I thought I heard a voice saying to me, I thought I could. Suddenly, after we meditated for an hour, I had the idea that I could ask my husband a question. I said, well, what do you think about this? And a voice came into my head, not auditory. This is fine with me. It's you I think about now. And I said, fine with you. I was what do you mean, fine with you? You leave me with two tiny babies. One is three months old, one is a year and a half, and you're gone. And I'm what do you expect me to do with this? And I was irate at first. And then I thought, wait a minute, who said that? I don't think it was my unconscious. It was not fine with me. Then what was seemed like his voice. It seemed like my husband's voice. And I thought, how dare you ask. How dare you say it's fine with you?

[David Remnick]

So you had a marital argument?

[Elaine Pagels]

We had a marital argument.

[David Remnick]

In his absence, yes. At this late date, do you pray?

[Elaine Pagels]

Three days sometimes, yes, but not usually a lot of words. Meditate, maybe. So that wasn't the only experience with unexpected events like that.

[David Remnick]

Elaine Pagels, thank you so much.

[Elaine Pagels]

Thank you very much, David.

[David Remnick]

Elaine Pagels is professor of religion at Princeton and her latest book is Miracles and the Historical Mystery of Jesus. I'm David Remnick and that's our program for today. Thanks for listening today and always throughout the year. And I hope you have a good new year to come.

[Narrator/Producer]

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