Elaine Hiesey Pagels Biography

Elaine Hiesey Pagels

Elaine Pagels is a scholar who has achieved popular as well as academic success. Most of her publications have focused on early Christianity and Gnostic Christianity, including The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis (1973) and The Gnostic Paul (1975). Pagels was also part of an international group that published an English version of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1979, Pagels published The Gnostic Gospels, which demonstrated the heterogeneous nature of early Christianity and earned her the National Book Critics Circle and the National Book Awards. In addition, she has published Adam, Eve and the Serpent (1988), and The Origin of Satan (1995). Pagels has been awarded several prestigious fellowships including a Rockefeller Fellowship (1978), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1979), and the MacArthur Prize (1981). Pagels has taught at Princeton University since 1983.