Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Pagels, Elaine - James Finn Cotter (review date Spring 1989)

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James Finn Cotter (review date Spring 1989)

SOURCE: "Pagels's Paradise Lost," in The Hudson Review, Vol. XLII, No. 1, Spring, 1989, pp. 165-70.

[In the review below, Cotter argues that while Adam, Eve, and the Serpent is well-written and persuasive, it contains misleading and inaccurate areas.]

In the epilogue of her new book [Adam, Eve, and the Serpent], Elaine Pagels tells us that, dissatisfied with contemporary Christianity, she turned to the earliest Christians for answers. She assumed that in that era, when the movement was pristine and primitive, things were simpler and purer. She found the opposite to be true: the movement was diversified, divided by controversy, and complex.

So what else is new?

Well, what Pagels found sounds strangely familiar, a not-so-distant mirror of our own time: martyrs, particularly women, ready to lose their lives rather than surrender their freedom to the will of the State;...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. B. Cobbey Crisler (review date 3 December 1979)
   2. Raymond E. Brown (review date 20 January 1980)
   3. Hyam Maccoby (review date June 1980)
   4. Kathleen McVey (essay date January 1981)
   5. Robin Lane Fox (review date 21 August 1988)
   6. Thomas D'Evelyn (review date 14 September 1988)
   7. Judith Ochshorn (review date April 1989)
   8. James Finn Cotter (review date Spring 1989)
   9. Henry Chadwick (review date 21 March 1990)
   10. Leslie Houlden (review date 18 June 1995)
   11. Mary Gordon (review date 26 June 1995)
   12. John P. Meier (review date 9 July 1995)
   13. Rockwell Gray (review date 30 July 1995)
   14. Norman Cohn (review date 21 September 1995)
   15. Mary Troychak (review date September-October 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright