This is about deep story

I was disinclined to give Elaine Pagels' Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus a fair shake. I was wrong. I encountered a book that intrigued, broadened, and even fed delight. 

Pagels is a Princeton University historian of religion, an authority on the numerous texts in the Mediterranean world from the decades just before and at the beginning of the Christian era that didn't make it into the official (canonical) version of the Bible. 

Pagels' subject matter is what made me suspicious of her scholarship. This derives from a quirk of my history. When the Dead Sea Scrolls, 3rd century BCE texts uncovered by archeologists in the Judean desert turned up in the 1950s and early '60s, my intellectually curious, historically inclined, mother was for awhile gripped by a sort of fever for the discoveries. Though just an annoying child, I remember feeling there was something a little too credulous in her enthusiasm. Something didn't feel right. The whole accumulated history of the ancient world couldn't be overturned by some bits of clay covered with scratches. That's not how history works; there are no secrets, just complicated, crooked byways to explore. 

It seemed many mid-20th century popular religious writers, encountering the new historical tidbits, lost their bearings. As I studied history more, I wasn't going there. (Mother eventually got over her enthusiasm as well.) 

And I long pigeonholed Pagels as one of those enmeshed in the glamour of poorly grounded novelties. In Miracles and Wonder she's not, at least not much. Instead she muses with restraint on what modern historical interpretation of the times means to thinking about Bible narratives.

... given the opportunity to draw upon a far wider range of sources than those available to many historians in the past, I am excited to return to the questions with which we began: Was Jesus actually a historical person? If so, what kind of person? The answers are not obvious, since our earliest sources are brief, and often contradictory. There are more questions than answers -- many gaps in what can be known. But the evidence confirms that he was, indeed, an actual person; everyone among his contemporaries who mentions him agrees on that, whether they speak of him with reverence or contempt. 

I began this book with other questions too. What was the social and political context of Jesus' life in Judea? How is it that Jesus, who lived thousands of years ago, has not gone the way of other beings, gods and humans, like Zeus or Julius Caesar, who populate our culture's remote past?

The result is a little uneven, but interesting. 

She particularly chases down the notion, found in multiple more or less contemporary sources, that Jesus had a known male parent, one Pantera, a Roman legionnaire, who presumably raped his mother Mary.

... Recognizing the political context of first-century Galilee is necessary, though to understand the gospel stories. What they tell is what the writers knew well: that everyday life in occupied Judea often included violence. Roman writers picture their empire as a civilizing force, but Josephus [a contemporary Jewish historian] depicts first-century Judea as a land in turmoil.  

What has lent credence to the stories of Pantera is what local people knew: that Roman soldiers brutally suppressed any hint of revolt, exploited subject people, and targeted local women with sexual violence. ... 

... As for what actually happened -- divine miracle, human dilemma, or both -- who can say? As I see it, however these various writers interpret Jesus's origin, [gospel authors, canonical or not] all agree on the spiritual truth: that Jesus is "Son of God," and embodies God's presence on earth. 

That is, this is an historian who gets around sticky, messy questions of "what is truth; what really happened?" by defaulting to "does this story inspire?" This is no way to write academic history, but it may be the only way to chronicle actually existing, longstanding religious faiths whose content morphs and grows within history. This is Pagels' method.

My own experience as a historian has made me cautious. We do not know which episodes were made up, and which might be based on actual or visionary experiences. Furthermore I have shown that some scenes that sound like invention are written as metaphor. ... 

... what fascinates me is not only the historical mysteries my book seeks to unravel but the spiritual power that shines through these stories. ... every one of these gospels -- not only those in the New Testament but also the "secret gospels" [non-canonical fragments] -- ends in the most astonishing reversal of all. After Jesus suffers the worst imaginable fate, betrayed by a trusted friend, abandoned by everyone, falsely accused, tortured, and cruelly executed in public, he is raised to glorious new life, reunited with those who love him, and elevated to receive the highest praise in heaven, to reign over a world renewed in justice and peace. 

Hebrew Scriptures set the pattern for such shifts: people enslaved are set free; a shepherd boy named David fells a hostile giant with a slingshot; hungry lions spare Daniel's life; and Jonah emerges alive from the belly of a whale. The point is as clear as a lightening flash: "God can make a way out of no way," transforming what we suffer into joy. I love this about the gospel stories. Is that what keeps the stories of Jesus alive amid the twists and turns of history? As I see it, they give us what we often need most; an out burst of hope.

This is a generous book. We live in a time that needs a lot more generosity. I recommend it less for the truth it reveals than for its spirit. But that ain't nothing.