
Miracles and Wonder
The Historical Mystery of Jesus
Elaine Pagels(Author)
Random House Large Print (Publisher)
Published on 8. April 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
512 pages
979-8-217-07010-7 (ISBN)
Description
From the award-winning author of The Gnostic Gospels comes a captivating new account of the life of Jesus that explores the mystery of how he inspired a religion that reshaped the world.
Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work on the Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culmination of a decades-long career, she explores her most ambitious subject, the life of Jesus himself. Miracles and Wonder unfolds like a historical mystery, with each chapter addressing a fascinating question. Why is Jesus said to have had a virgin birth? Why do we say he rose from the dead? Did his miracles really happen and what did they mean?
The story Pagels tells is thrilling and tense. Not just Jesus comes to life, but his desperate, hunted followers as well. They were writing in wartime and under occupation, she reminds us, endangered for spreading the gospel of a man who was executed as an insurrectionist. Some of the most electrifying details in the Gospels, Pagels writes, may have been crafted by his disciples to avoid persecution and explain inconvenient facts. So Jesus wasn’t illegitimate; instead, his mother conceived by God. Jesus’ body wasn’t humiliatingly tossed into a common grave; he was seen alive and whole by his followers. He wasn’t a failed messiah; his kingdom lives in us.
Drawing on a lifetime of study and Pagels’ own personal journey, Miracles and Wonders beautifully depicts this lost world and captures Jesus’s enduring power to inspire and attract.
Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work on the Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culmination of a decades-long career, she explores her most ambitious subject, the life of Jesus himself. Miracles and Wonder unfolds like a historical mystery, with each chapter addressing a fascinating question. Why is Jesus said to have had a virgin birth? Why do we say he rose from the dead? Did his miracles really happen and what did they mean?
The story Pagels tells is thrilling and tense. Not just Jesus comes to life, but his desperate, hunted followers as well. They were writing in wartime and under occupation, she reminds us, endangered for spreading the gospel of a man who was executed as an insurrectionist. Some of the most electrifying details in the Gospels, Pagels writes, may have been crafted by his disciples to avoid persecution and explain inconvenient facts. So Jesus wasn’t illegitimate; instead, his mother conceived by God. Jesus’ body wasn’t humiliatingly tossed into a common grave; he was seen alive and whole by his followers. He wasn’t a failed messiah; his kingdom lives in us.
Drawing on a lifetime of study and Pagels’ own personal journey, Miracles and Wonders beautifully depicts this lost world and captures Jesus’s enduring power to inspire and attract.
More details
Edition
Large type / large print edition
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Diversified Publishing
Edition type
Large type / large print edition
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
778 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-217-07010-7 (9798217070107)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
04/2025
Vintage
€1.99
Available for download
Person
ELAINE PAGELS is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. In 2015 she received the National Medal for the Humanities from President Barack Obama. The Gnostic Gospels won both the National Book Critic's Circle Award and the National Book Award. Her books include Why Religion, Beyond Belief, and Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. She has been profiled in TIME, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The New Yorker and more.