Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels
Born
Elaine Hiesey

(1943-02-13) February 13, 1943 (age 81)
Known forNag Hammadi manuscripts
Early Christianity
Spouses
(m. 1969; died 1988)
(m. 1995; div. 2005)
FatherWilliam Hiesey
AwardsMacArthur Fellowship (1981)
National Book Award (1980)
National Book Critics Circle Award (1979)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1979)
Rockefeller Fellowship (1978)
Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities (2012)
Academic background
Alma materStanford University (BA, MA)
Harvard University (PhD)
Academic work
DisciplineHistory of religion
InstitutionsPrinceton University
Barnard College

Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey (born February 13, 1943), is an American historian of religion. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnosticism.

Her best-selling book The Gnostic Gospels (1979) examines the divisions in the early Christian church, and the way that women have been viewed throughout Jewish history and Christian history. Modern Library named it as one of the 100 best books of the twentieth century.