Join Georgia Center for the Book, Decatur Book Festival, Conversations at First Baptist, and Charis Books & More for an evening with award-winning author Elaine Pagels, in conversation with Barbara Brown Taylor. They’ll be discussing Pagels’ new book, Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus, a spellbinding and deeply-researched epic that sets out to answer the question of how a poor young Jewish man inspired a religion that shaped the world. This event will take place in the Sanctuary of First Baptist Church Decatur. Tickets are free, but required. They will become available on Monday, March 10, 2025, at noon.

Preoder the book from Charis Books & More here. Copies will be pre-signed. Elaine will be available for a limited number of personalizations after the event.

***For group registrations of 6 or more, please email Joe at davichj@dekalblibrary.org.

About the Book:

“This is a brilliant and necessary book. Sober, wise, respectful, and fearless, Elaine Pagels’ account of her exploration into the history and meaning of Jesus is akin to having a long, rich, and illuminating conversation with a friend who’s read everything and is eager to share what she’s learned.”
—Jon Meacham, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

“Provocative. Gracious. Reverent: A great historian of religion gives us an account of the life of Jesus, one of history's most towering figures. Scholarly and inquisitive, but also contemplative and respectful, this book will speak to believers and non-believers alike.”

—Tara Westover, author of Educated

“With her vast learning worn lightly, easily, Elaine Pagels offers a profound historical meditation on Jesus and the gospels. Treating a jumble of ancient sacred stories with utmost care and respect, she discerns the patterns that finally bring hope and maybe even redemption to an afflicted world—precisely the reason these stories live and inspire faith.”

—Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy and Bob Dylan in America

From Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University Elaine Pagels, recipient of honors including the National Humanities Medal, Rockefeller, Gugenheim, and MacArthur Fellowships, as well as both the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, now comes the highly anticipated new book MIRACLES AND WONDER: The Historical Mystery of Jesus–a spellbinding and deeply-researched epic that sets out to answer the question of how a poor young Jewish man inspired a religion that shaped the world.

As a young scholar and researcher at Barnard College in the 1970s, Elaine Pagels fundamentally changed the world’s understanding of Christianity with her work on fifty-two early Christian texts that together formed the basis for her groundbreaking publication of The Gnostic Gospels in 1979.

Since then she has published other books and won a staggering number of prizes – however in all of her years of writing about Christianity she has never before explored its biggest subject of all: Jesus Christ. 

Who was Jesus? And who is he in the 21st century? How, from the first century to the present day, have countless people and groups seen him in such varied and contradictory ways? Was he an actual person or merely a fictional character?

Once and for all in MIRACLES AND WONDER Elaine Pagels lays out the evidence, evaluates it, and addresses who she believes the most likely person Jesus of Nazareth was in his own time, reckoning with the many conflicting version of Jesus produced in the subsequent two thousand years and what those differences tell us about ourselves and Western culture. 

For instance, none of the writers of the gospels that formed the basis for the Christian bible knew Jesus personally–they were his followers, but already members of a descendant generation. They were also writing for a purpose: to attract new followers, which shaped what they were likely to say. And their text was produced under historical conditions in which it was considered dangerous to be a follower of Christ’s. Jesus after all had been executed by the Romans as an insurrectionist.

MIRACLES AND WONDER reads like the most satisfying of historical mysteries as Elaine Pagels launches each chapter with a fascinating question, such as:

Why is Jesus said to have had a virgin birth?
Why do we say he rose from the dead?
What do his miracles mean?

The story she tells is thrilling and tense. And along the way, Elaine Pagels threads in details of her own spiritual journey, leaving readers with a Jesus they can make their own.

About the Author:

Elaine Pagels is best known for research and publication involving a cache of over fifty ancient Greek texts discovered translated into Coptic in Upper Egypt in 1945. After completing her doctorate at Harvard University she participated with an international team of scholars to edit, translate, and publish several of these texts. After publishing two monographs and several scholarly articles, she wrote The Gnostic Gospels, which won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Then, having received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, she joined the faculty at Princeton University in 1982 as the Harrington Professor of History of Religion at Princeton University, where she now teaches and engages in research. Besides continuing to write scholarly articles, she has published other books accessible to a wider audience, including Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (Random House, 1988), which explores how various Jewish and Christian readings of the Genesis accounts (c. 50-400 CE) articulate a wide range of attitudes toward sexuality and politics; The Origin of Satan: How Christians Came to Demonize Jews, Pagans, and Heretics (Random House, 1995); Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (Random House, 2003) and most recently, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (Viking Penguin, 2012).

About the Conversation Partner:

Barbara Brown Taylor is the New York Times bestselling author of An Altar in the World, Learning to Walk in the Dark, and Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others. After serving three congregations–two in downtown Atlanta and one in rural Habersham County, Georgia–she joined the faculty of Piedmont College as the first Butman Professor of Religion and Philosophy. Since she put down the chalk in 2017, she has spoken at events with wonderful names such as Wild Goose, Evolving Faith, Awakening Soul, and Gladdening Light, but her favorite gig is being the full-time caretaker of a farm in the foothills of the Appalachians where she lives with her husband Ed and very many animals. In 2024 she was elected to the Georgia Writer's Hall of Fame at the University of Georgia, and her new book, Coming Down to Earth is forthcoming from Convergent Books in 2026.