"Max B. Sawicky" wrote:
>
>
> Pagels argues convincingly that notions in Christianity elaborated at length
> in Gnostic Gospels that did not suit the political needs of an
> institutionalized Church allied with patriarchal, feudal authority came to
> be branded as heresy.
I'll have to reread her on the devil. I went through it quickly a few years ago & it's already vague in my memory. Though I don't remember the details of her arguments, I remember thinking them pretty persuasive.
I do believe that there has been among leftists (both atheist & christian) a good deal of wishful thinking about the early church. Guthrie's song on Jesus was not one of his happier inspirations. For a more bracing account of xtianity, rome, & class struggle one shold read G.E.M. de Ste. Croix. On Engels and early xtianity: Levins & Lewontin dedicate their book to him, "...who got it wrong a lot of the time, but got it right when it counted." I suspect his speculations on early xtianity are part of the "lot of the time" when he got it wrong.
If I remember Ste. Croix's book correctly, xtianity was a religion of neither slaves nor rulers but of what in modern jargon we would call "upper middle class."
Carrol