Elaine Pagels Quotes

The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It's almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren't that interested in whether Jesus was real.

The Book of Revelation is the strangest book in the Bible, and the most controversial. Instead of stories and moral teaching, it offers only visions - dreams and nightmares, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, earthquakes, plagues and war.

The Gospels were written to present the life and teachings of Jesus in ways that would be appropriate to different readerships, and for that reason are not all the same. They were not intended to be biographies of Jesus, but selective accounts that would demonstrate his significance for different cultures.

The book of Revelation is written largely in symbols.

If you read back in the Bible, the letter of the apostle Paul to the church of Thessalonia, he said that in the latter days before the end of the age that the Earth would be caught up in what he called the birth pangs of a new order.

The early Church had nothing but the Old Testament. The New Testament lies hidden in the Old; the Old Testament lies open in the New.

To the first class belong the Gospels and Acts; to the second, the Epistles; to the third, the Revelation.

We don't actually know if the person who wrote the Gospel of John had a written copy of Thomas because we don't know exactly when it was written.

The learned are not agreed as to the time when the Gospel of John was written; some dating it as early as the year 68, others as late as the year 98; but it is generally conceded to have been written after all the others.

One of the comments that we've heard that has really blessed us is people have been driven back to the book of Revelation to prove us wrong only to find that what we said was there.

It was my study of the two Corinthian letters that first caused me to concentrate my attention more directly on the relation of the apostle Paul to the older apostles.

For nearly 2,000 years, most people assumed that the only sources of tradition about Jesus and his disciples were the four gospels in the New Testament.

I got to thinking about the Book of Revelation that was written by a Jewish prophet who was also a follower of Jesus who hated the Roman Empire. I realized that the Book of Revelation could be a way to reflect on the issue of religion's relationship to politics.

I never thought I would write about the Book of Revelation. It's so dense; it's so complex and puzzling. But then I found I was thinking about a number of themes, one of which has to do with politics and religion.

The gospels were, in fact, written anywhere from forty to a hundred years after Jesus, and their authors attempted to demonstrate that Jesus could be seen to fulfill various Old Testament pronouncements.

I've never believed in the end of times. We are mankind. Our footprints are on the moon. When the last trumpet sounds and the beast rises from the pit - we will kill it.

A man says to me, 'Can you explain the seven trumpets of the Revelation?' No, but I can blow one in your ear, and warn you to escape from the wrath to come.

When you read the Koran, you give up. At least the Bible is very beautiful because Jews have an extraordinary literary talent.

I think the best way to view the Gospels is to view them as a magnificent portrait being painted by Jewish artists to try to capture the essence of a God experience that they believe they had with Jesus of Nazareth.

Left Behind takes what to some people may be unbelievable predictions from the Bible and shows how they might play out. It makes the events of biblical prophecy understandable and thus believable.

There's a bit of debate about that; some say it was really Matthew, but the popular consensus is that Mark was the first one, so that's why I did that one first. And I was planning on doing all four.

The apostolic writings are of three kinds: historical, didactic, and prophetic.

The Book of Revelation is such a dream landscape that you can plug any major conflict in it.

Nothing is more prominently brought forward in the New Testament than the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Throughout the ages, Christians have adapted John of Patmos's visions to changing times, reading their own social, political and religious conflicts into the cosmic war he so powerfully evokes. Yet his Book of Revelation appeals not only to fear and desires for vengeance but also to hope.