Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels is the Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University, where she has been on faculty since 1982. She holds an affiliation with the Department of Classics. Her research focuses on Gnosticism, early Christian texts, and religious history in late antiquity.

Notable works include The Gnostic Gospels, The Origin of Satan, and Adam, Eve and the Serpent, which explore themes of religious conflict, scriptural interpretation, and the evolution of Christian thought. Pagels received a MacArthur Fellowship early in her career, underscoring her scholarly impact.

Her work bridges religious studies, classical antiquity, and cultural history, offering interdisciplinary insights into the formation of religious identity and doctrine.