Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus, by Elaine Pagels. Doubleday, 2025, xi + 320 pages, $30.00.

Imagine for a moment that you would like to read an older historical document. You decide to read the exploration journals of Lewis and Clark. Now imagine that you read these journals in a hypercritical way. You very much doubt the distances Lewis and Clark say they travelled. You are totally antagonistic about their reports of the flora and fauna they saw. You believe Lewis and Clark were possibly real people, but you are very suspicious about almost everything they wrote. After reading the journals, you say some nice things about these explorers, but for the most part, you believe the journals are more fiction than fact. You appreciate historians who are also very critical of these journals, but you mostly avoid authors who say the journals are accurate and historical. Because you doubt the journals, you implicitly judge anyone who believes they are correct.

I share this fictional story as a backdrop to my review of Elaine Pagels’s 2025 publication Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus. As some readers of Ordained Servant may already know, Pagels is a long-time and well-known critic of the New Testament (NT). She does not objectively approach the NT. Instead, Pagels approaches the NT with presuppositions that the historic Christian understanding of the Gospels is flawed. Like many critics—past and present—Pagels believes that the authors of the NT Gospels crafted their stories in such a way as to make Jesus the Son of God and Messiah. Basically, in her view, the authors of the Gospel mostly meant well, but they did not get the story of Jesus correct. Pagels’s beliefs are similar to NT critics before her in the various “quests” for the historical Jesus. Her admittedly “rationalist assumptions” of the NT lead her, of course, to rationalist conclusions about the NT (60).

Each of the seven chapters of Miracles and Wonder asks and answers a specific question. Chapter 1 asks, “The Virgin Birth: What Happened?” Pagels says that the birth stories of Jesus in the gospels have discrepancies and are “wildly divergent” (19). She believes Matthew and Luke “revised” Mark’s birth story about Jesus for their own purposes (34). Pagels also believes that the NT Gospels are Christian propaganda stories to get people to think that Jesus is the Messiah that God promised in Old Testament (OT) texts (e.g., Isa. 7:14). This means that the authors of the Gospels took the liberty to stretch the OT messianic texts as references to Jesus. In chapter 1, Pagels also utilizes some Gnostic gospels in an attempt to prove her point that Jesus’s birth story in the NT Gospels is not historical.

In chapter 2, Pagels asks, “Who is Jesus?” This chapter focuses on the miracles and mysteries of Jesus in the NT Gospels. When discussing Jesus’s miracles, Pagels is antagonistic. For example, she talks about the story where Jesus raises a little girl from the dead (Mark 5:41). However, for Pagels, the girl may have been in a coma (64). Jesus, she says, was like other “healers” of his day who may have used various tactics to heal people. The Gospels were written, Pagels notes, not necessarily to convey historical facts, but to get people to jump on board the Jesus movement (71). Her position on Jesus’s miracles, as far as I can tell, is that the Gospels do not really help us know the truth about the miracles. Her rationalist assumptions (miracles cannot happen) lead her to rationalist conclusions (Jesus’s miracles were not really miracles).

The third chapter covers the NT Gospels’ teaching on the kingdom of God. Pagels notes the OT background to the theme of God’s kingdom but says the OT prophets disagree on what this kingdom is (88). She approaches the topic of the kingdom in the NT, also doubting whether the Gospels are in harmony about it. Pagels reads Jesus’s teaching about the Kingdom of God as insight into how Christianity began. Jesus believed that God’s kingdom was coming soon, and people needed to be totally committed to enter it (100). At the same time, Pagels says Jesus’s beatitudes are “strange” (100). Furthermore, in Pagels’s view, the Gospel of Thomas is beneficial in understanding Jesus’s teaching. In my understanding, Pagels appreciates and admires the early Gnostic writings more than the NT Gospels.

Chapter 4 is about Jesus’s crucifixion. Pagels starts this chapter by admitting she believes Jesus’s predictions about his death were added after his death—the disciples put words into his mouth (118). Pagels also argues that Jesus’s trial before Pilate was purposely obscured by each of the Gospels to explain away the fact that Pilate never condemned Jesus (125). In fact, Pagels mentions that some scholars say Jesus’s trial before Pilate was so bizarre it never actually happened. She says Mark wrote about the crucifixion during the war in Rome (68–70 AD). This means Mark used the crucifixion story to give people hope during war (128). Pagels believes that the Gospel writers “spun” the story of Jesus’s crucifixion as if the Jews had initiated Jesus’s death (140). Pagels also says this is where Christianity has been antisemitic. She is “distressed” by this (144–45). From this chapter, I understand Pagels to believe the NT crucifixion story is a silly, antisemitic, and strange spin on Jesus’s death.

Chapter 5 focuses on the Gospel stories of Jesus’s resurrection. Again, Pagels says Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead based on the Gospel stories. However, we cannot know what really happened (163). Pagels even tries to argue that “many Christians have come to think of these [resurrection] stories only as myth masquerading as fact” (162). The fact is, Christians from many backgrounds and denominations strongly affirm that belief in Christ’s bodily resurrection is a non-negotiable part of true Christianity (1 Cor. 15). Pagels’s view is indeed convoluted. I read her view as this: Jesus probably did not rise from the grave, but his followers may have had spiritual experiences of his resurrection. Their writings reflect their spiritual experiences. Her unsympathetic view of Jesus’s resurrection is also colored by her reading of the secret texts of Nag Hammadi (185).

“How did Jesus become God?” is the question Pagels answers in the seventh chapter. This chapter has the same critical arguments as the earlier chapters. Pagels certainly does not believe that Jesus is God; she insists he is not God in the flesh. For Pagels, John wrote his Gospel in such a way as to make people believe Jesus was God. Pagels mentions early Christian writers Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, arguing that they helped shape the belief that Jesus is God. In her opinion, John’s Gospel is the only one that specifically equates Jesus with God. The other NT Gospels, she believes, are ambivalent about this question. Pagels’s rationalist assumptions again are explicit: Jesus was not God, but early Christians made him out to be God.

The final chapter focuses on present views of Jesus. In this chapter, Pagels interacts with the beliefs of new converts, artists, and filmmakers about Jesus. Pagels believes that just as Jesus’s earliest followers constantly revised their views about Jesus, his followers do the same today (209). She discusses the Vineyard church’s views of Jesus and groups in Peru, the Philippines, and other people groups’ views of Jesus. Finally, and oddly, Pagels explains various painters and movie producers’ views of Jesus. This chapter was Pagels’s attempt to give evidence supporting her critical views: People today have very different views of Jesus, just like his followers in the first century. I found this chapter very selective and lopsided. In it, Pagels failed to mention anything about historic Christian orthodoxy through the years.

Much more could be said about Pagels’s book. One must read it to understand Pagels’s arguments and viewpoints about who Jesus is (or is not). At first, when I was reading it, I was rather upset at her extreme criticism of the NT. But shortly after starting the book, I recognized her criticism was like that of other NT critics I have read. When I finished the book, Pagels’s rationalist arguments and repeated antagonism became banal and monotonous. She never attempted to explain any part of the NT objectively. Almost every one of her citations referred to critical scholars. She had no intention of seriously interacting with non-critical scholars who opposed her views. Her goal was not to truly interact with the Gospel texts with an open mind and heart. Instead, in this book, Pagels’s goal was to prove—based on her personal story and biases—that the NT is unreliable in its teaching about Jesus. She used to believe it was true, but then she read some first-century history and some Gnostic texts and now she claims to really know the truth: The Gospels are a fabrication. At the end of the day, Pagels believes her insights are true and those of the Gospels are false. It is the same movie, script, and ending as the arguments of other NT critics.

If I can use a courtroom metaphor, Pagels puts the NT Gospels on trial in Miracles and Wonder. The charge is this: The Gospels are guilty of not telling the truth about Jesus. In this trial, Pagels cherry picks evidence to suit her case. There is no suitable defendant in the courtroom to defend the Gospels. And in this kangaroo court, Pagels plays judge, jury, and prosecutor, all at the same time. Of course, the outcome of the sham trial of the NT Gospels is “guilty as charged.”

If you want a scholarly resource that seriously and honestly interacts with various viewpoints about the credibility of the NT gospels, Miracles and Wonder is not that book. This book is not an open-minded look into the stories of Jesus in the NT Gospels. Instead, it is a critical rationalistic attempt to discredit the teaching of the NT. The same rationalist path has been trodden many times—it is well-worn! Blaise Pascal once said that there are two extremes: “To exclude reason and to admit reason only.” The book Miracles and Wonder displays the extreme of admitting reason only, making it quite unreasonable.

Shane Lems is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and serves as pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Hammond, Wisconsin. Ordained Servant Online, January, 2026