Elaine Pagels is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion Emeritus at Princeton University, specializing in early Christianity and Gnosticism through direct study of Nag Hammadi manuscripts. Her foundational scholarship on Gnostic texts and early Christian debates carries the full authority of a major research university and has become standard reference material in the field.
The Gnostic Gospels (1979); Beyond Belief; The Origin of Satan; Adam, Eve, and the Serpent