Telling Lies and Getting Away With It

Pagels is just repeating the lie in the Talmud. But, like Charles Coulombe, I seriously doubt the existence of "modern scholarship".

From Crisis

By Regis Martin, STD

Scholars like Elaine Pagels have been lying for years about Christianity, but in spite of that fact (or perhaps because of it), they are lionized by the media as experts.

t was in early 1943, while the war in Europe continued to rage, that a young woman named Simone Weil, who would not live to see its end, set down a series of reflections on the spiritual renewal that France, then under brutal occupation, would need to undergo once the Nazi menace had finally been driven out. She called it The Need for Roots, foremost of which, she insisted, was the need for truth, the sacredness of which had lately been subject to massive devaluation at the hands of its enemies. 

She was utterly uncompromising on the subject. Anyone, she said, who spoke or wrote deliberate lies, must be held accountable for their distortions. So great was her reverence for truth that she longed to see laws against historical libel enacted in order to prevent even the most famous and fastidious of scholars from committing avoidable errors. The esteemed Etienne Gilson, she said in effect, ought to go to jail for having claimed that there was no actual opposition to slavery in the ancient world. How, she demanded, could he possibly know?  

Well, perhaps she was overdoing it a bit in going after a historian and philosopher who was at least as honest and austere as she was. No doubt her passion for Plato and all things Greek may explain the special venom she felt in going after poor Gilson. Nevertheless, one cannot help but admire her unswerving devotion to truth, for the need we have to rally one and all to its defense. It was no less a figure than that of Albert Camus, after all, whose own life was at constant and serious risk in the work of the French Underground, who called her “the only great spirit of our time.” He was not exaggerating the extent of her passion for telling the truth.

Now, all that was, admittedly, a very long time ago; and while standards of truth may not then have been as loftily applied as Simone Weil would have liked, there was at least a minimal respect for the value of actually telling the truth. Why else would her book have made such a profound impact upon the consciences of its many readers? 

Since then, however, we have fallen precipitously below that particular bar. Indeed, we appear to have abandoned it altogether, especially in media circles. Let the following serve as the latest example on record—all the more egregious, I should add, because nothing will ever be done about it.  

A couple of days before Christmas, there was a piece in The New York Times titled “A Conversation About the Virgin Birth That Maybe Wasn’t.” It was an interview with a certain Professor Elaine Pagels, whom the interviewer, Nicholas Kristof, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, fawningly described as “an expert on the early church,” the go-to gal for getting all the goods, which means she really knows her stuff. 

And what stuff might that be? Only that Mary, whom for centuries we’ve been calling the Virgin Mother of God, was actually not a virgin at all. Nor was there anything particularly special about the child she bore, except that his status was that of a bastard, owing to the fact that his birth was most likely the result of rape at the hands of a Roman soldier. 

Not bad for a distinguished “expert on the early church,” who, by the way, has been teaching practically forever at Princeton University and whose books and essays have long been lionized in media circles, where she is regarded as a sage. But, really, how could she possibly know? Was she specifically asked about her sources? 

No, of course not. That would spoil all the fun of making a mockery of the Christmas story. It would also give the game away, which simply mustn’t be allowed to happen to someone of Professor Pagels’ stature. Because the fact is, the woman is a complete fraud and no serious scholar will take her seriously. Only the quarter educated, the brain-dead hacks who turn out the usual editorial tripe for major newspaper outlets, or who staff Gender Studies Departments at universities where wokery (not wisdom) is on offer, regard her with any kind of respect—also fear, lest they, too, appear less than totally on board with progressive ideology.
Meanwhile, the truth about Professor Pagels and her bogus claims to scholarship have long been established, most recently in 2006, in a devastating essay written by the late Jesuit priest and scholar Paul Mankowski, from which, in a more honest and robust age, nothing of her reputation would have survived.  

So, what exactly had she done? What were the avoidable errors she committed? Quite simply, she lied about St. Irenaeus, a second-century bishop and martyr, widely regarded as the Father of Western Theology. What she did was to conflate a text or two from his famous work Against Heresies in order to make him say what, in fact, he had never said but what she had rather wished he’d said because it suited her agenda to have him say it. 

For anyone with scholarly pretensions to try and pull off a thing like that, which means “intentionally to falsify a source is,” wrote Fr. Mankowski, “a career-ending offense. Among professional scholars,” he added, “witness tampering is no joke: once the charge is proven, the miscreant is dismissed from the guild and not re-admitted.”

If spurious claims are made with impunity about a second-century Christian saint, why should anyone be surprised when lies about the Founder of Christianity, not to mention His Mother, are spread and not a word is said or written in denunciation? Is there no one at The New York Times—the nation’s premier newspaper of record, which boasts of providing “All the news that’s fit to print”—interested in telling the truth about Christianity?

Not if it won’t aid in the effort to dismantle Christianity.

What is especially galling about all this, and it happens all the time, is not just the addle-headedness of those who pretend to know stuff they plainly do not know, or to flat out lie about stuff they do know but are determined to suppress, but the sheer breath-catching arrogance with which they strut their superiority—pretending to be guardians of the tablets while condescending to the poor peasants who just don’t know any better. Nicholas Kristoff is just the latest example, who, moments before lowering the boom on all the boobs out there too stupid not to know any better, airily announces how “respectful” he’s determined to be “of readers who have deep faith.”  

A pretty curious way to show respect, wouldn’t you say? 

On the other hand, and here I may have a bit of some really good news, even if the Times will not think it fit to print, how many readers are we talking about anyway? I mean, who is actually reading this stuff? Or, better still, how many readers of the interview will, seeing this latest sunburst, have their faith shaken to the core by the combined firepower of a couple of twits telling lies to one another about the alleged origins of Christianity?

Merry Christmas to everyone…

Pictured: Elaine Pagels, PhD, anti-Christian "scholar"