Elaine Pagels, an authority on early Christianity and author of "The Origin of Satan," will deliver the 18th annual Tanner Lecture on Human Values at the University of Utah.
Pagels, who is the Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University, will speak on "Satan: Sketching His Social History." The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 14, in Kingsbury Hall.Pagels' 1979 book, "The Gnostic Gospels," won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the American Book Award. She is also the author of "The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis," "Paul the Gnostic: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters," and "Adam, Eve and Serpent."
"The Origin of Satan" explores the struggle within Christian tradition between the human view that "otherness" is evil and the words of Jesus that reconciliation is divine.
The Tanner Panel, during which two noted scholars respond to the lecture, will be held at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, May 15, in the Fine Arts Auditorium. The panelists will be Greil Marcus, literary critic and music columnist for Interview Magazine, and Wendy Doniger, professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
All events are free and open to the public.
The Tanner Lectures were established at Cambridge University in 1978 to advance scholarly and scientific learning related to human values. They are given annually at Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, the University of California, University of Michigan and the University of Utah.