THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS by Elaine Pagels gets a thirty-year retrospective by Michael Kaler in the Globe and Mail:

Hip gnostics

MICHAEL KALER

Globe and Mail Update

April 10, 2009 at 5:41 PM EDT

If there ever was one unified Christian movement, it probably died with Jesus at the first Easter. Ever since, Christianity has been a collection of any number of diverse groups.

Some – such as the Roman and Egyptian churches – have survived for millennia; others have vanished. Over a period of several centuries, the men we now call church fathers (the leaders of several of the factions of early Christians) fought opposing factions in the battle to define and control this new religion. Polemics were waged, books were destroyed, history was rewritten, all in the hope of eliminating “heresies” such as gnosticism.

It didn't work. Gnosticism is everywhere these days, in the movies, in the headlines and on bestseller lists. And this year marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Elaine Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels, the book that more than any other brought knowledge of gnosticism back into the mainstream.

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The article also surveys some key scholarship about Gnosticism during this period.