Elaine Pagels

The historian who took the Nag Hammadi texts out of the seminar room. The Gnostic Gospels (1979) argued that the fight between the Gnostics and the emerging church was not only about metaphysics but about authority — who may teach, who may claim a vision, whether a hierarchy is needed between a person and what they know. It won the National Book Award, sold a million copies, and is the reason most readers have heard of Thomas. Scholars have pushed back on how unified a "Gnosticism" ever was (Michael Williams and Karen King argue the category is a polemical invention that should be retired); this wing keeps the word because readers need a door-handle, and marks the dispute rather than hiding it.