"This virtuoso study may disquiet some readers and refresh others; the debate it opens is not likely to leave any reader unmoved." -- The New Yorker How did the early Christians come to believe that sex was inherently sinful? When did the Fall of Adam become synonymous with the fall of all humanity? What turned Christianity from a dissident sect that championed the integrity of the individual and the idea of free will into the bulwark of a new imperial order -- with the central belief that human beings cannot choose not to sin? In this provocative masterpiece of historical scholarship Elaine Pagels re-creates the controversies that racked the early church as it confronted the riddles of sexuality, freedom, and sin as embodied in the story of Genesis. And she shows how what was once heresy came to shape our own attitudes toward the body and the soul. Ms. Pagels has taken a complex and seemingly arcane subject and made it fascinating and accessible...Any scholarly author who has ever tried to do that will recognize the brilliance of her achievement." -- Wall Street Journal