Witcover is an editor and writer whose fiction and critical essays appear regularly in magazines and online. In the following essay, Witcover draws historical parallels between the Nag Hammadi texts and Pagels's book on the subject.

Imagine a number of books written about a recent historical event by a number of different authors who are drawing on the same material . . . but who approach their subject in a variety of ways, for a variety of reasons. Imagine also that these books are published at approximately the same time and receive a mixed reception from readers and critics, so that initially no one book or group of books stands above the rest in the public estimation. Now fastforward a hundred years. The majority of the books are out of print, all-but forgotten, while those that remain have attained the stature of classics and are not only widely read but...