There's a reason why Brown's book is considered a work of fiction.
True story:
I was having a conversation with a 20-something a few years back and I mentioned Martin Luther. She responded that he was really a charismatic guy and that it was a shame he got shot. I paused and said that I was speaking about THE Martin Luther and not Martin Luther King who was named after him. Then I asked if she had heard of Martin Luther or knew about the Protestant Reformation. She just stared at me blankly and then said something to the effect that she was not very good in current events.
F
Fiction captures the times, and Pagels has had influence far beyond academia, because she feeds the hunger of persons deprived of faith in Christianity with a kind of substitute for it. They no longer believe in religious truth, and her "truthiness" to them is good enough. She convinces them that they understand the gnostics when they are incapable of understand Irenaeus. Pagels falsely tells us that the bishop had power to suppress when he actually had no such thing.