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Saying 53, The Lion and The Man
7. Jesus said, “Blessed is the lion that the man consumes, and the lion becomes man. And cursed is the man that the lion consumes, and the man becomes lion.”
In the Coptic text, this saying actually ends "and the lion becomes man." While we have a Greek version of this, from the Oxyrhynchus papyri, the Greek version is too fragmentary to be of any use in determining the correct ending: scholars have to use the Coptic version to reconstruct the Greek. In my translation, I have reversed the ending to read "and the man becomes lion", as did Guillamont, Puech, Quispel et al, the first translators of the Gospel of Thomas. The reversed ending makes sense and most commentators agree that the corrected version is what was intended. Otherwise saying 7 requires particularly contorted interpretations. Richard Valantasis manages to have it both ways, and decides that the Greek version ends as my version does, while the Coptic version intentionally reversed it. In its modified form, the structure of the saying resembles a story from the Talmud about Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, "When Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa prayed, a poisonous reptile bit him, but he did not interrupt his prayer. They departed and found the same 'snake' dead at the opening of its hole. 'Woe to the man', they exclaimed, 'bitten by a snake, but woe to the snake which has bitten Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa.' A modern parallel might be, "Dog bites man, that's not news; man bites dog, now that's news." Still, the structure of Thomas 7 is rather more complicated than either of these. In interpreting saying 7, the most pressing question is not the structure, but what is meant by the lion? The Gospel of Thomas doesn't specifically tell us the answer to either, but we may think that the man represents the spirit, since saying 114 promises Mary that she will become a living spirit, like you males. What of the lion? The Gospel of Thomas doesn't tell us, so we need to look to other texts in the ancient world, to determine what lions may mean in them. The most obvious option is that the lion represents the passions, or passionate emotion. Marvin Meyer mentions the following passage from Plato as a clue to the meaning of the lion (which curiously has a concept of two into one also):- "An ideal image of the soul, like the composite creations of ancient mythology, such as the Chimera or Scylla or Cerberus, and there are many others in which two or more different natures are said to grow into one.... Then do you now model the form of a multitudinous, many-headed monster, having a ring of heads of all manner of beasts, tame and wild, which he is able to generate and metamorphose at will.... Suppose now that you make a second form as of a lion, and a third of a man, the second smaller than the first, and the third smaller than the second.... And now join them, and let the three grow into one.... Next fashion the outside of them into a single image, as of a man, so that he who is not able to look within, and sees only the outer hull, may believe the beast to be a single human creature.... And now, to him who maintains that it is profitable for the human creature to be unjust, and unprofitable to be just, let us reply that, if he be right, it is profitable for this creature to feast the multitudinous monster and strengthen the lion and the lion-like qualities, but to starve and weaken the man, who is consequently liable to be dragged about at the mercy of either of the other two; and he is not to attempt to familiarize or harmonize them with one another -- he ought rather to suffer them to fight and bite and devour one another.... To him the supporter of justice makes answer that he should ever so speak and act as to give the man within him in some way or other the most complete mastery over the entire human creature. He should watch over the many-headed monster like a good husbandman, fostering and cultivating the gentle qualities, and preventing the wild ones from growing; he should be making the lion-heart his ally, and in common care of them all should be uniting the several parts with one another and with himself. " Plato, Republic 588-589b excerpted. There is also an incidental reference to a lion in the Cratylus dialogue Soc. That is a tremendous class of names which you are disinterring; still, as I have put on the lion's skin, I must not be faint of heart... And, of course, in the myth of Er, also in the Republic, we have a lion, an ape and an eagle. Here in Plato, in both the Republic and Cratylus, the lion is connected to the heart. The lion is an element of the tetramorph, a creature made up of four other creatures, just as Plato describes a triple-natured creature. The best known examples of the tetramorph are from Ezekiel and Revelation, "And round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!" Revelation 4:6-8 There are actually two elements of this tetramorph in saying 7, the lion and the man-and, of course, both occur in Plato's composite creature. The book of Daniel, which describes four different kinds of composite beasts, makes an explicit connection between the lion and the heart. This first beast has three elements of the tetramorph. "Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And the four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it." Daniel 7:2-4 In Daniel, the lion is somehow transformed into a man, standing up like a man, with a man's heart, just as the lion in Thomas is transformed into a man by being eaten. The story of Samson and the lion offers a similar symbolism and meaning. Samson kills the lion, then marries Delilah, then sees the corpse of the lion, in which bees have nested, producing honey. He takes the honey and eats it. Again, the lion has been transformed, and is eaten: "out of the eater came what is eaten, and out of the strong came what is sweet." A lion motif is found in the story of Daniel in the lion's pit. In Daniel 6:17-25 the men who had accused Daniel are eaten by the lions, whereas Daniel survives because an angel stops the mouths of the lions. In the later addition to the story, which are part of the Bel and the Dragon story in the section of Daniel relegated to the Apocrypha, (Daniel 14:31-42), an angel takes the prophet Habakkuk by the hair to the lion pit where he gives his meal to Daniel and then is whisked off again by the angel. So again, although Daniel doesn't literally eat the lions, he is given food by an angel while he is in with the lions, in contrast to the men who are eaten by the lions. It's not quite the same the as eating a lion is some form or other, but I suspect that the imagery is connected. To sum up, the likeliest meaning for the lion logion seven in the Gospel of Thomas is the heart, or the emotions, particularly the passionate or extreme emotions, which should be consumed, in the manner of Samson consuming the honey found in the lion's corpse, or transformed, into a man, or what is male within one, to receive the spirit.Saying 7, the Lion and the Man
Saying 19, the Five Trees in Paradise
Saying 53, Circumcision of the Spirit
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