Texts in Conversation
Plato’s Timaeus argues that body and soul damage each other when out of proportion, each pulling the other toward disease. The Gospel of Thomas similarly warns that flesh depending on soul and soul depending on flesh is a source of trouble.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Plato Timaeus
Classical
88 and is in a very passionate state, it shakes up the whole body from within and fills it with maladies; and whenever the soul ardently pursues some study or investigation, it wastes the body; and again, when the soul engages, in public or in private, in teachings and battles of words carried on with controversy and contention, it makes the body inflamed and shakes it to pieces, and induces catarrhs; and thereby it deceives the majority of so-called physicians and makes them ascribe the malady to the wrong cause. And, on the other hand, when a large and overbearing body is united to a small and weak intellect, inasmuch as two desires naturally exist amongst men, — the desire of food for the body’s sake, and the desire of wisdom for the sake of the most divine part we have — the motions of the stronger part prevail and augment their own power, but they make that of the soul obtuse and dull of wit and forgetful, and thereby they produce within it that greatest of diseases, ignorance. From both these evils the one means of salvation is this — neither to exercise the soul without the body nor the body without the soul, so that they may be evenly matched and sound of health. Thus the student of mathematics, or of any other subject, who works very hard with his intellect must also provide his body with exercise by practising gymnastics; while he who is diligent in molding his body must, in turn, provide his soul with motion by cultivating music and philosophy in general, if either is to deserve to be called truly both fair and good. The various parts, likewise, must be treated in the same manner, in imitation of the form of the Universe. For as the body is inflamed or chilled within by the particles that enter it, and again is dried or moistened by those without, and suffers the affections consequent on both these motions, whenever a man delivers his body, in a state of rest, to these motions, it is overpowered and utterly perishes; whereas if a man imitates that which we have called the nurturer and nurse of the Universe, and never, if possible, allows the body to be at rest but keeps it moving, and by continually producing internal vibrations defends it in nature’s way against the inward and outward motions, and by means of moderate vibrations arranges the affections and particles which stray about in the body in their due reciprocal order, according to their affinities — as described in the previous account which we have given of the Universe — then he will not suffer foe set beside foe to breed war in the body and disease, but he will cause friend to be set beside friend so as to produce sound health.
Date: 360 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Gospel of Thomas 1:112
Early Christian
111 Jesus said, “The heavens and the earth will roll up in your presence, and the Living One from the Living One will not see death.” Does not Jesus say, “Whoever has found himself, of him the world is not worthy”? 112 Jesus said, “Woe to the flesh that depends on the soul; woe to the soul that depends on the flesh.” 113 His disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?” “It will not come by watching for it. They will not say, ‘Look, here,’ or ‘Look, there.’ Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.”
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Notes and References
"... The next question I need to address is what the Gospel of Thomas says about the relationship between the body and the soul. I would like to focus on the interpretation of the nature of the soul in saying 112. Quite notably, two prominent scholars of the Gospel of Thomas, Uro and Patterson, have recently offered a reading of the saying against the background of Timaeus 87c–89a. The line of argument goes as follows. According to Timaeus, the main dramatis persona of the dialogue, the living being, is the combination of the body and the soul. Hence, “in determining health and disease and virtue and vice, no proportion or lack of it is more important than that between soul and body” (Timaeus 87d; trans. D.J. Zeyl). If the soul is strong and excellent, but the body that carries it about is too weak, then the living being as a whole is not beautiful. If the proportion is disturbed in the opposite way, the outcome is equally unfortunate ..."
Miroshnikov, Ivan
The Gospel of Thomas and Plato: A Study of the Impact of Platonism on the Fifth Gospel
(pp. 78-79) Brill, 2018
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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