Texts in Conversation
In Plato's Republic, Socrates describes the human soul as a man, a lion and a beast with many heads joined in one body. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus blesses the lion a man eats and curses the man a lion eats, probably drawing on Plato's image.
Share:
2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Plato's Republic Excerpt 1:15
Republic 588a-589b
Nag Hammadi
Assuredly a single image became the image of a multifaceted beast with many heads. On some days it truly resembles the image of a wild beast, and then it is possible to dispose of the first image, and all of these demanding and difficult forms emanate from there with labor, because now these are formed with hubris, and all the others as well that resemble them are now formed by the word, because now it is a single image, because the image of the lion is one thing, and the image of the man is another. The [...] is joined together forms a single [...], which [is] far more multifaceted than the first, and the second image [is] small.” “It has been formed.” “Now then, join each one of them together and make the three into a single one, so that they grow together, and so that all of them are inside a single image subsisting outside the image of the man who cannot see the things inside him, but he sees only what is outside him, and it is evident what creature his image dwells inside, and that he was formed in the image of men.
Gospel of Thomas 1:7
Nag Hammadi
6 His disciples questioned him and said to him, “Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give alms? What diet should we observe?” Jesus said, “Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are disclosed before heaven. Nothing hidden will fail to be revealed, and nothing covered will remain undisclosed.” 7 Jesus said, “Blessed is the lion that the man will eat, so that the lion becomes a man. And cursed is the man whom a lion will eat, and the lion will become a man.” 8 And he said, “The human being is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a large, fine fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear should hear.”
Search:
Notes and References
“... Since the non-metaphorical interpretations of the saying do not seem to be convincing, we have to surmise that the lion in the saying serves as a representation of a different entity. I believe that there is at least one lion metaphor that might have been known by the competent reader of Gos. Thom. 7. It comes from the Platonist tradition and describes anger as a lion that lives inside every human being. The suggestion that the symbolism of Gos. Thom. 7 might be indebted to Plato’s allegory of human soul was first proposed by Howard M. Jackson. [...] (i) The lion and the man in Gos. Thom. 7 come from Plato’s allegory of the soul. I believe that this suggestion is correct; I discuss Plato’s allegory in detail below. [...] I think that we do not need to turn to Phaedrus in order to understand Gos. Thom. 7; rather, we need to take a closer look at the allegory of the soul presented in Respublica. According to Plato, the human soul is tripartite; it consists of the rational part [...], the irrational and appetitive part [...], and the spirited part [...] (Resp. 436a–441c). According to Plato’s allegory, the appetitive part is like a “multicolored beast with a ring of many heads” (trans. G.M.A. Grube and C.D.C. Reeve), while the spirited one is like a lion and the rational one like a human being; these three creatures are united into one, and this unity appears to be like a human being (588c–d). Therefore, there are two men in the allegory, “the inner man” [...] and the outward, or the composite one. It is worth noting that the imagery of feeding and starving is quite important for the allegory. The one who commits injustice feeds the beast, the lion and all that pertains to the lion [...], and at the same time makes the inner man starve. If the inner man does not intervene, the beast and the lion will eat each other up (588e–589a). Plato does not explicitly say that the beast or the lion can devour the inner man, but this seems to be an option as well. As I will try to show later, up to this point Gos. Thom. 7 is completely like-minded with Plato. Yet, there is also a key area of disagreement. [...] I suggest that the objective of Gos. Thom. 7 is to correct Plato’s anthropology. According to Gos. Thom. 7, there is no way the inner man and the inner lion can peacefully coexist. They are invariably enemies, and, in order to live, one of them has to get rid of the other one. ...”
Miroshnikov, Ivan
The Gospel of Thomas and Plato: A Study of the Impact of Platonism on the Fifth Gospel
(pp. 195-196) 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.
Your Feedback:
Leave a Comment
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.
User Comments
,