Lion and Human in Gospel of Thomas Logion 7

Logion 7 (NHC II, 2, 33:23-29) has challenged interpreters of Thomas's Gospel since the text first became available to scholars.1 In the only sustained treatment that the saying has received, Howard Jackson characterizes Gos. Thorn. 7 as "[a]mong the hardest of the 'hard sayings' that the [Gospel of Thomas] sets upon the lips of Jesus."2 In its Coptic version, divided into clauses, it runs:3 1. Jesus said, 2. "Blessed is the lion that the human eats, 3. and the lion becomes human. 4. And cursed is the human that the lion eats, 5. and the lion will become human." No parallel may be found attributed to Jesus in any canonical or noncanonical Gospel or the agrapha.4 Although it is attested in at least two recensions of the Gospel of Thomas, Coptic (NHC II, 2) and Greek (P.Oxy. 654), its isolated transmission in Gospel of Thomas has rendered the logion frustratingly enigmatic. And it is enigmatic indeed. The logion shares little in the way of thematic motifs with other sayings in the Gospel of Thomas tradition. The motif of the lion so dominant in Gos. Thorn. 7 does not occur elsewhere in the Gospel of Thomas, or even in other Thomas traditions preserved in the Nag Hammadi codices or elsewhere.5 More broadly, concern over eating is shared with only one other logion, Gos. Thorn. 11: Jesus said, "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. And the dead (elements) will not die. In the days when you (plur.) used to ingest dead (elements), you made them alive. When you are in the light what will you do? On the day that you were one, you made two. And when you are two, what will you do?"6 Even here it is not entirely clear what the connection may be between the two sayings.7 The enigma of Gos. Thorn. 7 has left it in a state of exegetical neglect in comparison with the attention received by other passages with parallels in the Synoptic Gospels or in extrabiblical testimony.8 In the following pages I offer a new reading of Gos. Thorn. 7. Since Gos. Thorn. 7 exists in relative isolation in the Gospel, I WUl avoid predicating my reading on any a priori theory of the Gospel's compositional or redactional history, its theological coherence (or lack thereof), or its social location or liturgical use. Rather, the present paper takes up the very reasonable charge tendered by Francis Fallon and Ron Cameron "to analyze in depth the originally discrete sayings in the text."9 In short, I argue that the key to understanding Gos. Thorn. 7 as a discrete saying may be found in early Christian discourse about the resurrection. That is to say, the allegory of lion and human in Gos. Thorn. 7 represents at least one strand of Thomasine reflection on the general resurrection. I will first discuss as briefly as possible the previous attempts to place the logion theologically and literarily, and then move on to my own analysis of this obscure saying of the living Jesus. I. PREVIOUS APPROACHES TO GOSPEL OF THOMAS 7 Yet, for a variety of reasons, the commonsense emendation of early commentators has failed to convince the majority of the Gospel's students.11 On the one hand, the proposed emendation renders the supposedly "obscure saying" almost tautological. It is hard to imagine what hidden meaning such a commonplace truism about digestion would hold for readers of the Gospel of Thomas, faced tiiroughout with paradoxical logia of the living Jesus. In this respect, NHC II, 2 certainly preserves the lectio difficilior. Even clearer are the text-critical reasons for preserving the original reading of Gos. Thorn. 7 as preserved in NHC II, 2. The reason for the supposed error is not entirely clear, purportedly either due to a copyist's or translator's error, and Jackson has effectively countered the arguments for emendation.12 The subsequent critical edition of the Coptic and Greek witnesses by Bentiey Layton and Harold Attridge has shown without any doubt that the text should not be emended and must be understood as it stands. …