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The Lion Becomes Man: The Gnostic Leontomorphic Creator and the Platonic Tradition
The Lion Becomes The Gnostic Leontomorphic Creator and the Platonic Tradition
233 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1985
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October 18, 2014
“I have exerted myself to leave no promising stone unturned. If the journey leads far afield and, in many cases, into the darker corners of ancient religiosity--from classical Greek myth, Egyptian religion, Plato and Judaism to Hellenistic bestiaries, Mithraism, magic and astrology--I trust that what may be learned about Gnosticism and about the late antique world in general makes the venture worth the undertaking.”
The seventh saying in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas from Nag Hammadi has long puzzled scholars. “Jesus said: Blessed is the lion whom the man shall eat and the lion becomes man; but foul is the man whom the lion shall eat and the lion shall become man.” Many scholars think the ending is a scribal error. Wouldn’t it make more sense to read “the man shall become lion” to reverse the beginning? However, many of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas have surprise endings like this, plus the form of the verb is different from the verb in the first part. For these reasons and others, Jackson argues that the ending as we have it is not a scribal error.
There are no other sayings like this in the Bible, however, the Old Testament does compare the Hebrew god Yahweh to a lion often. Also the god Nergal (who appears in 2 Kings 17) is often depicted as a lion headed staff. Yaldabaoth, an evil god who the Gnostics associated with Yahweh, is said to have the features of a lion in several sources such as Origen’s Against Celsus, the Pistis Sophia, and the Apocryphon of John. Mandaean and Manichaean texts, derived from Gnostic texts, also give the King of Darkness the features of a lion. Christians often used the story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den and the associated Psalms from the Bible as a metaphor for Christian martyrdom, especially since Christians were sometimes fed to lions during ancient Roman times.
Turning to astrology, the constellation Leo contains the royal star Regulus, indicating an association between lions and royalty. Also, Neo-Pythagoreans believed everyone’s soul lived in the Milky Way before birth and migrated to earth by a celestial gateway located between the constellations Cancer and Leo. According to Macrobius, Leo is where souls (which all start out as perfect spheres) begin to take shape and prepare to be born. Chnoumis amulets, which feature a serpent with a lion’s head, were used for healing throughout the ancient world. There is also a Mithraic being called the Leontocephaline often portrayed with the characteristics of a lion.
There are several lion-headed deities in the Egyptian pantheon and one of them, Mios, is explicitly identified with Yahweh on lead curse tablets from Cyprus. There are also not one, but two Egyptian cities named Leontopolis devoted to worshipping lion-headed gods. In one of these cities, a temple to Yahweh was founded in 162 B.C. by Onias which lasted until A.D. 73. According to the historian Josephus, Onias refurbished a deserted temple of Bastet. Why did Onias found a rival to the temple in Jerusalem? One possible reason is he felt the priests in Jerusalem were no longer legitimate and he was the one responsible for carrying on the high priesthood after the murder of his father.
The Gnostics may have believed in reincarnation, so it’s possible this is what is meant by the lion becoming man. It’s also possible that the Gnostics wore animal masks in their ceremonies and this is what is referred to. Jackson rejects these explanations however. He finds the answer in a section from Book 9 of Plato’s Republic, a Coptic translation of which was discovered at Nag Hammadi along with the Gospel of Thomas, so it was a passage the Gnostics valued. Plato reports Socrates saying that the soul of man can be divided into three parts: a many headed beast, a lion, and a man. The beast is basically the id of Freudian psychology, the urge for food, money, and sex. The man represents reason. The lion represents anger, courage, and ambition. If the man can enlist the lion as an ally against the beast, his passion can ennoble him, but if the lion sides with the beast, the man is devoured.
According to Socrates, the person who believes injustice pays, “is affirming nothing else than that it profits him to feast and make strong the multifarious beast and the lion and all that pertain to the lion, but to starve the man and so enfeeble him that he can be pulled about whithersoever either of the others drag him, and not to familiarize or reconcile with one another the two creatures but suffer them to bite and fight and devour one another.”
On the other hand, the person who believes justice is better “affirms that all our actions and words should tend to give the man within us complete domination over the entire man and make him take charge of the many-headed beast--like a farmer who cherishes and trains the cultivated plants but checks the growth of the wild--and he will make an ally of the lion’s nature, and caring for all the beasts alike will first make them friendly to one another and to himself, and so foster their growth.”
In his attempt to leave no stone unturned, Jackson seems to have tracked down every possible reference to lions he could find in the ancient record. While most of these references don’t help shed light on the seventh saying of Thomas, I did learn a lot about the ancient world as Jackson’s introductory statement promised. This book is written for a scholarly audience, so he assumes the reader is familiar with words such as betyl (a meteorite revered as a sacred stone) and anguipede (a god with snakes for legs). Jackson also assumes the reader knows Coptic, Greek, Italian, French, German, etc. Since I don’t know any of these languages, I no doubt missed out on a few things, but the book was readable and enjoyable overall.
The seventh saying in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas from Nag Hammadi has long puzzled scholars. “Jesus said: Blessed is the lion whom the man shall eat and the lion becomes man; but foul is the man whom the lion shall eat and the lion shall become man.” Many scholars think the ending is a scribal error. Wouldn’t it make more sense to read “the man shall become lion” to reverse the beginning? However, many of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas have surprise endings like this, plus the form of the verb is different from the verb in the first part. For these reasons and others, Jackson argues that the ending as we have it is not a scribal error.
There are no other sayings like this in the Bible, however, the Old Testament does compare the Hebrew god Yahweh to a lion often. Also the god Nergal (who appears in 2 Kings 17) is often depicted as a lion headed staff. Yaldabaoth, an evil god who the Gnostics associated with Yahweh, is said to have the features of a lion in several sources such as Origen’s Against Celsus, the Pistis Sophia, and the Apocryphon of John. Mandaean and Manichaean texts, derived from Gnostic texts, also give the King of Darkness the features of a lion. Christians often used the story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den and the associated Psalms from the Bible as a metaphor for Christian martyrdom, especially since Christians were sometimes fed to lions during ancient Roman times.
Turning to astrology, the constellation Leo contains the royal star Regulus, indicating an association between lions and royalty. Also, Neo-Pythagoreans believed everyone’s soul lived in the Milky Way before birth and migrated to earth by a celestial gateway located between the constellations Cancer and Leo. According to Macrobius, Leo is where souls (which all start out as perfect spheres) begin to take shape and prepare to be born. Chnoumis amulets, which feature a serpent with a lion’s head, were used for healing throughout the ancient world. There is also a Mithraic being called the Leontocephaline often portrayed with the characteristics of a lion.
There are several lion-headed deities in the Egyptian pantheon and one of them, Mios, is explicitly identified with Yahweh on lead curse tablets from Cyprus. There are also not one, but two Egyptian cities named Leontopolis devoted to worshipping lion-headed gods. In one of these cities, a temple to Yahweh was founded in 162 B.C. by Onias which lasted until A.D. 73. According to the historian Josephus, Onias refurbished a deserted temple of Bastet. Why did Onias found a rival to the temple in Jerusalem? One possible reason is he felt the priests in Jerusalem were no longer legitimate and he was the one responsible for carrying on the high priesthood after the murder of his father.
The Gnostics may have believed in reincarnation, so it’s possible this is what is meant by the lion becoming man. It’s also possible that the Gnostics wore animal masks in their ceremonies and this is what is referred to. Jackson rejects these explanations however. He finds the answer in a section from Book 9 of Plato’s Republic, a Coptic translation of which was discovered at Nag Hammadi along with the Gospel of Thomas, so it was a passage the Gnostics valued. Plato reports Socrates saying that the soul of man can be divided into three parts: a many headed beast, a lion, and a man. The beast is basically the id of Freudian psychology, the urge for food, money, and sex. The man represents reason. The lion represents anger, courage, and ambition. If the man can enlist the lion as an ally against the beast, his passion can ennoble him, but if the lion sides with the beast, the man is devoured.
According to Socrates, the person who believes injustice pays, “is affirming nothing else than that it profits him to feast and make strong the multifarious beast and the lion and all that pertain to the lion, but to starve the man and so enfeeble him that he can be pulled about whithersoever either of the others drag him, and not to familiarize or reconcile with one another the two creatures but suffer them to bite and fight and devour one another.”
On the other hand, the person who believes justice is better “affirms that all our actions and words should tend to give the man within us complete domination over the entire man and make him take charge of the many-headed beast--like a farmer who cherishes and trains the cultivated plants but checks the growth of the wild--and he will make an ally of the lion’s nature, and caring for all the beasts alike will first make them friendly to one another and to himself, and so foster their growth.”
In his attempt to leave no stone unturned, Jackson seems to have tracked down every possible reference to lions he could find in the ancient record. While most of these references don’t help shed light on the seventh saying of Thomas, I did learn a lot about the ancient world as Jackson’s introductory statement promised. This book is written for a scholarly audience, so he assumes the reader is familiar with words such as betyl (a meteorite revered as a sacred stone) and anguipede (a god with snakes for legs). Jackson also assumes the reader knows Coptic, Greek, Italian, French, German, etc. Since I don’t know any of these languages, I no doubt missed out on a few things, but the book was readable and enjoyable overall.
May 10, 2025
Got what I needed out of it for the paper I’m writing, but the lack of elaboration on several ideas/cults/terms was a bit annoying. So was the lack of elaboration on why Sekhmet is connected to healing when explaining the origins of Lion-serpent Yahweh and how he’s Chnoubis and used on magic amulets. Lots of neat ideas tho
January 11, 2015
Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."- Gospel of Thomas (7)
This has been one of my favorite sayings of Jesus ever since I ran across it, and I'm so excited to have a book that makes this its central focus! This book looks at the saying from what is surely every possible reasonable angle, at least as far as the current state of knowledge allows. I am looking forward to reading my favorite Gnostic works again, especially John's Apocryphon, armed with this new knowledge. I only have two complaints. The middle of the book really bogged down, beginning with the discussion of the Egyptian lion-headed god Chnoumis. I don't think that the information was unneccesary exactly; it just seemed presented in a way that was disconnected to the main thesis.
This has been one of my favorite sayings of Jesus ever since I ran across it, and I'm so excited to have a book that makes this its central focus! This book looks at the saying from what is surely every possible reasonable angle, at least as far as the current state of knowledge allows. I am looking forward to reading my favorite Gnostic works again, especially John's Apocryphon, armed with this new knowledge. I only have two complaints. The middle of the book really bogged down, beginning with the discussion of the Egyptian lion-headed god Chnoumis. I don't think that the information was unneccesary exactly; it just seemed presented in a way that was disconnected to the main thesis.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews