Five Trees of Paradise (Gospel of Thomas)

 Today I am looking at the nineteenth saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "Blessed is he who came into being before he came into being. If you become my disciples and listen to my words, these stones will minister to you. For there are five trees in paradise for you. Summer or winter they do not change and their leaves do not fall. Whoever knows them will not taste death." 

This saying naturally breaks down into the segments. First is a beatitude. Then there is the statement about the stones. And third is the enigmatic saying about the Trees of Paradise. All three have echoes in the canonical gospels. Once again the Gospel of Thomas gives us new insights into the New Testament sayings. 

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Transcript

Today I am looking at the nineteenth saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "Blessed is he who came into being before he came into being. If you become my disciples and listen to my words, these stones will minister to you. For there are five trees in paradise for you. Summer or winter they do not change and their leaves do not fall. Whoever knows them will not taste death." 

This saying naturally breaks down into the segments. First is a beatitude. Then there is the statement about the stones. And third is the enigmatic saying about the Trees of Paradise. All three have echoes in the canonical gospels. Once again the Gospel of Thomas gives us new insights into the New Testament sayings. 

I will take then one at a time. The meaning of the beatitude ought to be familiar to us by now. It is a repeated theme in the Gospel of Thomas. "Blessed is he who came into being before he came into being.” Another translation says, “Blessed is one who was before coming into being.”  Jesus is oncer again pointing us to our true nature which is unborn. It is like the Zen koan that I mention often about seeing the face we had before we were born and before our parents were born.  

This is the same truth Jesus was teaching when he said in the Gospel of John, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” In response to that statement, the religious teachers of Jesus’ day picked up stones to stone him to death for blasphemy. Jesus’ teaching was blasphemous then and now. The text says that to avoid being executed Jesus ran away from them and hid. That is an interesting detail that does not jibe with the stereotype that Christians have of Jesus, yet it is there in the Gospel of John.  

“Before Abraham was, I am.” Jesus was clearly saying that he was before Abraham was born. Abraham was his ancestor. So Jesus was saying that he was before his ancestor was born. That is his koan. In Thomas he says, “"Blessed is he who came into being before he came into being.” He is blessing those who know that they were before they were born. Those who know their true eternal nature. 

Jesus says next, “If you become my disciples and listen to my words, these stones will minister to you.” This is very reminiscent of what Jesus said on Palm Sunday according to the Gospel of Luke. Jesus was riding down the Mount of Olives on a donkey. All his disciples were rejoicing and praising God, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd scolded Jesus, saying, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” 

In both gospels the stones give testimony to the truth – one by speaking and the other by serving. This is pointing to the truth that even the seemingly inanimate universe – even rocks - are alive with the presence of the Divine and they testify to the Eternal Gospel, the Perennial Wisdom, for those with ears to hear. This reminds me of the story of the Buddha  when the touches the earth and the earth bears witness to who he is. This happens in the context of the Buddha being tempted by Mara, which is also a parallel to Jesus being tempted by the devil in the wilderness, which was when Jesus was coming to grips with waking up to his True Nature.  

The testimony of the stones is a way of saying that we are is more than these skin sacks of meat that we call bodies. We assume these bodies are the limits of what we are. Jesus is saying that our identity is not limited by time or space. We were before we were born or our ancestors are born. What we are extends even to the stones in the road. They are included in what we are. Time and space are illusions in comparison to our true nature. 

The third part of the saying, which makes up most of the 19th saying, is the most intriguing and difficult part to interpret. It says, “For there are five trees in paradise for you. Summer or winter they do not change and their leaves do not fall. Whoever knows them will not taste death." 

What is Jesus talking about? From the Book of Genesis we know of two trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. Yet the Gospel of Thomas says there are Five Trees. What are these five trees? There are several interpretations. Some interpret the five trees as the five human senses. But it does not make sense that if you know the five senses, then you will not experience death. So I don’t think that is what it means. 

A more interesting interpretation comes from the Acts of Thomas, which is another apocryphal book dated to the early third century. It describes the apostle Thomas’ trip to northwest India, and includes an account of his martyrdom. This possibility should be taken seriously simply because it comes from the Thomas tradition.  

In this book there is an account of Thomas anointing an Indian raja and his brother with oil, as a symbol of the Holy Spirit. They have an auditory experience of the risen Christ speaking to them. Then during that ceremony, Thomas says, “Come, elder of the five members....” Then he names the five members: mind, thought, reflection, consideration, and reason.”  One ancient interpretation identifies these as five as sanity, reason, mindfulness, imagination and intention. Perhaps these are five types of consciousness that one is to know. 

But the passage in the Acts of Thomas does not say anything about five trees in Paradise, so it is a stretch to identify the five trees of the Gospel of Thomas as five states of mind. In the Hindu Puranas five celestial trees that are named, so maybe there is some inter-borrowing between the Thomas tradition in India. The five trees might also correspond to the five books of the Torah, called the Pentateuch.  

I think the best solution is to look to Book of Revelation for guidance in identifying the five trees of paradise. At the end of the Book of Revelation, John is shown the Tree of Life in Paradise. It says: 

“And he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”  

This is the Tree of Life mentioned in Genesis, where it says that if you eat of it you live forever. So I think that Genesis and Revelation are the best sources to identify the five trees of the Gospel of Thomas. 

In Revelation it says that this Tree of Life grows on both sides of the River of Life, and that they bear twelve kinds of fruit. Many interpreters see this as twelve types of the Tree of Life, each bearing a different fruit. So we have twelve trees of life in Revelation and five trees of life in Thomas. They are different ways of pointing to the same reality. 

There is no further identification of the twelve fruits in Revelation, and I don’t think there needs to be any further identification of the five trees in Thomas.  You can go too far in interpreting symbols allegorically. Jesus seldom, if ever speaks allegorically.  There is no reason that the five trees in Thomas should stand for anything other than simply the Tree of Life.  

This is the simplest explanation, and for me the simplest is usually the best. Otherwise it is easy to drift off into metaphysical speculation, which is what happened to later Gnosticism. Remember the KISS acronym: Keep It Simple Saint. So I think it best to keep it simple here. 

“For there are five trees in paradise for you. Summer or winter they do not change and their leaves do not fall. Whoever knows them will not taste death." In Thomas instead of twelve trees with twelve fruits like in John’s Revelation, there are five trees, presumably with five fruits. The meaning is the same, whoever knows them, eats them, becomes one with them, will not experience death. It is that simple. Yet that profound.