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that the person who knows the beginning is blessed and will not taste death, then one can extend this reasoning even further to "coming into being before coming into being." The reasoning in this logion appears to contain an inner mode of reasoning as follows: Rule: Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death (GTh 1). Case: If you become my disciples and hearken to my sayings, Result: these stones will serve you! This logion, then, would appear to be the conclusion of a long introduction to the Gospel of Thomas that builds an argument on the basis of the initial logion about listening carefully to Jesus' sayings (which means becoming his disciple), interpreting the sayings to find their meaning, and, as a result, not tasting death. This inner reasoning has become an environment for abductive discovery of information that extends far beyond conventional wisdom. If the reasoning in the logion is introducing the major premise in its initial statement, the reasoning proceeds as follows: Contrawisdom (Rule): Blessed is one who came into being before coming into being. Joining of Case and Result from GTh 1 and 19: If you become my disciples and hearken to my sayings, you will discover the interpretation of these sayings and not taste death, and these stones will serve you. Result: There are five trees in Paradise for you; they do not change, summer or winter, and their leaves do not fall. Whoever knows them will not taste death. The reader now has entered fully into the domain of contrawisdom. The initial contrawisdom appears to be based on "a myth of an already existent being entering the mundane world" (Valantasis 1997: 88). Jesus, an example of such a being, stands before disciples with sayings that can lead them to understand that they also are such beings. This leads to the case/result (abductive reasoning) that if they become Jesus' disciples, they will discover the interpretation that leads them to this knowledge about themselves, and they will not taste death. "These stones will serve you" may mean that objects in the phenomenal world will become the things that at first hide true insight but then become the objects that (through searching and reflecting) lead a person into true knowledge. Perhaps the five trees in Paradise are a matter of finding both the beginning (Garden of Eden) and the end (Paradise). Since, as is stated in GTh 18, true knowledge takes one both to the beginning and the end, one who becomes a true disciple comes to know "the five trees in Paradise." One wonders if these trees are in some way related to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. Valantasis is perceptive when he says:
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