Text
There is a piece of Gnostic poetry from second century called the Hymn of the Pearl which is contained in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas. The apostle Judas Thomas sings the hymn in an Indian prison to comfort his fellow prisoners. In the hymn, the royal son is sent by his father and mother, the king and the queen, from the highlands of the East (the heavenly world) to go to Egypt (the fallen world) to collect a hidden treasure, the pearl, from the mouth of a dragon. He has to leave his beautiful, glittering clothes at home, but, if he returns with the treasure, he will be allowed to dress in them again.
When he arrives in Egypt, he dresses like the locals in order not to attract attention. After eating the food the Egyptians gave him, the prince forgets who he really is. His parents learn about this, and thus send a letter to him to remind of his origin and his task, which begins: “From your Father, the King of kings, and your Mother, the Mistress of the East.” The letter takes the form of an eagle, and at its arrival becomes speech - representing the Gnostic idea of the “call” acting as the savior. When hearing the voice of the eagle, the prince is awoken from his unawareness. He uses the names of his father and mother in an invocation to charm the dragon, seizes the pearl, and returns home. His parents send his glittering clothes to meet him, and when he sees them, the cloak radiates knowledge and whispers to him that they fit each other perfectly.
In the story, the prince stands for the human soul, which has fallen from heaven into the material world in search of a treasure, a pearl, which symbolizes the wisdom one must attain during life. His parents, the King and the Queen are to be identified as the Father and the Holy Spirit, at least according to its Christian reading in antiquity. The soul forgets its high origin and destiny and falls “asleep” until it is awakened by a “call.” The cloak and the toga which he left behind in the palace at home, only to be clothed in them when he returned again, refer to the spirit and spiritual body with which the soul was originally united; the Egyptian clothes that he was wearing while in Egypt stand for the material body.
Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Acts of Thomas 108-113
Bibliography
| Brock 1990, 79 | Brock, Sebastian. “The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature.” In: Janet Martin Soskice (ed.). After Eve: Women, Theology and the Christian Tradition. London: Marshall Pickering 1990, 73-88. |
| Lapinkivi 2004, 171 | Lapinkivi, Pirjo. The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in the Light of Comparative Evidence. State Archives of Assyria Studies 15. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Coprus Project 2004. |
| Parpola 2001 | Parpola, Simo. “Mesopotamian Precursors of the Hymn of the Pearl.” In: R. M. Whiting (ed.). Mythology and Mythologies. Methodological approaches to intercultural influences. Melammu Symposia 2. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001, 181-194. [PDF] |
Amar Annus
Pirjo Lapinkivi
URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0001382.php
|
