116 LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOMThe similarities of some of these expressions to the Gospel of Thomas are
noteworthy (see, for instance, Gospel of Thomas 108).
According to Christian traditions, Judas Thomas the twin was the brother
of Jesus, and in Syrian tradition he was thought to be the twin brother of Jesus.
This concept of the twin also functions importantly in Manichaean sacred lit-
erature. The New Testament book of Jude is apparently attributed to this
Judas, and in the Acts of Thomas, Judas Thomas is the apostolic missionary to
northern Mesopotamia and India—hence the presence of the church of Saint
Thomas in India to the present day. As the twin brother of Jesus, Judas
Thomas was credited with special knowledge and insight, although not all
Christians agreed with this positive assessment. In the Gospel of John, pre-
sented above, this evaluation of Judas Thomas as a person of knowledge,
Thomas the "gnostic," is directly contradicted, and Thomas is portrayed as
"doubting Thomas," Thomas the "agnostic."
In the Song of the Pearl and, less directly, in the Gospel of Thomas and
the Book of Thomas, the story of the soul is depicted in mythic narrative.
The mythic story of the soul was recounted throughout the literature of an-
tiquity and late antiquity. It was told by storytellers, interpreted by philoso-
phers, and incorporated into texts of gnostic wisdom. It is the story of Eros
(or, Cupid, love) and Psyche (soul), told by Apuleius of Madaura in his ro-
mance entitled Metamorphoses (or The Golden Ass). The word psyche is femi-
nine in gender in Greek, and the soul is often considered female in stories of
the soul. In the Exegesis on the Soul, included here, the story of the soul is
recounted in graphic form as the fall and restoration of the soul, who suc-
cumbs to bodily and sexual defilement and is restored to her former condi-
tion by her heavenly lover.
Simon Magus, the first-century teacher from Samaria claimed by the
heresiologists to be the founder of the gnostic religions, seems to have acted
out a myth of the soul not unlike that described in Exegesis on the Soul.^12
Simon himself apparently was called "the great power of god," an expression
found in Acts 8:10,^13 and associated with a woman named Helena, whom he
found working as a prostitute in Tyre and subsequently redeemed. He is said
to have called her "first thought" (ennoia) and imagined her incarnating and
reincarnating as thought or soul in one human body after another—Helen of
- See Rudolph, Gnosis, 297-98.
- This expression is also found in the title of a text from the Nag Hammadi library, the Concept
of Our Great Power (VI,4).