LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM 387
Having discounted absolute interpretation, we perceive some clues. On the
surface the poem is simply an adventure. Yet everywhere in it are clues of other
meanings. After all, serpents who sleep with pearls in their possession cannot
but have an allegorical dimension. These symbols were used in Mandaean tra-
ditional tales as well as in such gnostic works as the Pistis Sophia. Scholarship
suggests that the main characters—the father, mother, and prince—form a
gnostic trinity, equivalent to the Christian trinitarian formula. They may rep-
resent the father of truth, the mother of wisdom, and the son. The son, who is
redeemer and savior, is not Christ, however, or at least not primarily Christ.
Hans Jonas identifies him with the Manichaean pre-cosmic human. The son
has a double or twin role, for he appears to be both savior and the soul that he
saves; he saves and must himself be saved. So too the pearl, which at first ap-
pears to be a symbol of the soul, is also the deity who saves the soul. The no-
tion of the double is typically gnostic: the role of Thomas as twin in the
Gospel of Thomas and the Book of Thomas is but one example. As Jonas
points out, "the interchangeability of the subject and object of the mission, of
savior and soul, Prince and Pearl, is the key to the true meaning of the poem,
and to the gnostic eschitology in general."^2
Other symbols in the poem are doubled as well. The prince's garment of
glory, which is his spiritual body, he has taken off and left behind in order to
assume the unclean robe of the world, which is obviously the unclean physical
body. But the garment of glory also operates as an independent being, re-
minding him of his duty to return. So too the letter, on which is written the
call of redemption, flies down like an eagle from heaven and becomes a mes-
senger of light, in a way that recalls the heavenly letter of the Songs of
Solomon. On the way the letter, the word, seems to take on a woman's voice.
Whoever the author and whatever the background, that poem's creator revels
in games of spiritual ambiguity, skirting confusion as it deepens into swift
spectacle. The prince has left the east, the land of light and origin, to go down
to Egypt, which stands traditionally for the body, for material things, for dark-
ness and error. It is the kingdom of death, which is exemplified by the tomb
culture and underground cult of the dead. Likewise, the serpent is the realm of
darkness and ignorance, in dark waters on the earth below the sea.
In this fable of redemption, as Hans Jonas points out, the savior himself
must be saved—or rather, must save himself. We see the dramatic way in
- Jonas, Gnostic Religion, p. 127.