24. The Song of the Pearl
F I I
- he Song of the Pearl is a narrative poem about a prince's quest for
I a pearl. Presented in the Acts of Thomas as a hymn uttered by
JL. Thomas, The Song of the Pearl is also a gnostic tale of salvation, of
sleeping in error and awakening to light, of quest not only for the pearl but for
the benefit of possessing the pearl: a return to the light.
What is the pearl? As one of the alternative titles of the poem, "The Hymn
of the Soul," suggests, the pearl may esoterically be the soul. Or the pearl may
be gnosis, the awakening, and the knowledge that the soul must have to move
to the next level of being. Bentley Layton suggests that the prince and his
quest may be the soul and its journey, the poem a tale of "the soul's entry
into bodily incarnation and its eventual disengagement from the body."^1 The
soul on entering matter becomes inert, but once in possession of its pearl of
knowledge it will waken into wisdom and reunion with "the first principle."
Giinther Bornkamm believes the young prince and savior to be Mani him-
self, the founder of Manichaeism. The mysteries of interpretation fortu-
nately are not fixed and apparent. Were the symbolic figures—a road, a coat,
a serpent, a pearl, a wandering prince—easily decodable, the poem might be
merely didactic. But the narrative is shot through with mysterious changes,
dramatic turns and transformations that may be interpreted as theology only
at risk of error.
i. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, p. 366.