The Hymn of the Pearl

Embedded in the Acts of Thomas is the Hymn of the Pearl (also called the Hymn of the Soul or Song of the Pearl) — a poem of a king’s son sent from the East down into Egypt to fetch a single pearl guarded by a serpent, who forgets himself in exile, is awakened by a letter from home, recovers the pearl, and returns to his Father’s house and his glorious robe. This file sets out the poem, its allegory of the soul’s descent and return, and how its beauty and its (apocryphal, gnostic-tinged) provenance are weighed together.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Poem in Its Setting

The Hymn of the Pearl appears in the Acts of Thomas as a song the apostle sings while imprisoned in the realm of King Misdaeus, before his martyrdom (Acts of Thomas 108–113; trans. Klijn 2003). It is preserved fully in the Syriac version and, with differences, in one Greek manuscript; many scholars regard it as an originally independent poem — older than, or at least distinct from, the Acts — that was incorporated into the narrative, which would explain its self-contained perfection and its looser fit with the surrounding episodes (Klijn 2003; Bornkamm 1992). Whatever its precise origin, it stands within an apocryphal and gnostic-tinged work (see The Acts of Thomas), and its imagery draws on the same Syriac and dualist spirituality.

The Story

The poem is a first-person tale told by a king’s son. While a child in his Father’s house in the kingdom of the East, clothed in glory and wealth, he is sent by his parents on a journey down into Egypt to bring back the one pearl that lies in the sea, guarded by a “loud-breathing serpent” — and he is stripped of his shining robe for the journey and given provisions and a charge to remember who he is (Hymn of the Pearl, in Acts of Thomas 108–109; trans. Klijn 2003). Arriving in Egypt, he comes near the serpent and waits for it to sleep; but the Egyptians notice him a stranger, give him their food, and he forgets — forgets that he is a king’s son, forgets the pearl, and falls into a deep sleep of soul, sunk in the heaviness of the foreign land (Hymn of the Pearl 110; trans. Klijn 2003).

His parents, perceiving his plight, send him a letter, which flies to him as an eagle and speaks: “Awake and arise from thy sleep… remember the pearl for which thou wast sent into Egypt” (Hymn of the Pearl 110–111; trans. Klijn 2003). The letter rouses him; he remembers his origin and his errand, charms or overcomes the serpent by naming his Father, seizes the pearl, and turns homeward, stripping off the filthy Egyptian garments. As he ascends toward the East, his bright robe — the glorious garment he had laid aside as a child — is sent down to meet him; he sees in it as in a mirror his own image, receives it, and is clothed again, and so returns to his Father’s house and kingdom in glory (Hymn of the Pearl 111–113; trans. Klijn 2003).

The Allegory of the Soul

The poem is transparently allegorical, and its allegory is the descent and return of the soul. The king’s son is the soul (or the heavenly self); the Father’s house in the East is the soul’s heavenly origin; Egypt is the material world of forgetfulness and exile; the serpent is the power that guards the world (death, the devil, or matter); the pearl is the soul’s true treasure or destiny to be recovered; the forgetting is the soul’s amnesia of its origin amid the body and the world; the letter is the call from above — the revelation, the word of God, the awakening grace — that recalls the soul to itself; and the bright robe is the glory the soul laid aside and recovers in its return (Bornkamm 1992; Klijn 2003). The structure — descent, forgetting, awakening by a heavenly call, recovery, ascent, reclothing in glory — is the classic shape of the soul’s journey, and it has spoken powerfully to readers across many traditions.

Beauty and Provenance Together

The Hymn of the Pearl is, by wide consent, one of the most beautiful poems of early Christian and late-antique literature, and the Orthodox tradition has not been deaf to it: its themes — the soul’s exile in the world, the forgetting and the awakening, the call from the Father, the garment of glory lost and regained — resonate deeply with patristic and ascetic spirituality, with the parable of the Prodigal who “came to himself” (Luke 15:17) and returned to the Father, and with the baptismal “robe of light” of Syriac hymnody (Ephrem and the Syriac Fathers; cf. St. Ephrem the Syrian). Many Orthodox readers receive it as a precious devotional allegory of the soul’s return to God.

Yet its provenance must be kept in view. The Hymn comes embedded in the apocryphal, encratite, gnostic-tinged Acts of Thomas (see The Acts of Thomas), and its imagery of the soul’s pre-existent heavenly self, its descent into a body experienced as exile, and its salvation by a call that awakens it to remember its origin can be read in a frankly gnostic key — a key the Church does not adopt, since Orthodox anthropology does not hold the soul to be a fallen heavenly being trapped in an evil material world, nor the body to be a prison from which to be freed (cf. Christology and the Orthodox affirmation of the goodness of the created body in the Incarnation). The discerning reader therefore holds the two together: the poem’s beauty and its genuine spiritual resonances are real, and it can be read with profit as an allegory of the Prodigal’s return and the baptismal garment; but its native gnostic frame is not the Church’s teaching, and the Hymn, like the Acts that carry it, is received critically — valued, but not as Scripture or doctrine (METHODOLOGY §3.5).

A Note on the Apostle

The Hymn of the Pearl is not, of course, a composition of the apostle Thomas; it is a poem placed on his lips by the Acts, drawn from the Syriac poetic tradition of the third century or earlier (Klijn 2003; Bornkamm 1992). Its connection to Thomas is literary, not historical — the Acts assign the apostle their finest song, as the apocryphal Acts often crown their heroes with hymns. The poem belongs to the study of Syriac Christianity and of the Acts of Thomas, and through them to the wider tradition of the apostle, but it tells us nothing of the historical Thomas; it is the Acts’ gift to him, and to the reader, not his own words.

See Also

References

  • The Hymn of the Pearl, in The Acts of Thomas 108–113. Trans. A. F. J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. 2nd rev. ed. Leiden: Brill, 2003. (Text, translation, and commentary.)
  • Bornkamm, Günther. “The Acts of Thomas.” In New Testament Apocrypha, ed. W. Schneemelcher, vol. 2. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1992. (On the Hymn of the Pearl and its possibly independent origin.)
  • Elliott, J. K., ed. The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. (Translation of the Hymn of the Pearl within the Acts of Thomas.)
  • The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. (Luke 15:17, the Prodigal who “came to himself.”)