Introduction

Tucked away inside a single Syriac manuscript of a long hagiography devoted to Thomas, the saint, is a poem of just over 100 lines. While widely accepted as a parable or allegory, the poem itself is a first-person narrative with a trip, a giant snake keeping a pearl by the sea, a magic sleeping-spell, literal telepathy, a flying letter that talks, and more. With these and other endearing charms, The Pearlsong, as I’ll call it, has so captivated readers that it’s often considered on its own, apart from its position in the Acts of Thomas.¹ However much it’s a part of the saint’s life, it is and has been treated as a separate text all on its own, as it is here. 

This Syriac text, along with two Greek versions, is the subject of this book. The Syriac text of The Pearlsong is known from a single manuscript, among other Thomas manuscripts lacking it. Similarly, most Greek manuscripts of the Acts of Thomas have no Pearlsong, with just one including it. In addition to these late ancient texts in Syriac and Greek, there’s a paraphrase in a Byzantine homily by Niketas of Thessaloniki (perh. eleventh century). All three texts are given below with English translations.

At its most basic, The Pearlsong is a first-person narrative in verse, told by a prince sent as a child to Egypt by his parents to retrieve a pearl from a giant snake in the sea. Once in Egypt, abandoned by his guardian-guides, he tries to disguise himself as an Egyptian, and he gets tricked into joining them in serving their king and eating their food. He forgets why he’s there and where he came from. But his parents are somehow aware and they write a rousing letter that triggers his memory. The letter flies from sender to receiver, whom it wakes from slumber by making sounds and by actually speaking. The traveler- prince, now reawakened and reminded, recites a sleeping spell over the giant snake using the names of his royal family. The snake is now unconscious, so the prince makes off with the pearl. At this point our protagonist makes his way home, finding the letter in front of him as a guiding light. His parents also sent the prince a shining or sparkling garment belonging to him, but unlike the letter, the garment doesn’t fly: two members of the royal staff deliver it to him on the road, and it becomes a revelatory mirror. Like the letter, the shining garment speaks, too. Now the traveler-prince is ready to return home and rejoin his family, on the best terms with king and court. 

While specific allegorical or symbolic interpretations are possible, The Pearlsong is first and foremost a story, with all the possibilities of meaning, appropriation, and remixing. A reader or hearer may iden- tify, for example, with one or more actors in the narrative, at different times, and take some “meaning” – encouragement, sympathy, inspira- tion, direction, a reason to laugh – from the story that’s not directly philosophical or religious, domains where allegory and symbolism tend to reside. Like Shakespeare’s Tempest, the world of The Pearlsong is

a created world which is neither allegory nor psychology, but rather a world in the true sense; an alien place at the other side of the mirror, or at that world from which we snatch glimpses when we dream. Like learning of a new continent, we can see the similarities and also the dissim- ilarities to our own world; there’s people there, some of which may look like us, others which may look or behave in a way that appears to us quite surreal; they move about in a landscape where some of our natural laws seem to hold, while others don’t. We may spot creatures, strange as things from another planet, whom we soon come to learn.²

The Pearlsong has characters that are strange, uncanny, or supernatural, like a letter that can fly like an eagle, and parents telepathically aware of their child’s dire straits. Altogether the pedestrian elements and the weird and unexpected combine to make up the story, and it’s mainly as a story that I will read and discuss it, while still open to symbolic readings.

In the Syriac manuscript of the Acts of Thomas, the text is titled a maḏråšå, and in Greek psalmos.³ Either of these terms can reasonably be translated as “hymn,” and the text is typically referred to in English as “the hymn of the pearl (or soul),” but does “hymn” really fit this text? 

First, in the Thomas story itself, Thomas “says” the poem: he’s not singing. The verb used for Thomas’s performance of The Pearlsong is the normal, everyday verb of speaking in Syriac, the verb ʔemar. By contrast, the other piece of verse in the Acts of Thomas that the title character shares is something at a wedding, but in this case, Thomas unambiguously sings it, with the verb zmar used: “Thomas started singing this song.”⁴ By contrast, The Pearlsong is introduced in the Acts of Thomas this way: “Thomas started reciting this maḏråšå.”⁵

 Second, in English “hymn” brings to mind a piece of verse sung in praise of someone or something, maybe in a liturgical setting or style, whether a selection from The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion or an Egyptian hymn to Amun-Ra, for example. The Pearlsong is not mainly in praise of anyone or anything: neither the prince, the pearl, nor even the royal family and realm the prince leaves and returns to. 

Third, regarding the Syriac term maḏråšå: this word refers to a ma- jor type of Syriac religious poetry associated especially with the fa- mous Syriac writer Ephrem, and it is regularly translated “hymn” in that context. As discussed in Appendix Ⅰ, a maḏråšå normally means a kind of Syriac poem following a set of stanzaic patterns. The Pearlsong, though, clearly follows a distinctly different metrical arrangement and thus cannot be a Syriac “hymn” in this technical sense. 

So why is the text called a maḏråšå? The Syriac term is cognate with Hebrew miḏrāš. Midrash is a well-known, if not easily defined, genre of late ancient (and later) Jewish literature. At the most generic level in this context, it means a theory-oriented (as opposed to practice) interpretive instruction based on an authoritative text, generally part of the Bible.⁶ It’s nearly impossible to fit The Pearlsong even into this loose definition. In short, it’s not a maḏråšå as miḏrāš.⁷ 

So, if it’s not really a hymn, or a miḏrāš, and we want to call it something else, what might work? Niketas refers to it as τραγῳδίαν τινά “a tragedy.” Is it enough simply to call it a ”poem”? Maybe “lore” or “lore-song”? I prefer “Pearlsong” because, first, unlike “hymn,” “song” can include rhythmical recitation without music; and second, it conveys both whimsy and uniqueness – like the article in “the hymn of the pearl.” “Pearlsong” is no more invented than “hymn of the pearl” and it’s a better match. 

Beyond the title, it’s important to keep in mind the text’s more con-crete features: a first-person narrative focused on the speaker’s movements and changes, recorded in Syriac with a baseline rhythm of six-syllable couplets. It’s not in praise of anyone or anything. It’s not ob- viously written for music, and at least the way it’s presented in the Acts of Thomas, it wasn’t experienced as a melodic song. That said, there’s nothing to bar the text or narrative from a musical setting, and the name Pearlsong remains open and inviting for that prospect.