We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
When revising my translation of the Mandæan scroll The Baptism of Hibil-Ziwa which has just been published by the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Studi e Testi, No. 176, I was struck by certain resemblances in the narrative to the story of the journey of the Parthian prince in search of the Pearl as related in the Syriac Acts of Judas Thomas. This poem is sometimes called the Hymn of the Apostle Thomas and by Professor F. G. Burkitt (the Quest, vol. v, July, 1914) the Hymn of the Soul. In his Zwei Gnostische Hymnen (Giessen, 1904) which contains both the Syriac text and the translation into German, Erwin Preuschen calls it Das Lied von der Erlösung.
1 As DrWaldemar, Sunding points out in his Kušṛa (Gleerup, Lund, 1953)Google Scholar the gimra scarcely behaves like a “jewel” or “pearl” (Ginza Rabba, rt. p. 158 op. cit.), and he suggests a second meaning, “serpent,” viz. that the gimra here may be the serpent portrayed on the magic seal-ring known as the skandola or skan daula. As for the mrara which I have translated “bitter herb” (Lidzbarski in several places Bitterkraut, and Sunding “poison”), I offer the suggestion that here it may mean a poisonous creature, for, in the Tafsir Pagra a mrara is classed with the serpent and tortoise as a noxious creature.
