Hymn of the Pearl
Hymn of the Pearl
But the most intriguing piece of very early evidence may be a few lines of poetry from some apocryphal early church literature. These lines, referred to as the two images segment are from an epic Syriac poem, the "Hymn of the Pearl."
We find this hymn, today, within a 3rd century text called the Acts of Thomas (not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas). Many scholars argue it is Gnostic text and the Catholic Church has called it heretical. But vilification does not diminish significance for historians. It is the legendary story—true, partly true or false—of the apostle Thomas’ (Judas Thomas or Thomas Judas Didymus) mission to India and his martyrdom. Authorship is often attributed to the Gnostic poet Bardesane of Edessa, perhaps as early as A.D. 216).
The hymn, itself, is thought to be older than the Acts of Thomas. It is found in different places in different Greek and Syriac versions of Acts found.
Words of the Hymn of the Pearl
As a matter of first person literary style, the risen Christ is describing his burial garment:
Suddenly, I saw my image on my garment like in a mirror
Myself and myself through myself [or myself facing outward and inward]
As though divided, yet one likeness
Two images: but one likeness of the King [of kings in some translations]
If you look at a photograph of the shroud you see two full size images of a man, one in which the image is facing outward and one inward. In more modern terms we describe these as front-side and back-side images, or ventral and dorsal images. They are, indeed, as in a mirror as they are full size and seemingly perpendicular to the surface. Those words, “as though divided, yet one likeness,” resonate with the two separate image that meet at the top of the head.
Interpretations of the Hymn of the Pearl
Scholars have different ideas about how to interpret the “Hymn of the Pearl,” sometimes also called the “Hymn of the Soul” or the “Hymn of the Robe of Glory.” There is no direct evidence that the first-person speaker is Jesus. The speaker is “the son of the king of kings.” It is rich with the Gnostic idea that mankind can be saved from the tragedy of the human conditions by a secret message delivered by Jesus. But, arguably, since this hymn was supposedly sung or spoken by the Apostle Thomas as he awaited his martyrdom in a prison in India, it can be argued that these are Thomas’ words.
The point, however, is that the two images segment of the “Hymn of the Pearl” seems to describe the shroud that is now in Turin. It is hard to imagine what else, even in a metaphorical sense, these words describe.
What is lacking in the poetic description is any mention of the photographic-like negativity. Perhaps, given that such a concept was not realized during this era, it wasn’t addressed. Or perhaps it was.
Testing History
Part of the task of the historian can be likened to a prospector panning for gold and being able to distinguish between the real stuff and fool’s gold, little bits of pyrite that glitter and shine, that look like gold but are all but worthless.
We started our journey through the Edessa to Constantinople history by looking at the shroud that is in Turin, in an obvious sort of way, so that we might test the nuggets of history we found and see if they were gold. We have a long ways to go. We need to find a plausible way for the cloth to get from Constantinople to Turin. We need to then look at the history of astonishing discoveries that happened in the 20th and early part of the 21st century. The journey gets very exciting.
The divided images looking out of and into the cloth of the shroud and the burial garment of the Hymn of the Pearl, the tetradiplon fold marks, the unusual images that seemed like sweat or fine pigments, seemingly not made by human hands, the poker holes. We took a detour through Spain to look at the Oviedo cloth. At first it looked like we might in this cloth have extraordinary confirmation. Then we were not so sure. How significant is the carbon dating of the Oviedo Sudarium? Not much, as we will see.
Making Sense of History in Context
Much of the information about the shroud’s history or possible history, depending on how you interpret it, was known for a long time. It is just that no one realized that a strange statement about a burial cloth rising up on Friday’s seemed to make much sense at all. Or that the two-image segment of the Hymn of the Pearl was anything more than peculiarly strange gibberish within an epic poem. Or that the small little circles in a strange pattern drawn on Jesus’ burial cloth in that picture in the Hungarian Pray Codex meant anything. Or that a word like tetradiplon, a perfectly good word, that otherwise seems not to exist in anything ever written in Greek, was meaningful. I was a Scavone puts it, “in so many cases . . . obscurities such as this often become brightly lit when one inserts the Shroud into the context.”
Hymn of the Pearl
Suddenly, I saw my image on my garment like in a mirror
Myself and myself through myself [or myself facing outward and inward]
As though divided, yet one likeness
Two images: but one likeness of the King [of kings in some translations]