Hibil-Ziwa and the Parthian Prince

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.