Recensiones y presentación de libros 149 sodes, namely APTh and MP, transmitted separately? Last but not least, if one accepts the alleged use of our text by Manicheans (pp. 687-88), it is necessary to explain what was so attractive to their views in such an “orthodox” text. The second text included in this splendid edition is the Acts of Thomas (AT). According to the general consensus, AT has been transmitted “completely”, but such an assertion in the case of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles is at the very least confusing. Here we thus face the same problems as before: with the exception of a couple of sections, and some isolated references against marriage (see the references in the General introduction to the first vol. pp. 34-36), there is nothing in the text, as it exists today, that could explain the uneasiness of orthodox commentators (see, however, A. Orbe’s view, [Cris- tología gnóstica I, 398ff]). In point of fact, the latter describe it as encratite (Epiphanius, Pan. 2.47.1), as Manichean (Augustine, c.Faust. 17.2.5), or as Priscillianist (Turribius, Epist.Id.Cep. 5). These opinions, together with the text’s general “Biblical tint” (pp. 864-65), seem to be evidence for its early revision (see, contra, A.F.J. Klijn, “Early Syriac Christianity-Gnostic?”, in U. Bianchi [ed.], Le origini dello Gnosticismo [Leiden 1970] 577). As Piñero and Del Cerro rightly point out (p. 863), the view that the text has been transmit- ted in “its entirety” should be therefore taken cum grano salis. As a matter of fact, as the authors –following Orbe (see pp. 875ff) rather than Klijn (above)– affirm, ATh probably had a clear Gnostic undercurrent. In addition to the numerous Gnostic echoes in the text, there is the fact that the Syriac revises the text with clear doctrinal intentions. Last but not least we have two sections presenting doctrinal peculiarities such as “The Song of the Maiden of the Light” (cc. 6-7) and the so-called “Hymn of the Pearl” (cc. 108-113). With regard to the former, it describes how the Maiden of the Light (= Sophia and/or the Gnostic soul) returns to the Pleroma after its earthly sojourn. The Gnostic framework seems obvious, and was interpreted as such both by Ephraem (Adv. haer. Hymn 55.5.7) and by Manicheans (see Manich. Psalter). In spite of the authors’ consistent Gnostic interpretation of the Hymn in several places (see p. 875-76; 881-82 and notes 31-52 to the text), the Gen- eral Introduction (vol. I, 31) strikingly describes it, following the Syriac rather than the Greek text, as an allegory of the wedding of Christ with the Church. As far as the Hymn of the Pearl is concerned, the text is preserved in two mss only, namely a Syriac ms and a Greek ms (Rom. Vallicel. B 35). The translation follows the Greek text but is completed, according to the scholarly consensus on the superiority of the Syriac (p. 1093, note 562), with additions proceeding from the Syriac text and placed between square brackets. There is no consensus concerning the interpretation of this portion of Acta Thomae, however. Of the three proposed interpretations of the story as “homiletical appeal for conversion”, as a redeemer myth or as a Gnostic myth (for these views, see J.K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 441), the authors retain only the last two in order to endorse (rightly, in my view) the view that interprets it in Gnostic way (see, contra, G. Luttikhuizen, “The Hymn of Jude Thomas the Apostle”, in J.N. Bremmer [ed.], The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas [Leuven 2001] 103-09). In the authors’ view, the Hymn should