Psalms of Thomas

The Psalms of Thomas are a set of third-century psalms found appended to the end of a Coptic Manichaean psalm book, which was in turn part of the Medinet Madi library excavated in 1929. The psalms were originally published in 1938 by Charles Allberry.
The meter and structure of the psalms suggest that they were originally written in Eastern Aramaic. There are 20 psalms in total. The themes and content of the psalms bear a considerable resemblance to the Hymn of the Pearl from the Acts of Thomas.

Authorship

Considerable controversy continues as to whether the Thomas or Thom referred to could be the Apostle Thomas, Mani's disciple, also called Thomas, or the Gnostic concept of the divine twin. This is because the latter is referred to in other parts of the Coptic Manichaean Psalm-book as a distinct person from the Apostle. The enigma has since deepened with the publication of the Cologne Mani-Codex in the 1970s, which showed that Mani himself came out of a baptizing Christian sect called the Elkasaites.

List of psalms

List of the titles of the 20 psalms:

Concerning the Light
Concerning the coming of the Soul
Concerning the First Man
Concerning the First Man
The Soul, which is the First Man
Concerning the Living Spirit
That of the Living Spirit
That of the Envoy
That of the Perfect Man
Concerning the molding of the...
... concerning his son
... of the Savior
... the Church unto the Apostle
I heard the cry of a physician
For a table has been set in the house
Salome built a tower
The Little one made music by night
I reached the door of the garden
The vine which grew from the Living ones
The cry of Pamoun

Mandaean parallels

In 1949, Torgny Säve-Söderbergh suggested that the psalms were largely based upon canonical Mandaean texts. Säve-Söderbergh's work on the psalms demonstrating that Mandaeism did not derive from Manichaeism, as was formerly commonly believed. For instance, Psalm 13 has parallels with prayers 125, 129, and 155 in the Qulasta.
Säve-Söderbergh notes Mandaean parallels such as the following.

Psalms 1, 2, 6, 8, 12, and 14 have concluding formulae that are similar to the Mandaean ʿniana prayers, which are Qulasta prayers 78–103.
Psalm 2 has parallels with Left Ginza 3.15 .
In Psalm 5, the phrase "treasure of life" is a parallel of the Mandaean formula "I am a mana of the Great Life," a phrase often found in the numerous hymns of Book 2 of the Left Ginza, including Left Ginza 2.18 and 2.27. In Mandaic, mana has been variously translated as "mind," "nous," or "treasure." In Mandaeism, Simat Hayyi, the name of a female uthra, also literally translates as "Treasure of Life."
Psalm 6 directly corresponds with Qulasta prayer 66, which is in turn identical with Left Ginza 3.43.
Psalm 8 has various Mandaean motifs, such as the capture of demons and the triumph of Light.
In Psalm 12, phrases such as "the empty one" and "the laden one" have parallels with the end of chapter 47 of the Mandaean Book of John. In the same chapter, phrases such as "ears but would not hear" have parallels in Psalm 14.
Psalm 13 has parallels with Qulasta prayer 24 and Left Ginza 3.2, 3.22, and 3.41.
Coptic passage 220 is similar to Qulasta prayer 155, which is the first Saturday rahma prayers.
In Psalm 14, Hylē's answer of co-existing opposites is similar to Ruha's answer to Dinanukht in Book 6 of the Right Ginza. Both texts also resemble the Nag Hammadi Gnostic poem The Thunder, Perfect Mind.
In Psalm 17, the "mockery litany," in which aspects of the transient material world are mocked, has parallels with chapter 12 of the Mandaean Book of John.
Psalm 18 enumerates the senses and limbs, with its text similar to chapter 15 of the Mandaean Book of John, Left Ginza 3.19, and prayer 96 of the Qulasta.

The parallels are summarized in the table below.

PsTh	GL	GR	CP	MJ
2	3.15
5	2
6	3.43		66
8	2.15
12				47
13	3.2,22,41		24, 125, 129, 155
14		6		47
17				12
18	3.2,19		96	15

These parallels are also discussed in Gelbert & Lofts.
Van Bladel suggests that an equally plausible scenario is that of Manichaeism and Mandaeism both having borrowed the hymns from another common source, likely the funeral prayer of an Aramaic-speaking Judeo-Christian group in Mesopotamia such as the Elchasites.
There are also parallels between:

Psalm 15 and Qulasta prayer 373, as well as several prayers following prayer 373
Psalm 19 and Qulasta prayer 375