Dialogue of the Saviour
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The Dialogue of the Savior is one of the New Testament apocrypha texts that was found within the Nag Hammadi library of predominantly gnostic texts.
The text is somewhat peculiarly constructed, containing also a few large interruptions seemingly out of place within, and only superficially edited into, the dialogue. Starting with a series of questions ultimately concerning esoteric knowledge and its pursuit, the text abruptly turns to a description of the origin of the world, interrupted briefly by a return to dialogue. Having expounded the description of creation, it returns to the gnostic question and answer session about how to achieve salvation via gnosis, but is abruptly interrupted by a natural history list of the Four Elements, the powers of heaven and earth, and so forth.
After the history list, there is an apocalyptic vision, in which Didymous Judas Thomas, Mary, and Matthew, are shown hell from the safety of the edge of the earth, and an angel announces that the material world was an unintended evil creation (see Yaltabaoth). Finally, the text returns to the question-based dialogue.
The rather artificial manner in which other texts (the vision of hell, the natural history list, and the creation theory) appear to have been inserted into a question-based dialogue, and the abrupt change half way through from referring to Jesus as Lord to referring to him as Saviour, has led many to propose that it is based on four or five different original works. However, due to the damage that the text has suffered, study of it has so far proven too difficult to identify what these texts might be (although the dialog shares an affinity with the Gospel of Thomas).
Although the text appears to be misogynist in its command to destroy the works of femaleness, it is generally considered that this was a reference to destroying sexuality and thus reproduction, thus suppressing carnal desire.
Text and date
The text was found within in a single Coptic codex, and is heavily damaged, resulting in numerous missing words, phrases, and sometimes entire passage. Enough of the text is intact, however, to discern its basic outline and teaching.
The surviving portions indicate that the general content is a dialogue with Jesus, in a similar manner to the Gospel of Thomas. However, most scholars who have studied the text believe it to be a composite work, consisting of the original dialog between Jesus, Matthew, Mary (Magdalene), and Judas (either Dydumus Judas Thomas or Judas Iscariot). A lengthy introduction appears to have been added to this, and other material as been inserted into the dialog, interrupting its flow.
Some writers, such as Helmut Koester and Elaine Pagels, hold the core of the work to be quite early, possibly as early as the first century and preceding the Gospel of John. Other consider it to have been written in the early to mid second century. The current text appears to have been copied in sometime in the third century. The Nag Hammadi texts as a whole were buried sometime in the fourth century, possibly as a result of an episcopal edict commanding their destruction. They were discovered by Arab peasants in Egypt digging for fertilizer in 1945.
Summary
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