The ''Book of Thomas the Contender'', also known more simply as the ''Book of Thomas'' (not to be confused with the

Gospel of Thomas The Gospel of Thomas (also known as the Coptic Gospel of Thomas) is an extra-canonical sayings gospel. It was discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945 among a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library. Scholars speculate ...

and the

Infancy Gospel of Thomas The ''Infancy Gospel of Thomas'' is a biographical gospel about the childhood of Jesus, believed to date at the latest to the second century. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is generally considered to be Gnostic in origin because of references ...

), is one of the books of the

New Testament apocrypha The New Testament apocrypha (singular apocryphon) are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. Some of these writings were cite ...

represented in the

Nag Hammadi library The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the " Chenoboskion Manuscripts" and the "Gnostic Gospels") is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Thirteen leather-bound papyr ...

( CG II), a cache of

Gnostic Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized p ...

gospels secreted in the Egyptian desert. The title derives from the first line of text. The colophon appended to the text gives the title ''The Contender writing to the Perfect''.

Composition

There are two competing theories as to the composition of the text: *Firstly, since it is only the initial 3/5 which constitute dialogue, with the remainder being a monologue, it may have originally been two works, one of dialogue, one of monologue. *Alternatively, and not in the least because of the two titles, the work is thought to have originated as a letter, with a name of the form ''Epistle of the Contender'', written by a Jew who upheld Hellenic philosophy. The text is thought to have later been given a Christian setting and converted into a dialogue, in a similar manner to other works. An additional consideration is that, since the scribe writing the text is named as

Matthias Matthias is a name derived from the Greek Ματθαίος, in origin similar to Matthew. People Notable people named Matthias include the following: In religion: * Saint Matthias, chosen as an apostle in Acts 1:21–26 to replace Judas Iscariot * ...

, this work may actually be the lost Gospel of Matthias. The dialogue can also be read as an internal conversation between Jesus and his lower self, Judas Thomas, the twin (contender for supremacy of the soul).

Content

The content of this work is quite hyperbolic and

gnostic Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized p ...

in style, in the sense of imparting a private, arcane knowledge related to good versus evil, and while it lacks references to the elaborate gnostic cosmology, its gnostic allusions to the pleroma and light versus fire clearly point to its origins:

Then the savior continued and said, "O unsearchable love of the light! O bitterness of the fire that blazes in the bodies of men and in their marrow, kindling in them night and day, and burning the limbs of men and making their minds become drunk and their souls become deranged... Woe to you, captives, for you are bound in caverns! You laugh! In mad laughter you rejoice! You neither realize your perdition, nor do you reflect on your circumstances, nor have you understood that you dwell in darkness and death! On the contrary, you are drunk with the fire and full of bitterness. Your mind is deranged on account of the burning that is in you, and sweet to you are the poison and the blows of your enemies! And the darkness rose for you like the light, for you surrendered your freedom for servitude! You darkened your hearts and surrendered your thoughts to folly, and you filled your thoughts with the smoke of the fire that is in you! (Book of Thomas the Contender)

The gnostic content in the texts of the

Nag Hammadi Nag Hammadi ( ; ar, نجع حمادى ) is a city in Upper Egypt. It is located on the west bank of the Nile in the Qena Governorate, about north-west of Luxor. It had a population of close to 43,000 . History The town of Nag Hammadi is name ...

trove can be argued to be often identical to Jesus' conceptual content, but the metaphorical language and symbolism are strikingly different. "The Book of Thomas the Contender" and its guidance in overcoming ego "lusts/attachments" differs markedly with Jesus' gentler, more practical psychological approach in the four canonical Gospels and the

References

Online text for the Book of Thomas the Contender
translated by John D. Turner, a selection from James M. Robinson, ed., ''The Nag Hammadi Library'', revised edition. HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1990. {{Authority control Thomas, Book of Thomas the Apostle Nag Hammadi library