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The ''Book of Thomas the Contender'', also known more simply as the ''Book of Thomas'' (not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas), is one of the books of the New Testament apocrypha represented in the Nag Hammadi library (CG II), a cache of Gnostic gospels secreted in the Egyptian desert. The title derives from the first line of text. :"The secret words that the savior spoke to Judas Thomas which I, even I, Mathaias, wrote down, while I was walking, listening to them speak with one another." 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, 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). The New Testament's "doubting" Thomas and Judas "the betrayer" could also be symbolic and descriptive of this internal battle between the Christ Self and ego identity. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Book of Thomas the Contender」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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