The Dialogue of the Saviour is one of the New Testament apocrypha texts that was found within the Nag Hammadi collection of predominantly gnostic texts. The text appears only once in a single Coptic codex, and is heavily damaged. The surviving portions indicate that the general content is a dialogue with Jesus, in a similar manner to, and possibly based on, the Gospel of Thomas. In the process of determining the Biblical canon, a large number of works were excluded from the New Testament. ... Nag Hammâdi is a village in the middle of Egypt, called Chenoboskion in classical antiquity, about 225 kilometres north-west of Aswan with some 30. ... Gnosticism is a blanket term for various religions and sects most prominent in the first few centuries A.D. General characteristics The word gnosticism comes from the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis (γνῶσις), referring to the idea that there is special, hidden mysticism (esoteric knowledge) that only a few possess. ... Coptic is an adjective referring to the original inhabitants of Egypt, the Copts. ... A codex (Latin for book; plural codices) is a handwritten book from late Antiquity or the Early Middle Ages. ... The Gospel of Thomas, completely preserved in a papyrus Coptic manuscript discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, is a list of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. ...

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 persuit, 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. The word gnosis (from the Greek word for knowledge, γνώσις) has several uses: Among the gnostics, gnosis was the privileged knowledge of the heart or insight about the spiritual nature of the cosmos, that brought about salvation to the pneumatics - people who believed they could achieve this insight. ...

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. Thomas was one of the 12 apostles of Jesus. ... The term Demiurge (or Yaldabaoth, Yao, Bythos and several other variants, such as Ptahil used in Mandaeanism) refers in some belief systems to a deity responsible for the creation of the physical universe and the physical aspect of humanity. ...

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 lead 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 supressing carnal desire.