both close and far away, both sinless and the root of sin. They are both the knowledge of their inquiry and the finding of those who seek them, the command of those who ask of them, and the power of powers. The speaker claims to be the one who is called Truth, yet they are also associated with iniquity. They describe themselves as a mute who speaks, a bread maker, and the knowledge of their own name. The speaker encourages listeners to hear them with gentleness and learn from them through roughness. They describe themselves as a crier who also listens, and who walks in the seal of their mind. The speaker is described as the defense and says that they are called Truth. The conclusion sees the speaker describe themselves as the hearing attainable to all, the sound of a name, and the one who alone exists and has no one to judge them. They encourage the hearers to look at the speaker's words and writings, and to heed the message and find the speaker in their resting place, where they will live without dying again. Form The content of "The Thunder, Perfect Mind" (the title may alternately be translated "The Thunder, Perfect Intellect") takes the form of an extended, riddling monologue, in which an immanent divine saviour speaks a series of paradoxical statements alternating between first-person assertions of identity and direct address to the audience. These paradoxical utterances echo Greek identity riddles, a common early poetic form in the Mediterranean. Moreover, it is a non-epistolic, non-narrative unmediated divine speech. It has been theorized that the text was originally composed in Greek due to its meter and phrasing, and it has been dated to a vaguely estimated period of time before 350 C.E., the date of the Coptic manuscript from which the text originates. Structure and language The work as a whole takes the form of a poem in parallel strophes, and the author, it may be surmised, has drawn on a tradition of such poems in both Egyptian and Jewish communities, in which a similarly female divinity (Isis or aspect of the divine Sophia respectively) expounds her virtues unto an attentive audience, and exhorts them to strive to attain her. Patricia Cox Miller suggests that it is the "self-revelation of a powerful goddess". Parallels in Mandaic scriptures In Book 6 (also known as the "Book of Dinanukt") of