Asclepius, Text Also known as The Perfect Discourse. A tractate of Hermetic literature that presents itself as a dialogue between the demigod Asclepius, who is being initiated into the Hermetic mysteries, and the god Hermes Trismegistos, who is conducting the initiation. Like all Hermetic literature, it is not a Christian work, and was never widely authoritative in the early church.

The Asclepius tractate was originally written in Greek, and was known as The Perfect Discourse; the whole work does not survive in Greek, but a few quotations are preserved in later writings, including the early 4th century Christian writer Lactantius, who cites it as an example of non-Christian support for certain Christian doctrines (Institutes 4.6, 6.25). A version of the whole work survives in Latin, and the Nag Hammadi Codices contain a Coptic translation of sections 21–29 (NHC VI,8). The Coptic translation is relatively close to the original Greek, while the Latin version paraphrases and expands significantly upon the Greek text.