This volume contains the critical edition of the five tractates in Nag Hammadi Codex VII, with codex introduction (by Frederik Wisse), introductions, Coptic text, and English translations and notes, of The Paraphrase of Shem (Wisse). Second Treatise of the Great Seth (Gregory Riley), Apocalypse of Peter (M. Desjardins and James Brashler), The Teachings of Silvanus (Malcolm Peel and Jan Sandee) and The Three Steles of Seth (James Goehring and James M. Robinson).

This volume, with several contributors, contains the critical edition of Nag Hammadi Codes VII, with introductions, Coptic Text, English translations, and notes for each of the five tractates in the codex.

The essays in this volume situate the Nag Hammadi Codices and their texts in the context of late antique Egypt, treating such topics as Coptic readers and readings, the difficulty of dating early Greek and Coptic manuscripts, scribal practices, the importance of heavenly ascent, asceticism, and instruction in Egyptian monastic culture. They also explore the relationship of the texts to the Origenist controversy and Manichaeism, the continuity of mythical traditions in later Coptic literature, and issues relating to the codices' production and burial. The volume thus showcases the new trend in scholarship to treat the Nag Hammadi Codices not as sources for Gnosticism, but instead for Christianity and monasticism in late antique Egypt.

As an accompaniment to the corpus of the Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (GCS), Adolf von Harnack created the monograph series Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur (TU) in 1882, which from that time on served as an "archive for the ... editions of older Christian writers".