The Paraphrase of Shem is the first tractate of the best-preserved codex discovered at Nag Hammadi (Upper Egypt) in 1945 – codex 7 – and so is among the most complete of the Coptic texts composing the Nag Hammadi collection. The scribal hand of the codex is a practiced, lovely unical script, identical to that of the latter treatises of NHC XI (Allogenes and Hypsiphrone). The scribe of the first half of NHC IX also wrote NHC I,4 (Resurrection, Treatise on), and the make of codices I, VII, and XI are simil…