A book on a shelf feels like one thing. For historical reading, however, the physical volume and the works written inside it may need separate descriptions. Confusing the two can turn a collection of texts into an imaginary single composition.
Begin with two labels
Use “manuscript volume” for the physical book you are discussing and “work” for an individual composition. A codex is a book form made from leaves rather than a continuous roll. Its contents may include more than one work.
The Claremont Colleges Digital Library’s collection overview describes the Nag Hammadi codices as containing more than fifty religious and philosophical texts in Coptic. That is a useful reminder to ask which text, in which manuscript, an argument concerns.
Build a reading reference with three layers
Record the work’s title, the manuscript identification supplied by your edition, and the modern editor or translator. Add the page or section you are reading. These details make it easier to distinguish the historical evidence from the modern publication through which you encounter it.
If the edition lists more than one surviving copy, do not assume they are identical. Read its introduction to learn what has been compared and how the printed text was prepared. Leave specialist conclusions to the evidence the editor actually presents.
Ask a smaller historical question
Instead of “What does this library believe?”, begin with “What does this passage say, and how does the author frame it?” You can then compare it with another passage without assuming a shared position in advance.
For the chronological side of this distinction, see dating the text and the copy. A physical manuscript, a composition and a modern translation each have a history; keeping those histories apart is part of reading them together responsibly.