The Library
1780 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
200–101 BC
21 works
c. 225–175 BC
Aramaic or Hebrew
Anonymous
A blind exile in Nineveh who buries the dead at night against the king's order, and a young woman in Ecbatana whose seven husbands have each died on the wedding night. The angel Raphael travels with Tobit's son under a false name, and a fish's gall cures the blindness.
c. 180 BC; Greek translation c. 132 BC
Hebrew
Ecclesiasticus
Jesus ben Sira
A Jerusalem teacher's collected wisdom on friendship, money, daughters, physicians, table manners, and the fear of the Lord, ending with a hymn in praise of famous men that runs from Enoch to the high priest Simon coming out of the sanctuary.
c. 158 BC; survives in fragments
Greek
Eupolemus
A history claiming Moses as the first wise man, the inventor of the alphabet, who gave it to the Phoenicians, who gave it to the Greeks — with a long invented correspondence between Solomon and the kings of Tyre and Egypt about building the temple.
c. 160–150 BC
Hebrew, surviving complete in Ge'ez
Anonymous
Genesis and half of Exodus dictated to Moses by an angel and dated throughout by jubilees of forty-nine years, on a solar calendar of exactly 364 days. The patriarchs keep feasts that have not been given yet, Abraham refuses to celebrate his father's idols, and the watchers' fall is retold with the demons petitioning to keep a tenth of their number.
c. 160–145 BC; survives in fragments
Greek
Aristobulus of Alexandria
Five fragments preserved by Eusebius, arguing that where scripture gives God hands and feet these are figures for power and standing, and that Plato and Pythagoras had both read Moses in an older Greek translation.
c. 2nd century BC; survives in fragments
Greek
Exagoge
Ezekiel the Tragedian
A Greek tragedy in iambic trimeter on the exodus, with Moses speaking the prologue. In one fragment he describes a dream in which a great figure on a throne at Sinai hands him a sceptre and a crown and steps down, and the stars bow to him.
c. 2nd century BC; survives in fragments
Greek
Artapanus
A retelling in which Abraham teaches astrology to the pharaoh, Joseph invents land measurement, and Moses — identified with Musaeus and with Hermes — organises Egypt into thirty-two districts, invents ships and weapons and philosophy, and is credited with the animal cults.
c. 2nd century BC
Hebrew
Anonymous
David in the first person: the smallest of his brothers, a shepherd who made a harp with his own hands, passed over by the prophet until God chose him — and then the meeting with the Philistine, whom he cut down with the man's own sword.
c. 200–100 BC
Hebrew and Greek
Attributed to Baruch son of Neriah
Read aloud by the exiles in Babylon and sent home with money for sacrifices: a confession that the disaster was deserved, a poem identifying Wisdom with the book of the commandments, and a lament in which Jerusalem speaks as a widow watching her children led away.
c. 160–100 BC
Greek
Anonymous
The oldest Jewish Sibylline book, written in Egypt in Homeric hexameters: the empires rise and fall, the seventh king of Greek descent will come, and at the end the nations will send gifts to the temple and the earth will bear its fruit without cutting.
c. 150–130 BC
Hebrew
4QMMT
Anonymous
A letter from one group of priests to another listing about twenty points of purity law on which they differ — the purity of poured liquids, where the red heifer is burned, whether the deaf and blind may enter — and closing by saying that this is why we have separated from the majority.
c. 150–100 BC
Greek
Pseudo-Aristeas
The story of how the Torah came to be translated: Ptolemy releases a hundred thousand Jewish slaves, sends gifts to the temple, and receives seventy-two elders who answer a philosophical question each over seven banquets and then complete the work in seventy-two days on the island of Pharos.
c. 150–100 BC
Hebrew
11QT
Anonymous
The longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, rewriting the law with God speaking in the first person throughout — no Moses as intermediary. It specifies a temple with three concentric courts that was never built, a calendar of new festivals, and a law for the king limiting his army and forbidding him more than one wife.
c. 124 BC
Greek
Abridged from Jason of Cyrene
A rhetorical history of the same revolt as First Maccabees, told for effect rather than for the record. Heliodorus is flogged by an apparition in the treasury; Eleazar refuses to pretend to eat pork; a mother watches seven sons die and tells the last that God made the world out of things that did not exist.
c. 150–100 BC
Hebrew
Anonymous
A widow rebukes the elders of her town for setting God a deadline, then dresses to be looked at, walks into the Assyrian camp, flatters the general for four days, and cuts off his head with his own sword while he lies drunk.
c. 150–100 BC
Greek
Anonymous
A Greek retelling of the return from exile, differing from Ezra–Nehemiah in order and content, and containing one episode found nowhere else: three bodyguards of Darius debate whether wine, the king, or women is strongest, and the winner answers that women are strong but truth conquers all.
c. 150–100 BC
Greek
Anonymous
Two elders spy on a wife in her garden, threaten her, and accuse her of adultery when refused. She is condemned on their word until the young Daniel separates the witnesses and asks each under which tree it happened. They name different trees.
c. 150–100 BC
Greek
Anonymous
Daniel proves the idol Bel does not eat by scattering ashes on the temple floor overnight and showing the king the footprints of the priests and their families, then kills a living dragon by feeding it cakes of pitch, fat, and hair.
c. 150–100 BC
Greek
Anonymous
Inserted into the third chapter of Daniel: a confession from inside the furnace that there is no prince or prophet or place to offer sacrifice any more, followed by a litany calling on frost and dew, whales, fowls, and all the works of the Lord to bless him.
c. 130–100 BC
Greek
Anonymous
Six passages the Greek adds to a book whose Hebrew never names God: Mordecai's dream of two dragons, the texts of the royal edicts, prayers from Mordecai and Esther, and the scene where Esther faints and the king's face changes from wrath to gentleness.
c. 110–100 BC
Hebrew
Anonymous
Forty years of revolt told soberly and in order: the desolating sacrilege in the temple, the old priest Mattathias killing a man at the altar, Judas and his brothers, the rededication that became Hanukkah, and the treaty with Rome that would outlast them all.
21 of 1780 works