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.
101–200
109 works
c. 175; later material added
Greek
Anonymous
A denunciation of Roman greed followed by an acrostic on Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour, Cross, whose initial letters spell out the fish, and a passage on the sign that will appear in the world when the age ends.
c. 160–190
Greek
Anonymous
A young woman of Iconium breaks her engagement after hearing Paul preach chastity, survives fire and wild beasts, baptises herself, and goes off to teach.
c. 175–192; survives in fragments, partly in Arabic
Greek, partly surviving in Arabic
Galen of Pergamum · 129 – c. 216
The greatest physician of antiquity mentions Christians four or five times in passing, twice comparing arguing with them to arguing with the school of Moses — they accept undemonstrated laws. But he grants that they hold to justice, restrain their appetites, and include some who philosophise as well as anyone.
c. 175–185; survives in fragments
Greek
Hypomnemata
Hegesippus · c. 110–c. 180
Five lost books of travel and enquiry into what the churches actually taught, preserved where Eusebius quotes them — including the account of the death of James the brother of Jesus.
c. 180
Greek
Lucian of Samosata · c. 125 – c. 180
An exposure of a working oracle cult in Paphlagonia, built on a tame snake with a linen head. When Alexander wanted a crowd purged before the mysteries he had the herald cry out that any atheist, Christian, or Epicurean present should leave.
c. 180
Greek
Ad Autolycum
Theophilus of Antioch · d. c. 183
Three books to a sceptical friend: on why God is seen only by the pure in heart, on the folly of the poets, and on the greater antiquity of Moses, with a chronology from creation.
c. 180; attribution debated
Greek
Athenagoras of Athens
A philosophical defence of bodily resurrection, arguing from the nature of the human being as a composite of soul and body that judgement of one without the other would be incoherent.
180
Latin
Anonymous
The bare transcript of a hearing in Carthage: a proconsul offering an easy way out, twelve Christians declining it, and a sentence carried out the same day.
c. 180–190; survives in fragments
Greek
Rhodon
A pupil of Tatian reports on the state of Marcion's school a generation after its founder: split into factions that cannot agree whether there are two first principles or three, and led by an old man named Apelles who, pressed on how he knew, admitted he did not know and simply believed.
c. 180–190
Greek
Anonymous
Peter's contest with Simon Magus in Rome, ending with the sorcerer's flight and fall, and with Peter's own crucifixion head downward after meeting Christ on the road out of the city.
c. 180–200
Greek
Sextus
Around four hundred and fifty one-line maxims on self-mastery, speech, wealth, and desire, adapted from pagan gnomic collections with the seams still showing. A wise man is God's likeness; use the tongue sparingly; possess nothing you cannot lose without grief.
c. 190
Greek
Epideixis
Irenaeus of Lyons · c. 130–c. 202
A short positive summary of the faith for a friend named Marcianus — creation, fall, incarnation, and the prophecies fulfilled — written without the polemic that fills Against Heresies.
c. 150–200; survives in fragments
Greek
Anonymous
The preaching, imprisonment, and crucifixion of Andrew in Patras, framed by long speeches urging converts to withdraw from marriage and the body.
c. 190; survives in fragment
Greek
Polycrates of Ephesus · c. 130–196
A courteous refusal: the churches of Asia will keep Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan as their fathers did, whatever Rome prefers, and Polycrates lists the graves that prove it.
c. 170–200; date disputed
Latin
Anonymous
A damaged list of the books a Roman congregation read publicly, with brief comments on why some are accepted, some allowed privately, and some rejected outright.
c. 192; survives in fragments
Greek
Anonymous
A writer who says he hesitated for years before putting anything down describes Montanus falling into a frenzy and speaking in a way the tradition knew nothing of, and the two women who caught it from him — and notes that none of them has been proved a martyr.
c. 195
Greek
Protrepticus
Clement of Alexandria · c. 150–c. 215
An invitation rather than a defence: the old myths are dismantled, and the new song of the Word is offered in their place to readers assumed to be cultivated and curious.
197
Latin
Apologeticum
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
A defence addressed to the governors of the empire, arguing that Christians are tried by a procedure used for no other crime, and that the blood of the martyrs is seed.
197
Latin
Ad Martyras
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
A short letter to Christians awaiting execution, reframing the prison as a training ground and urging them not to waste the opportunity by quarrelling among themselves.
c. 197; survives in fragments
Greek
Apollonius
An attack on the new prophecy that goes after its finances rather than its theology: Montanus paying salaries to preachers, Priscilla and Maximilla leaving their husbands, prophets who dye their hair, paint their eyelids, play dice, and lend at interest.
c. 197–200
Latin
De Spectaculis
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
An argument that the theatre, the circus, and the arena are inseparable from the idolatry and cruelty that fund them, and that no Christian can attend innocently.
c. 198
Greek
Paedagogus
Clement of Alexandria · c. 150–c. 215
Christ as the tutor of ordinary life, with detailed and often amused guidance on eating, drinking, sleeping, laughter, jewellery, bathing, and how to behave at a dinner party.
c. 200
Hebrew
Redacted by Judah ha-Nasi · c. 135 – c. 217
Six orders covering agriculture, festivals, women, damages, holy things, and purities, recording the disputes of the sages in the barest form — this one says, that one says — and often declining to settle them.
c. 198–203
Latin
De Baptismo
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
A defence of baptism against a teacher who denied its necessity, describing the rite in detail and advising that children wait until they can ask for it themselves.
c. 197–250; date disputed
Latin
Minucius Felix
Three friends walking on the shore at Ostia fall into a debate on religion, conducted with Ciceronian courtesy and no appeal to scripture at all.
c. 198–203
Greek
Stromateis
Clement of Alexandria · c. 150–c. 215
Deliberately unsystematic notebooks arguing that philosophy was God's covenant with the Greeks as the law was with the Jews, and sketching the true gnostic — the mature Christian whom knowledge makes loving rather than superior.
c. 200; survives in a fragment
Greek
Serapion of Antioch · d. c. 211
A bishop who had allowed a congregation at Rhossus to read the Gospel of Peter without looking at it first writes back, having now read it, to withdraw permission — receiving Peter and the other apostles as Christ, but rejecting what falsely bears their names.
c. 200
Latin
De Praescriptione Haereticorum
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
A lawyer's move: Tertullian argues that heretics have no standing to appeal to Scripture at all, because the Scriptures belong to the churches the apostles founded — and asks what Athens has to do with Jerusalem.
c. 200
Latin
De Patientia
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
A treatise on a virtue the author cheerfully admits he does not possess, tracing impatience back to the devil and patience to the passion of Christ.
81–109 of 109 matching · 1780 in the Library