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.
201–300
117 works
c. 200–250
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
The Foreigner records what the female revealer Youel taught him and what he saw after a hundred years of preparation: an ascent that ends not in a vision but in a knowing that has to be described by saying what it is not.
c. 200–250
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
Three hymns of ascent and return, said to be copied from stone pillars Seth set up, with instructions on the order in which they are to be said going up and coming back down.
c. 235
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185–c. 253
Written for two friends imprisoned under Maximinus, urging them not to bargain, and drawing on the Maccabean martyrs for a theology of witness unto death.
c. 235; recovered at Tura in 1941
Greek
Peri Pascha
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
An argument that pascha does not mean passion, as everyone was saying, but passage — and that the lamb eaten in haste with the loins girded is the Word consumed by a soul already on the road out.
c. 236
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Africanus had written to say that the story of Susanna cannot be genuine, since its wordplay works only in Greek. Origen concedes the philological point and argues for keeping the book anyway, on the ground that the churches read it and providence has provided for the churches.
c. 238
Greek
Gregory Thaumaturgus · c. 213–c. 270
A farewell speech by a departing student describing exactly how Origen taught: logic first, then physics and ethics, then philosophy read widely, and scripture last of all.
c. 231–248
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185–c. 253
An immense line-by-line exposition, begun to answer a Valentinian commentary on the same gospel, spending a whole book on the opening words alone.
c. 238–244
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185–c. 253
Sixteen sermons preached to an ordinary congregation, reading the days of creation, the ark, and the patriarchs for their moral and spiritual sense as much as their literal one.
c. 239–242
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Twenty sermons taken down by shorthand writers as Origen preached at Caesarea, wrestling with a God who says he repents, who deceives the prophet, and who hands his own people over — and refusing every easy way out of the difficulty.
c. 235–245; survives in fragments
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185–c. 253
The Old Testament laid out in six parallel columns — Hebrew, Hebrew in Greek letters, and four Greek versions — with marks showing where the Septuagint added to or omitted from the Hebrew.
c. 240; survives in part, in Latin
Greek, surviving in Latin
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Ten books on the Song, prefaced by a warning that no one should read it who is not already past the stirrings of the flesh. The bride is both the church and the individual soul, and the wound she carries is the arrow of love.
c. 242; survives in fragments
Middle Persian
Mani · 216–274 or 277
Mani's own summary of his religion, written in Persian and presented to the emperor Shapur I. It opens with the claim that wisdom has come down through Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus in turn, and has now come complete through the seal of the prophets.
c. 239–242; survives in Latin
Greek, surviving in Latin
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Sixteen sermons on the sacrificial code, opening with the flat claim that read literally these chapters are useless, and then reading every offering, every fat portion and kidney, as a movement of the soul or an aspect of Christ.
c. 240–244; survives in Latin
Greek, surviving in Latin
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Twenty-eight sermons on the wilderness, above all on the list of forty-two stopping places in chapter thirty-three, each read as a stage the soul passes through on its way out of Egypt.
c. 244; survives in Latin
Greek, surviving in Latin
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Thirty-nine short sermons on the infancy narrative and the opening of the ministry, opening with the observation that many had tried to write gospels and only four were approved — and naming some of the others.
c. 245
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185–c. 253
The stenographic record of a synod at which Origen cross-examines a bishop on the relation of the Son to the Father, and then on whether the soul is the blood.
c. 200–250
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
The soul as a woman who falls into prostitution, is passed between robbers, bears illegitimate children, and finally turns and weeps — at which the Father sends her own brother down to her as bridegroom, and the bridal chamber restores her.
c. 246
Latin
Ad Donatum
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
A convert's account of his own change, set against a bleak survey of the world he left — the arena, the courts, the marriage market — written in the ornate style he soon abandoned.
c. 246; survives in Rufinus's abridgement
Greek, surviving in Latin
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Fifteen books on Paul's hardest letter, holding together a real freedom of the will and a real grace, and reading the hardened Pharaoh and the vessels of wrath as descriptions of a mercy working on a longer scale than one life.
c. 246
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185–c. 253
A late commentary, partly surviving in Greek and partly in an old Latin version, patient with the literal sense and unusually attentive to textual variants.
c. 247
Latin
De Idolorum Vanitate
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
A brisk argument that the gods were once men, that demons animate their images, and that the one God is known through Christ — much of it condensed from Tertullian and Minucius Felix.
c. 248
Greek
Contra Celsum
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185–c. 253
A point-by-point reply, seventy years late, to the most intelligent pagan attack on Christianity ever written — quoting Celsus so fully that his lost book can be largely reconstructed from it.
c. 245–250; recovered in Munich in 2012
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Twenty-nine sermons on the Psalms, preached at Caesarea and read for centuries as the work of someone else. On Psalm 36 he tells his congregation that the man who is angry and does not sin is rarer than the man who does not become angry at all.
c. 248
Latin
Ad Quirinum
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
Scripture passages gathered under headings — on the Jews, on Christ, on Christian conduct — with almost no comment, assembled as ammunition for argument.
c. 249
Latin
De Habitu Virginum
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
Advice to consecrated women on wealth, cosmetics, jewellery, and mixed bathing, arguing that a life given to God should look different from a wealthy woman's ordinary life.
c. 200–275
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
Peter writes to summon Philip back, the apostles gather on the Mount of Olives, and a voice out of a great light answers their questions about the deficiency of the aeons and the suffering they must expect. Then they go down to Jerusalem and heal.
250; written down soon after
Greek
Anonymous
A presbyter at Smyrna puts woven chains on his own neck to show he will not sacrifice, then delivers a long speech in the marketplace to the crowd — Greeks and Jews together — before being burned. He notes bitterly how many have already gone up to the altars willingly.
c. 240–270; survives in fragments
Syriac
Evangelion
Mani · 216–274 or 277
The first of Mani's own scriptures, arranged in twenty-two chapters after the letters of the Syriac alphabet, opening with his declaration that he is an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of the Father — the same words Paul used, claimed for a different revelation.
c. 245–250
Latin
De Trinitate
Novatian · c. 200–c. 258
A careful exposition of the rule of faith: God the Father almighty, the Son who is truly God and truly man, and the Holy Spirit — written before the vocabulary of Nicaea existed.
c. 200–275
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
Badly damaged throughout. The priest of Salem receives a revelation of the end, is told to keep the book hidden, and appears to become the returning saviour figure himself — while the text insists, against docetists, that Christ truly ate, drank, was circumcised, suffered, and rose in the flesh.
c. 250
Latin
De Cibis Iudaicis
Novatian · c. 200 – c. 258
Written from hiding during the persecution to a congregation asking about the food laws. The unclean animals were never about animals, Novatian argues — they name human vices, and what the law forbade was the swine's filthiness and the vulture's appetite for another's death.
c. 3rd century
Hebrew
The school of Rabbi Ishmael
A running halakhic and narrative commentary on Exodus from the plagues to the covenant, arguing every law out of the wording and telling the crossing of the sea as a debate among the tribes over who would enter the water first.
c. 200–275
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
An attack on almost everyone: on catholics who think dying in the arena buys salvation, on those who marry and breed, and on rival gnostic teachers named outright — Valentinus, Basilides, Isidore, and the Simonians.
251
Latin
De Lapsis
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
After the Decian persecution, an unsparing analysis of why so many complied so quickly, and a refusal to let confessors hand out forgiveness in place of the bishop and a period of penance.
c. 250
Latin
De Spectaculis
Novatian · c. 200 – c. 258
Against believers who defended going to the games by pointing out that scripture nowhere forbids it — and who cited David dancing and Elijah's chariot as precedent. Novatian answers that idolatry is the mother of all the shows, whatever has since been built on top of it.
251
Latin
De Unitate Ecclesiae
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
Written during a schism over how to receive Christians who had lapsed under persecution. Cyprian argues that the church's unity is not an aspiration but a given, and that a bishop who breaks from it takes nothing with him.
252
Latin
De Mortalitate
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
Written during a plague that killed Christians and pagans alike, answering the complaint that the faithful were not being spared, and asking why people who say they long for heaven grieve at going there.
c. 252
Latin
Ad Demetrianum
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
A reply to a magistrate who blamed Christians for the wars, plagues, and failing harvests of the age, arguing that a world grown old is not a world being punished for the church.
c. 251–252
Latin
De Dominica Oratione
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
A clause-by-clause exposition insisting that the prayer is corporate from its first word: no Christian says my Father, because prayer is never private property.
c. 253
Latin
De Opere et Eleemosynis
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
An appeal for generosity to the poor, arguing that alms cleanse sins committed after baptism and answering wealthy Christians who plead that they have children to provide for.
41–80 of 117 matching · 1780 in the Library