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. 250–300; Papyrus Rylands 470
Greek
Sub Tuum Praesidium
Anonymous
Three lines on a scrap of Egyptian papyrus, asking the Mother of God for shelter and begging her not to overlook the petitions of those in need but to deliver them from danger.
249–258
Latin
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
Eighty-one letters to and from Cyprian covering a persecution, a plague, two schisms, and a running quarrel with Rome over whether heretical baptism counts.
c. 240–270; survives in fragments
Syriac
Mani · 216–274 or 277
A retelling of the fallen watchers and their monstrous offspring, taken over from an older Aramaic book found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and rewritten as Manichaean scripture. Fragments survive in Middle Persian, Sogdian, Uyghur, Parthian, and Coptic.
c. 3rd century; reported by Eusebius from the Edessa archives
Syriac
Anonymous
King Abgar of Edessa writes to Jesus asking him to come and heal him, having heard he cures without herbs or drugs. Jesus replies that he cannot come but will send a disciple afterwards — and blesses those who have not seen and yet believed.
1 September 256
Latin
Sententiae Episcoporum
The Council of Carthage
The minutes of a council on whether converts baptised by heretics must be baptised again. Each bishop speaks in turn and is recorded by name and see, and Cyprian opens by saying that no one sets himself up as a bishop of bishops or compels his colleagues by terror.
256
Greek
Firmilian of Caesarea · d. c. 269
A Cappadocian bishop backs Carthage against Rome on rebaptism, and tells Stephen of Rome bluntly that appealing to Peter does not settle an argument.
256
Latin
De Bono Patientiae
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
Written while the rebaptism quarrel was at its most bitter, commending patience as the virtue that holds a divided church together, and taking Tertullian's treatise as its starting point.
c. 256–257
Latin
De Rebaptismate
Anonymous
The other side of the argument Cyprian's council settled, written anonymously and preserved among Cyprian's works: baptism in the name of Jesus is valid whoever performs it, and what the heretic cannot give is the Spirit, which the laying on of hands supplies.
c. 254–258
Greek
Gregory Thaumaturgus · c. 213 – c. 270
Written after a barbarian raid on Pontus, ruling on Christians who took advantage of the chaos: those who kept plunder, those who informed on neighbours, those who joined the raiders, and the women taken captive, who are declared guiltless.
c. 258–259
Latin
Vita Cypriani
Pontius the Deacon
Written by Cyprian's own deacon within a year of his death, arguing that a bishop who lived well deserves a record as much as a layman who died well, and describing the beheading in the field at Sesti down to the cloak spread on the ground and the coins left for the executioner.
259
Latin
The martyrs and an editor
A prison diary from Carthage in the year after Cyprian's death, written by the prisoners themselves until the account is finished by a survivor. They record their dreams, their hunger, a quarrel between two of them that had to be healed before they could die, and Flavian's mother asking to be allowed to be proud.
259
Latin
Anonymous
A companion's account of a mass execution in Numidia, where the condemned were made to kneel in ranks along a riverbed so the blood would run into the water, and Marian's mother kissed his neck afterwards.
c. 247–264; survives in fragments
Greek
Dionysius of Alexandria · c. 190–265
Fragments preserved by Eusebius on persecution, plague, the Easter date, the Trinity, and a careful literary argument that the author of Revelation was not the author of the fourth gospel.
c. 260–270
Greek
Gregory Thaumaturgus · c. 213–c. 270
A short trinitarian confession said to have been given to Gregory in a vision, stating the full equality of the three without the philosophical apparatus of the next century.
c. 260–264; survives in fragments
Greek
Dionysius of Alexandria · c. 190 – c. 265
An answer to Egyptian millenarians, arguing on grounds of vocabulary, grammar, and style that whoever wrote Revelation cannot be the man who wrote the fourth gospel — the one writes flawless Greek and never names himself, the other names himself constantly and writes barbarously.
c. 260–270; survives in fragments
Greek
Porphyry · c. 234 – c. 305
A collection of oracles presented as evidence for theology, including one in which Hecate declares that Christ was a most pious man whose soul is immortal, and that the Christians err by worshipping him.
c. 260–300
Latin
Victorinus of Pettau · d. c. 304
A short exposition reading the visions as recapitulations of the same events rather than a sequence, with a frankly millenarian ending that Jerome later revised away.
c. 250–300
Greek or Latin
Anonymous
Two chapters of unrelieved threat against the nations — Babylon, Asia, Egypt, Syria — written for Christians under persecution and promising that the sword will come, that mothers will be widowed and their houses given to others, and that the elect are to hold on and not fear.
written c. 253–270
Greek
Plotinus · c. 204 – 270
Fifty-four treatises arranged by Porphyry into six sets of nine, on the One beyond being, the Intellect that contemplates it, the Soul that orders the world, and the return of the soul by stripping away — including a treatise written specifically against the gnostics in his own lecture room.
c. AD 100–300
Greek
Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus
Seventeen Greek treatises from Roman Egypt on God, mind, and the ascent of the soul. The first, the Poimandres, describes a Word coming out of light, a Man made in the image of God who falls in love with his own reflection in nature, and a rebirth into mind.
c. 250–300
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
A father's advice to a son in the manner of Proverbs, urging him to make reason the guide, to know that the mind is a lamp and the passions are wild beasts, and to bring Christ into the house of the soul as a guest.
c. 250–300
Greek
Anonymous
Eleven years after the resurrection, Jesus explains the fall and repentance of the aeon Sophia to disciples including Mary Magdalene, who asks most of the questions.
c. 3rd century
Greek
Phos Hilaron
Anonymous
A short hymn sung at the lighting of the lamps: having come to the setting of the sun and seen the evening light, we praise Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — worthy at every moment to be hymned by reverent voices.
c. 250–300
Greek
Anonymous
A loose collection of sayings and reflections on the sacraments — baptism, chrism, eucharist, redemption, and the bridal chamber — rather than a narrative gospel.
c. 270–300; burned by imperial order, survives in fragments
Greek
Porphyry · c. 234 – c. 305
Fifteen books of criticism from a scholar who read the texts closely: Daniel was written in the second century BC after the events it foretells, Peter and Paul contradict each other at Antioch, the gospels disagree on the resurrection, and the evangelists were uneducated men.
c. 250–300
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
An account of how everything came to be that opens by arguing with everyone who has said chaos came first, then narrates the making of the rulers, the coming of Eve as instructor, the phoenix and the beasts of Egypt, and the end when the rulers turn on each other.
c. 250–300
Hebrew
Anonymous
A companion to the Mishnah following the same six orders but four times longer, preserving the alternative rulings, the fuller debates, and the cases the Mishnah left out — including the earliest rabbinic references to the minim and to healing in the name of Jesus son of Pantera.
c. 250–300
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
Hermes leads a pupil through the last stages of initiation into silence, where the two of them see the eighth sphere and hear the ninth singing, and the pupil finds he can no longer speak in his own words but only in a hymn of vowels.
c. 280–300
Latin
De Fabrica Mundi
Victorinus of Pettau · d. c. 304
A short reading of the six days built entirely on the number seven — seven heavens, seven spirits, seven days, seven weeks to Pentecost — and defending the Friday fast and the Sunday assembly from the pattern.
c. 280–300
Greek
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786
Anonymous
The tail of a hymn to the Trinity on the back of a grain account, written with Greek vocal notation above the words — let all the powers cry amen, amen, might and praise to the only giver of all good things.
c. 290
Greek
Symposion
Methodius of Olympus · d. c. 311
Ten virgins at a banquet deliver speeches in praise of chastity, in deliberate imitation of Plato's dialogue on love, closing with a hymn sung by the winner.
c. 260–320
Greek
Anonymous
A romance in which young Clement follows Peter around the eastern Mediterranean, debates Simon Magus, and gradually recognises his own scattered family — carrying a distinctly Jewish-Christian theology inside the plot.
12 March 295
Latin
Anonymous
A twenty-one-year-old conscript at Theveste refuses the lead seal of enlistment. The proconsul points out that there are Christians serving in the imperial bodyguard right now; Maximilian answers that they know what is good for them, and that he cannot do evil. His father takes the body home.
298
Latin
Anonymous
A centurion at Tingis throws down his belt, vine-staff, and weapons in front of the legionary standards during the emperor's birthday sacrifice, and says that from now on he serves Jesus Christ the eternal king and stops soldiering for the emperors.
c. 3rd–4th century
Latin
Attributed to Paul
Twenty short verses supplying the letter Colossians 4:16 says Paul sent to Laodicea and which nobody had. It is assembled almost entirely out of phrases from Philippians and says nothing that Paul had not already written elsewhere — which may be why it survived so long unchallenged.
c. 300
Greek
Methodius of Olympus · d. c. 311
A direct attack on Origen's teaching that the risen body will be a spiritual form rather than this flesh, insisting that the same body is raised and transformed.
c. 297–303
Latin
Adversus Nationes
Arnobius of Sicca · d. c. 330
Seven books by a recent convert, ridiculing pagan mythology in exhaustive detail while holding theological opinions the church would not have endorsed.
81–117 of 117 matching · 1780 in the Library