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.
301–400
144 works
393
Latin
De Viris Illustribus
Jerome · c. 347–420
Short notices of a hundred and thirty-five Christian writers and their books, from Peter to Jerome himself, compiled to show pagans that Christianity had a literature.
c. 393
Greek
Evagrius Ponticus · 345–399
A hundred and fifty-three brief chapters on prayer stripped of images and concepts, defining the theologian as the one who prays truly.
c. 391–393
Greek
John Chrysostom · c. 347 – 407
Thirty-two sermons on Romans, insisting throughout that grace does not remove the will but frees it, and that Paul's hardest chapters are about God's dealings with two peoples rather than about the fate of individuals.
c. 390–395
Latin
Res Gestae
Ammianus Marcellinus · c. 330 – c. 395
The last great history written in Latin, by a pagan soldier who served under Julian, covering the years 353 to 378 and ending at Adrianople. He records the Christians tearing at each other over the see of Rome — a prize worth having, given what the city's matrons will give a bishop — and observes that no wild beasts are so hostile to men as Christians are to one another.
370–419
Latin
Jerome · c. 347–420
A hundred and fifty letters of scholarship, spiritual counsel, travel, and ferocious quarrel, including the dream in which he is accused of being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian.
c. 393–399; unexpurgated text survives only in Syriac
Greek, surviving in Syriac
Kephalaia Gnostica
Evagrius Ponticus · 345 – 399
Six centuries of dense, deliberately obscure sentences on contemplation, ninety to a hundred rather than a hundred each, so that the reader notices the gaps. Behind them is a doctrine of minds that fell from unity into bodies and will be restored to a state where even the distinction between them dissolves.
c. 395
Latin
De Mendacio
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
An examination of eight kinds of lie, concluding that none is permissible — not even to save a life, and not even to save a soul.
collected c. 350–500
Greek
Apophthegmata Patrum
Anonymous
Short exchanges between monks and their visitors, usually beginning with a request for a word, and answered in one or two sentences that rarely explain themselves.
388–395
Latin
De Libero Arbitrio
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
A dialogue on where evil comes from if God is good, answering that evil is not a substance but a turning of the will away from the greater good to a lesser one.
396
Latin
Ad Simplicianum
Augustine of Hippo · 354 – 430
Ambrose's old mentor sent two questions about Romans. Working on Jacob and Esau, loved and hated before either was born, Augustine gives up the position he had held for ten years — that God foresees who will believe and elects accordingly — and concludes instead that the will to believe is itself God's gift.
397
Latin
The Council of Carthage
Rulings of a North African synod on clergy, discipline, and the books that may be read in church as divine scripture.
c. 396–397
Latin
Vita Martini
Sulpicius Severus · c. 363–c. 425
The soldier who cut his cloak in half for a beggar, left the army because he was Christ's soldier and could not fight, and became a reluctant bishop of Tours.
c. 397
Latin
c. 380–430
Syriac
Liber Graduum
Anonymous
Thirty discourses distinguishing the upright, who keep the commandments while married and working, from the perfect, who renounce everything — and insisting both are genuinely Christian.
c. 393–431
Latin
Paulinus of Nola · c. 354–431
The correspondence and annual birthday poems of a wealthy senator who gave away an enormous fortune to live beside the tomb of a minor saint.
c. 300–400
Greek
Anonymous
A short Egyptian order in which the apostles are made to speak in turn about bishops, presbyters, readers, and widows, with a debate over whether women may offer the eucharist.
c. 400
Latin
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
Thirty-three books answering the Manichaean bishop whose arguments had once impressed him, defending the Old Testament and the goodness of the created order.
2nd century core, redacted c. 3rd–5th century
Aramaic
Attributed to Onqelos
The authorised Aramaic rendering of the Torah, read in synagogue verse by verse after the Hebrew. It translates closely but never quite literally where God is concerned: no hands, no face, no walking, and the Word of the Lord standing in wherever the text would have God present too plainly.
382–405
Latin
Jerome · c. 347–420
A new Latin Bible made, against loud objection, from the Hebrew rather than the Greek Septuagint, with prefaces defending each decision.
c. 397–400
Latin
Confessiones
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
A life told as prayer: a restless African rhetorician traces his own thefts, ambitions, and long detour through Manichaeism and Neoplatonism, then turns in the final books to memory, time, and the opening verses of Genesis.
c. 400
Hebrew and Aramaic
Talmud Yerushalmi
The academies of Galilee
The Mishnah with the discussion the Galilean academies built around it, closed abruptly and unevenly — whole orders are missing — apparently because the conditions that supported the schools gave out under Christian imperial rule.
c. 390–410
Greek
Theodore of Mopsuestia · c. 350–428
A historically grounded reading of the minor prophets that refuses to find Christ under every verse, insisting each oracle first meant something to its own hearers.
c. 400
Syriac
Anonymous
An expanded telling of how Edessa was converted: Abgar's letter to Jesus and the reply, and now a court painter sent to bring back a portrait, the apostle Addai preaching and healing the king, and the finding of the true cross by Protonike before Helena.
c. 400–450
Hebrew and Aramaic
The academies of Galilee
A verse-by-verse midrash on Genesis, reading the book as a set of openings rather than a narrative: why it begins with the second letter of the alphabet, what God consulted before making man, and repeated disputes with those who argue from in our image that there is more than one power in heaven.
121–144 of 144 matching · 1780 in the Library