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
10 works
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; 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. 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.
301–400
4 works
c. 320; survives in fragments
Greek
Arius · c. 256–336
A popular verse exposition, apparently written to be sung, arguing that the Son is the first and greatest of creatures, made before time but not eternal.
c. 335–340; survives in fragments
Greek
Marcellus of Ancyra · c. 285 – c. 374
A defender of Nicaea who defended it too far: the Word was in God from eternity but became Son only at the incarnation, and at the end will be reabsorbed, so that the kingdom of Christ has a term. Eusebius wrote two books against him.
362–363; survives in fragments quoted by Cyril of Alexandria
Greek
Julian the Apostate · 331 – 363
The only sustained attack on Christianity by a Roman emperor, and by one raised in the faith. Julian argues that the Christians have kept neither Greek philosophy nor the Jewish law but invented a third thing from the worst of both, that Genesis makes God jealous of knowledge, and that Jesus is nowhere foretold as God in the books they cite.
c. 375–380; survives in fragments
Greek
Apollinaris of Laodicea · c. 310 – c. 390
A friend of Athanasius who pressed the unity of Christ until something had to give: the Word took a human body and a human animal soul, but stood himself in the place of the human mind, because two complete beings cannot become one and two wills would be two persons.
401–500
3 works
c. 405; survives in fragments
Latin
De Natura
Pelagius · c. 354–c. 420
An argument that God would not command what cannot be done, so human beings must be able to keep the commandments — known chiefly from Augustine's line-by-line rebuttal.
c. 419–430; survives in Augustine's quotations
Latin
Julian of Eclanum · c. 386 – c. 455
The most formidable of Augustine's opponents, preserved almost entirely inside the books written to destroy him. Julian argues that a God who damns infants for another's act is worse than any human judge, that desire is a natural faculty like hunger, and that Augustine has never stopped hating the body.
c. 437
Greek
Theodoret of Cyrus · c. 393 – c. 460
Twelve books answering pagan objections a century after the temples closed, quoting some three hundred and forty pagan authors — many of them now lost apart from these pages — and asking why, if the philosophers were right, it is the fishermen's teaching that has filled the world.
601–700
1 work
c. 640; survives in fragments
Greek
Leontius of Neapolis · c. 590 – c. 650
An answer to the charge of idolatry, arguing that Christians do not worship wood but honour what it depicts, as a man kisses a letter from an absent son and honours the son rather than the paper — and pointing to the cherubim God himself commanded for the ark.
41–51 of 51 matching · 1780 in the Library