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.
200–101 BC
1 work
c. 158 BC; survives in fragments
Greek
Eupolemus
A history claiming Moses as the first wise man, the inventor of the alphabet, who gave it to the Phoenicians, who gave it to the Greeks — with a long invented correspondence between Solomon and the kings of Tyre and Egypt about building the temple.
1–100
3 works
c. AD 30–45
Greek
De Specialibus Legibus
Philo of Alexandria · c. 20 BC – c. AD 50
Four books sorting every particular commandment under one of the ten, so that circumcision, the priesthood, the festivals, marriage, courts, and the treatment of slaves all turn out to be applications of a single decalogue.
c. 90–125; survives in fragments
Greek
Kerygma Petrou
Attributed to Peter
A missionary sermon in Peter's name, preserved in a handful of quotations by Clement of Alexandria. It sets Christians apart as a third people who worship neither as the Greeks, who serve wood and stone, nor as the Jews, who serve angels and months and moons.
c. 97
Greek
Contra Apionem
Flavius Josephus · c. 37 – c. 100
A defence of Jewish antiquity against Greek writers who said the nation was recent and its books unreliable, answering the slanders about the temple one by one and setting out which books the Jews count as sacred and why.
101–200
16 works
c. 124–125; one fragment survives
Greek
Quadratus
The first Christian defence addressed to an emperor, of which Eusebius preserves a single paragraph noting that some healed by Jesus had lived into the writer's own lifetime.
c. 125–140
Greek
Aristides of Athens
A philosopher sorts humanity into races by what they worship — barbarians, Greeks, Jews, Christians — and argues that only the last have understood God, closing with a description of how they treat the poor.
c. 140; survives in fragments
Greek
Phlegon of Tralles
A chronicle by a freedman of Hadrian, lost apart from quotations. Origen and Africanus report that it recorded a great eclipse and an earthquake in Bithynia in the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, and Origen adds that Phlegon mentioned Christ's foreknowledge of events.
c. 155
Greek
Justin Martyr · c. 100–165
A philosopher's open letter to the emperor, answering the rumours that Christians were atheists and cannibals by simply describing what they believed and did — including the earliest detailed account of a Sunday gathering.
c. 155–160
Greek
Justin Martyr · c. 100–165
A short supplement provoked by the execution of three Christians in Rome, arguing that Christians are punished for the name alone and that whatever any philosopher said truly belongs to Christ.
c. 155–165
Greek
Justin Martyr · c. 100–165
A long, mostly civil debate with a Jewish interlocutor over whether the Hebrew scriptures point to Jesus, covering the law, the virgin of Isaiah, and the church's claim to be the true Israel.
c. 165–175
Greek
Oratio ad Graecos
Tatian · c. 120–c. 180
A convert's contemptuous farewell to Greek culture, arguing that its philosophy is derivative, its gods immoral, and that Moses is older than Homer.
c. 170–177; survives in fragments
Greek
Melito of Sardis · d. c. 180
A petition to the emperor arguing that the faith and the empire grew up together under Augustus and have prospered together since, and that only bad emperors — Nero and Domitian — have persecuted it.
c. 172–180; survives in fragments
Greek
Apollinaris of Hierapolis
An apology addressed to Marcus Aurelius, reporting the Thundering Legion whose prayers were said to have broken a drought on campaign, together with the first written attack on the new prophecy spreading through Phrygia.
c. 150–200
Greek
Anonymous
An answer to an enquirer who wants to know what sort of people Christians are. They live in their own countries as resident aliens, marry and bear children like everyone else, share a table but not a bed, obey the laws and outdo them, and are to the world what the soul is to the body.
c. 176–180
Greek
Legatio pro Christianis
Athenagoras of Athens
A calm, lawyerly petition to Marcus Aurelius answering the three standing charges — atheism, cannibalism, incest — and including an early statement of the Trinity in passing.
c. 175–180; reconstructed from Origen
Greek
Alethes Logos
Celsus
The first sustained intellectual attack on Christianity, recoverable almost whole because Origen quoted it line by line to answer it. Jesus was a bastard fathered by a soldier and a magician trained in Egypt; God does not come down; the faith recruits wool-workers and cobblers who tell children to disobey their fathers.
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. 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.
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.
201–300
4 works
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. 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. 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.
301–400
8 works
c. 303–304
Latin
De Opificio Dei
Lactantius · c. 250 – c. 325
Written while the persecution was running, and about anatomy. Lactantius walks through the body part by part — the eye, the ear, the hand, the arrangement of the teeth — arguing that nothing in it is accidental, against Epicurus, who said the organs came first and their uses after.
c. 308–310; partly survives
Greek
Pamphilus of Caesarea · d. 309
Written in prison with Eusebius's help, answering charge by charge the accusations against Origen's orthodoxy, mostly by quoting him at length.
c. 303–311
Latin
Divinae Institutiones
Lactantius · c. 250–c. 325
Seven books written during the Great Persecution, setting out Christianity as a complete philosophy — false religion, the origin of error, justice, true worship, and the life of blessedness — in the most polished Latin any Christian had yet written.
c. 311–313
Greek
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260 – c. 340
A governor active in the persecution had written a book setting Apollonius of Tyana beside Christ and arguing that the pagan wonder-worker was the better attested of the two. Eusebius answers by going through Philostratus's biography and asking what in it a reasonable person would actually believe.
c. 313–320
Greek
Praeparatio Evangelica
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260–339
Fifteen books arguing that Christians were right to prefer Hebrew scripture to Greek philosophy, assembled from enormous quotations of pagan authors.
c. 313–316
Latin
De Ira Dei
Lactantius · c. 250 – c. 325
Against the Stoics and Epicureans, who agreed that God cannot be angry. Lactantius argues that a God who cannot be angry cannot love either, since the two are one faculty turned two ways — and quotes Epicurus's dilemma in full: is God willing to prevent evil but not able, or able but not willing.
c. 318
Greek
Contra Gentes
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296–373
The first half of a two-part work, arguing that idolatry is a fall from the knowledge of God available through the soul and the order of creation.
c. 314–324; ten of twenty books survive
Greek
Demonstratio Evangelica
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260 – c. 340
The companion to the Preparation, and the harder half: having shown why Christians abandoned Greek religion, Eusebius now has to show why they kept the Jewish scriptures while refusing the Jewish law. The answer runs through the prophets text by text, arguing that the patriarchs lived by a religion older than the law and that Christians have returned to it.
401–500
3 works
417–418
Latin
Orosius · c. 375–c. 420
A world history commissioned by Augustine to prove that the pre-Christian past was at least as full of catastrophe as the present.
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.
c. 435–441
Greek
Contra Iulianum
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376 – 444
A reply to the emperor Julian's Against the Galileans, written eighty years after the fact because the book was still circulating and still doing damage. Cyril quotes Julian at length, section by section, before answering.
701–800
5 works
c. 720–730
Syriac
Anonymous
A conversation between a monk and an Arab notable staying at his monastery, ranging over the cross, images, and why Christians do not pray toward a single direction.
c. 755–770
Arabic
Anonymous
A defence of the Trinity and the incarnation for a Muslim readership, arguing from the Qur'an's own vocabulary as readily as from the Bible.
c. 782–783
Syriac
Timothy I · c. 728–823
A patriarch's own record of two days of courteous questioning by the caliph on the Trinity, the crucifixion, and whether the gospels foretold Muhammad.
c. 800–820
Arabic
Theodore Abu Qurrah · c. 755 – c. 830
A man comes down from a mountain knowing nothing and finds nine religions each claiming to be true. Abu Qurrah works through them by asking which account of God matches what a physician would prescribe for a sick creation, and argues his way to the incarnation.
c. 800–815
Arabic
Theodore Abu Qurrah · c. 750–c. 830
A defence of images written in Arabic for Christians who had stopped venerating them under Muslim and Jewish criticism, arguing the case on grounds a Muslim could follow.
1–40 of 54 matching · 1780 in the Library