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.
1–100
1 work
c. AD 30–45; survives complete only in Armenian
Greek, surviving in Armenian
Quaestiones et Solutiones
Philo of Alexandria · c. 20 BC – c. AD 50
A running catechism on Genesis and Exodus in question-and-answer form: why this word and not another, why this number, why God is said to repent when he cannot.
101–200
2 works
c. 130–145; survives in fragments
Greek
Basilides
Twenty-four books of commentary, of which a few paragraphs survive in Clement and Hippolytus. From a God who is not, a seed containing everything unfolds; suffering is never undeserved, since the martyr is paying for sins we cannot see, and even the sinless infant carries the capacity to sin.
c. 165–180; survives in fragments
Greek
Heracleon
Nearly fifty passages quoted by Origen, who set out to refute them and ended up preserving them. The Samaritan woman's five husbands are the senses; the royal official is the craftsman-god; the descent to Capernaum is a descent into matter.
201–300
9 works
c. 200–204; survives complete only in Georgian
Greek, surviving in Georgian
Hippolytus of Rome · c. 170 – c. 235
A reading of the Song in which the bride is the church and the bridegroom the Word, breaking off at chapter three. The women at the tomb become the new Eve, sent to the apostles as apostles themselves.
c. 204
Greek
Hippolytus of Rome · c. 170–c. 235
A verse-by-verse exposition written during persecution, arguing from the four kingdoms that the end is not as near as the excited were claiming, and dwelling on Susanna as a figure of the church.
c. 200–215; survives in fragments
Greek
Hypotyposeis
Clement of Alexandria · c. 150 – c. 215
Eight books of brief notes on the whole of scripture, condemned by Photius for saying strange things and lost apart from quotations. It preserved the tradition that Mark wrote at Rome from Peter's preaching, and that John, seeing the bodily facts already set down, composed a spiritual gospel.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
301–400
6 works
c. 363
Latin
Marius Victorinus · c. 290–c. 364
The work of an elderly and celebrated rhetorician whose late conversion caused a sensation in Rome, reading Paul with a Neoplatonist's philosophical vocabulary.
c. 364–367
Latin
Hilary of Poitiers · c. 310–367
Expositions of selected psalms written after his return from exile, applying Greek exegetical method to the Latin psalter.
c. 360–373
Syriac
Ephrem the Syrian · c. 306–373
An exposition of Tatian's gospel harmony, reading each scene for its layers of meaning in the associative Syriac manner rather than the Greek analytic one.
c. 366–384
Latin
Ambrosiaster
A complete Latin commentary on thirteen letters of Paul by an anonymous Roman writer, plain, historically minded, and free of allegory.
c. 387
Greek
Didymus the Blind · c. 313–398
Dictated by a scholar blind from childhood who ran the Alexandrian catechetical school, reading the prophet in the full allegorical manner of Origen.
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.
401–500
3 works
c. 405–410
Latin
Pelagius · c. 354–c. 420
A brisk, practical commentary emphasising moral effort and the example of Christ, which circulated widely under other names after its author was condemned.
c. 408–410
Latin
Jerome · c. 347 – 420
Eighteen books on Isaiah, the largest of Jerome's commentaries, giving the Hebrew and the Septuagint side by side wherever they differ and reporting the Jewish readings he had been taught before dismissing most of them.
c. 425–429
Greek
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376–444
A vast doctrinal commentary reading the fourth gospel as a sustained demonstration of the Word made flesh, with heavy emphasis on the eucharist as the flesh that gives life.
501–600
4 works
c. 540
Latin
Primasius of Hadrumetum · d. c. 560
A North African exposition drawing heavily on Tyconius and Augustine, reading the visions as the church's present struggle rather than a timetable.
c. 540–548
Latin
Expositio Psalmorum
Cassiodorus · c. 485–c. 585
A commentary on all one hundred and fifty psalms that pauses constantly to identify figures of speech, treating the psalter as a textbook of rhetoric as well as prayer.
c. 540–560
Greek
Oecumenius
The earliest surviving Greek commentary on Revelation, read almost entirely as already fulfilled in the incarnation and the passion rather than as a map of the future. The woman clothed with the sun is Mary; the thousand years are the present age.
c. 579–591
Latin
Moralia in Iob
Gregory the Great · c. 540–604
Thirty-five books begun as conferences for fellow monks in Constantinople, reading Job at three levels — historical, allegorical, and moral — and using it to map the interior life.
601–700
4 works
c. 611
Greek
Andrew of Caesarea
Revelation read on three levels at once — literal, moral, and spiritual — with the millennium taken as the present age of the church rather than a coming one, and Gog and Magog as nations still to appear.
c. 615
Syriac
Gabriel of Qatar
A working explanation of the daily office as celebrated in the Gulf: why the psalms fall in that order, what each procession and each veil means, and what a monk should be thinking during the parts where nothing is said.
c. 680–690
Syriac
Dadisho Qatraya · 7th century
A commentary on an earlier ascetic classic, written for solitaries and much concerned with the discipline of the seven weeks of enclosed retreat.
c. 700–708; unfinished
Syriac
Jacob of Edessa · c. 640–708
A commentary on the six days of creation gathering the natural science of the age — geography, zoology, astronomy — from Greek sources into Syriac.
701–800
7 works
c. 703–709
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673 – 735
Bede's earliest book, written in his twenties, dividing Revelation into seven recapitulating sections after Tyconius and firmly against reading it as a calendar. The thousand years are the age of the church, and the numbers are meanings rather than dates.
c. 711–716
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673 – 735
Seven books on the Song, opening with an attack on Julian of Eclanum for reading it as a wedding poem, and closing with an anthology of Gregory the Great on the same text assembled so that readers without a library could still have him.
c. 709–716
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
A patient exposition of the third gospel that marks in the margin which father each borrowed passage comes from, so a reader can tell Bede's own words from Ambrose's.
c. 721–725
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
An allegorical reading of the desert tabernacle in which every measurement, curtain, and vessel figures the church and the Christian life.
c. 758–767
Latin
Ambrosius Autpertus · c. 730–784
Ten books reading Revelation as the present life of the church rather than a forecast, with long passages on the interior conflict of the soul.
776, revised 784 and 786
Latin
Beatus of Liébana · c. 730–800
A compilation of earlier commentary on Revelation assembled in the Asturian mountains, and copied for centuries in manuscripts illuminated with the most startling images in medieval art.
c. 792
Syriac
Ktaba d-eskoliyon
Theodore bar Koni · 8th century
Questions and answers on the whole Bible, closing with an account of the religions and sects of Mesopotamia, including Manichaeans, Marcionites, and Muslims.
801–900
3 works
c. 850
Syriac
Ishodad of Merv · 9th century
Commentaries on the whole Bible in the Antiochene manner, preserving the readings of Theodore of Mopsuestia and other authors whose Greek texts were destroyed.
c. 840–860
Latin
Haymo of Auxerre · d. c. 878
Commentaries on Paul, Isaiah, the Twelve Prophets, and Revelation, written for teaching rather than display — the fathers digested into a continuous plain exposition that a student could follow without a library behind him.
c. 864–870
Latin
Christian of Stavelot
A teaching commentary that keeps breaking into the present: on the gospel being preached to all nations, Christian notes that the Bulgars have just been baptised, that the Khazars observe the law of Moses, and that the Danes are still to be reached.
901–1000
2 works
c. 910–913
Greek
Arethas of Caesarea · c. 860 – c. 939
A reworking of Andrew of Caesarea with more history in it — the seven churches given their actual circumstances, the plagues read against the Arab and Bulgar wars the writer had lived through.
1–40 of 62 matching · 1780 in the Library