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.
300–201 BC
1 work
c. 220 BC; survives in fragments
Greek
Demetrius the Chronographer
The earliest Jewish writer in Greek whose work survives, patiently calculating dates and answering awkward questions: how Jacob's children were born in so few years, and where the unarmed Israelites who left Egypt got their weapons.
201–300
4 works
c. 230; survives in fragments
Greek
Julius Africanus · c. 160 – c. 240
An attempt to reconcile the two genealogies of Jesus through levirate marriage: Joseph's father had two fathers, one by nature and one by law, so both lists are true. Africanus says the desposyni, the Lord's own surviving relatives, preserved the record.
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. 260–264; 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. 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.
701–800
1 work
734
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
Written months before his death to a former pupil now a bishop, complaining of absentee clergy, fraudulent monasteries founded as tax shelters, and dioceses too large to serve.
801–900
1 work
c. 845
Greek
Myriobiblos
Photius of Constantinople · c. 815–c. 893
Notes on two hundred and eighty books read by the author, each summarised and judged, many of them now lost entirely.
901–1000
1 work
c. 930–940
Latin
Collationes
Odo of Cluny · c. 878–942
Three books of moral criticism aimed at clergy and nobility alike, unsparing about simony, violence, and the appetites of the powerful.
1101–1200
5 works
c. 1119–1125
Latin
Guibert of Nogent · c. 1055–c. 1124
An attack on fraudulent relics and invented saints, prompted by a monastery claiming to own one of Christ's milk teeth, and asking how anyone could verify such a thing.
c. 1125
Latin
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
An attack on monastic luxury that turns on carved cloisters: what are these ridiculous monsters doing where the brothers read, and would the money not be better given to the poor?
c. 1160–1170
Latin
Stephen of Tournai · 1128–1203
A lucid commentary on Gratian written for French students, later followed by a bitter letter complaining that theology students now argue about the Trinity in the street.
c. 1180
Greek
Eustathius of Thessalonica · c. 1115–c. 1195
An attack on monks who sell their monastery's books, keep private property, and despise learning as a distraction from holiness.
c. 1181–1193
Latin
De Nugis Curialium
Walter Map · c. 1130–c. 1210
Gossip, ghost stories, monastic satire, and complaints about court life from a royal clerk who compared the court to hell and admitted he could not leave it.
1201–1300
1 work
c. 1240–1259
Latin
Chronica Majora
Matthew Paris · c. 1200–1259
A vividly opinionated chronicle of Europe from a St Albans scriptorium, illustrated by its author's own hand, hostile to papal taxation and to almost everyone in authority.
1401–1500
3 works
c. 1410
Latin
Dietrich of Niem · c. 1345–1418
A curial official's insider history of the schism, naming names and describing the financial machinery of the rival papal courts without much charity.
1440
Latin
De Falso Credita et Ementita Constantini Donatione
Lorenzo Valla · c. 1407–1457
A demonstration that the document by which Constantine supposedly gave the West to the papacy is a forgery — proved from its Latin, its anachronisms, and its silences.
c. 1444–1457
Latin
Lorenzo Valla · c. 1407–1457
Notes comparing the Vulgate against Greek manuscripts and finding the Latin wanting in dozens of places, including words on which doctrines had been built.
1501–1600
2 works
1511
Latin
Moriae Encomium
Desiderius Erasmus · c. 1466–1536
Folly delivers her own oration in praise of herself, working steadily through scholars, lawyers, monks, bishops, and popes before turning to the folly of the cross.
c. 1518–1556
Old Church Slavonic
Maximus the Greek · c. 1475–1556
Translations, textual corrections, and treatises by an Athonite monk brought to Moscow to revise the service books, who was imprisoned for decades for his corrections.
1601–1700
6 works
begun 1643; still in progress
Latin
Acta Sanctorum
Jean Bolland and the Bollandists
A critical edition of the lives of the saints arranged by feast day, with the sources weighed and the legendary material identified as such.
1655
Latin
Prae-Adamitae
Isaac La Peyrère · 1596–1676
An argument that there were people before Adam, that Genesis records only the origin of the Jews, and that the flood was local rather than universal.
1670
Latin
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
Baruch Spinoza · 1632–1677
An argument that scripture must be interpreted by its own history and language alone, that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, and that the state should leave belief free.
1678
French
Richard Simon · 1638–1712
A Catholic priest argues that the Hebrew text reached us through many hands and cannot be the sole rule of faith, since tradition is needed to establish it.
1681
Latin
De Re Diplomatica
Jean Mabillon · 1632–1707
A method for telling genuine medieval charters from forgeries by their script, formulas, seals, and materials, written after a Jesuit questioned his abbey's documents.
1700
English
Robert Calef · 1648–1719
A Boston merchant's attack on the Salem proceedings and on the ministers who supported them, printed in London because no Boston press would touch it.
25 of 1780 works