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.
1600–1501 BC
1 work
c. 1550 BC; older material, copied for centuries after
Egyptian
The Book of Coming Forth by Day
Anonymous
Spells written on papyrus and buried with the dead to get them safely through. At the centre is the weighing: the heart set against the feather of truth while the deceased denies forty-two sins one by one — I have not stolen, I have not caused pain, I have not held back water in its season.
1000–901 BC
1 work
c. 1200–900 BC; date heavily disputed
Avestan
Zarathustra
Seventeen hymns in the prophet's own voice, addressed to a single wise lord who created light and darkness and set two primal spirits at the beginning, one choosing truth and one the lie — and every person after them choosing too. At the end comes a judgement by fire and molten metal, and a world made fresh.
300–201 BC
1 work
c. 300 BC – AD 50; five books of different dates
Aramaic, surviving complete in Ge'ez
Anonymous
Five books under one name. Watchers descend, take wives, teach metalwork and cosmetics and sorcery, and father giants; Enoch is taken up to intercede for them and refused. Then an astronomical book, a dream vision of Israel's history as a flock of sheep, a letter of woes against the rich, and the parables of the Son of Man.
100–1 BC
1 work
c. 50 BC – AD 50; survives in fragments
Greek
Anonymous
Known mainly from one parable quoted by Epiphanius and others: a king holds a feast and posts a lame man and a blind man at the gate. They conspire, the blind carrying the lame, to rob the orchard — and each pleads innocence, until the king shows that body and soul are judged together.
1–100
1 work
c. 100
Greek
Anonymous
Michael is sent to tell Abraham he is dying and cannot bring himself to say it. Abraham stalls, asks for a tour of the world first, starts calling down fire on sinners, and has to be stopped — and at the judgement scene Abel weighs each soul on scales.
101–200
3 works
c. 130–150
Greek
Anonymous
A guided tour of the places of punishment and reward, with torments matched precisely to the sins that earned them.
Jewish core, Christian redaction c. 150
Greek
Anonymous
A history of the world in ten generations, into which a Christian editor has inserted the life of Christ, the twelve, and a long final judgement where the saved are given the chance to intercede for the damned and God grants it.
c. 175; later material added
Greek
Anonymous
A denunciation of Roman greed followed by an acrostic on Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour, Cross, whose initial letters spell out the fish, and a passage on the sign that will appear in the world when the age ends.
201–300
1 work
c. 239–242
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Twenty sermons taken down by shorthand writers as Origen preached at Caesarea, wrestling with a God who says he repents, who deceives the prophet, and who hands his own people over — and refusing every easy way out of the difficulty.
501–600
2 works
c. 530–545
Latin
De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae
Gildas · c. 500–c. 570
A furious sermon on the Saxon conquest as divine judgement, naming five British kings and denouncing them and the clergy in scriptural language.
c. 570–600; attribution traditional
Latin
Attributed to Columba · 521–597
An abecedarian hymn running from the Trinity before creation through the fall of the angels to the last judgement, in dense and deliberately difficult Latin.
801–900
1 work
c. 850–880
Old High German
Anonymous
A fragmentary alliterative poem on the fate of the soul at death and the end of the world in fire, with Elijah fighting Antichrist and the mountains burning.
901–1000
1 work
c. 950–960
Greek
Gregory the Disciple
A holy man in Constantinople, and two long visions granted to his servant Theodora: her soul's passage after death through twenty aerial toll-houses where demons produce a ledger of every sin by category, and a vision of the last judgement.
1001–1100
1 work
1014
Old English
Sermo Lupi ad Anglos
Wulfstan of York · d. 1023
Preached as the Danes overran England: the world is hastening to its end, and the English are being punished because they betray, enslave, and sell one another.
1101–1200
1 work
c. 1140
Latin
De Contemptu Mundi
Bernard of Cluny · 12th century
Three thousand lines of savage satire on a corrupt age in a demanding metre, opening with the world's last hour and the coming of the judge.
1201–1300
2 works
13th century; authorship disputed
Latin
Attributed to Thomas of Celano · c. 1185–c. 1265
A sequence on the day of wrath, the trumpet, the opened book, and a final quiet plea from the accused to the judge who once sat down weary seeking him.
c. 1270–1275
Old Church Slavonic
Serapion of Vladimir · d. 1275
Five sermons preached after the Mongol devastation, reading the catastrophe as judgement and denouncing the burning of accused witches as pagan cruelty.
1301–1400
1 work
c. 1340–1360
Middle English
Anonymous
Nine thousand lines on human wretchedness, death, purgatory, doomsday, and the pains of hell and joys of heaven, written for readers with no Latin.
18 of 1780 works