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. 300–200 BC
Hebrew or Greek
Anonymous
A warning to exiles bound for Babylon not to fear the idols carried in procession there. Seventy-two verses of relentless mockery, each closing with a refrain: they are not gods, so do not fear them. Their tongues are polished by carpenters, they cannot save themselves from rust, bats and swallows perch on their heads.
1–100
1 work
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
5 works
c. 160s; lost, echoed in Minucius Felix
Latin
Marcus Cornelius Fronto · c. 100 – c. 170
A speech by Marcus Aurelius's own tutor, known only through the charges Minucius Felix puts in a pagan's mouth in order to refute them: the infant covered in dough and stabbed by an initiate who does not know what he is cutting, and the lamp overturned at the feast.
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. 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. 180–190; survives in fragments
Greek
Rhodon
A pupil of Tatian reports on the state of Marcion's school a generation after its founder: split into factions that cannot agree whether there are two first principles or three, and led by an old man named Apelles who, pressed on how he knew, admitted he did not know and simply believed.
c. 197; survives in fragments
Greek
Apollonius
An attack on the new prophecy that goes after its finances rather than its theology: Montanus paying salaries to preachers, Priscilla and Maximilla leaving their husbands, prophets who dye their hair, paint their eyelids, play dice, and lend at interest.
201–300
10 works
c. 206
Latin
De Carne Christi
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
Against Marcion and Valentinus, an insistence that Christ was born of a real woman with a real body — including the notorious argument that it is to be believed precisely because it is unfitting.
c. 207–212
Latin
Adversus Marcionem
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
Five books dismantling Marcion's two gods, his edited gospel, and his shortened Paul, arguing that the God of Israel and the Father of Jesus are one and that the creation he made is good.
c. 200–210
Greek
Hippolytus of Rome · c. 170 – c. 235
A refutation of the Smyrnaean who taught that the Father himself was born and suffered, arguing from the scriptures that the Word is distinct from the one who sent him without there being two Gods.
c. 203–213
Latin
Scorpiace
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
Written against Gnostics who told Christians it was permissible to deny the faith under torture, arguing that martyrdom is willed by God and not merely tolerated.
c. 217–222
Greek
Philostratus · c. 170 – c. 250
The life of a first-century wandering Pythagorean sage commissioned by the empress Julia Domna: miraculous birth, travels to India and Egypt, healings, an exorcism, a girl raised from her bier, a trial before Domitian, a disappearance, and an appearance afterwards to a doubting disciple.
c. 222–235
Greek
Philosophumena
Hippolytus of Rome · c. 170–c. 235
Ten books arguing that every heresy is a Greek philosophy in disguise, with long quotations from the systems described and a bitter account of the Roman church under Callistus.
c. 200–250
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
Peter watches the crucifixion and sees two figures — one being nailed, and one above the cross, glad and laughing — and is told that the living Jesus cannot be touched. It attacks the bishops and deacons as dry canals who call themselves what they are not.
c. 200–275
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
An attack on almost everyone: on catholics who think dying in the arena buys salvation, on those who marry and breed, and on rival gnostic teachers named outright — Valentinus, Basilides, Isidore, and the Simonians.
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
10 works
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. 330–348; survives complete in Latin
Greek, surviving in Latin
Hegemonius
A staged public debate in Mesopotamia between a bishop and Mani, judged by pagan referees, followed by a hostile biography in which Mani is made the heir of a line of frauds and dies flayed at the Persian king's order.
c. 339–345
Greek
Orationes contra Arianos
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296–373
Three long discourses arguing text by text that the Son is eternally begotten, and that if he were a creature then creatures would be worshipping a creature.
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. 363–373
Syriac
Ephrem the Syrian · c. 306–373
Polemic set to popular tunes, answering the followers of Bardaisan, Marcion, and Mani in the same metres they used for their own hymns.
374–377
Greek
Panarion
Epiphanius of Salamis · c. 315–403
Eighty heresies described and refuted in order, each presented as a snakebite for which the book supplies the antidote, quoting sources now lost.
383
Latin
De Perpetua Virginitate Beatae Mariae
Jerome · c. 347 – 420
A Roman layman had argued from the gospels that Mary bore other children after Jesus and that marriage is therefore no worse than virginity. Jerome answers by combing the usage of until and brother through the whole of scripture, and proposes that the brothers of the Lord were cousins.
393
Latin
Jerome · c. 347–420
A violent reply to a monk who argued that marriage and virginity are equally meritorious — so violent that Jerome's friends tried to withdraw it from circulation.
c. 400
Latin
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
Thirty-three books answering the Manichaean bishop whose arguments had once impressed him, defending the Old Testament and the goodness of the created order.
c. 400–450
Hebrew and Aramaic
The academies of Galilee
A verse-by-verse midrash on Genesis, reading the book as a set of openings rather than a narrative: why it begins with the second letter of the alphabet, what God consulted before making man, and repeated disputes with those who argue from in our image that there is more than one power in heaven.
401–500
6 works
401–402
Latin
Jerome · c. 347 – 420
Two old friends who had studied together and shared a monastery tear each other apart in print over how much of Origen either of them had once believed. Jerome accuses Rufinus of doctoring his translations; Rufinus quotes Jerome's own earlier praise of Origen back at him.
406
Latin
Jerome · c. 347 – 420
A Gallic priest had objected to vigils at martyrs' tombs, to lighting candles by daylight, to sending money to Jerusalem instead of to the local poor, and to the whole cult of relics. Jerome answers in a single night, and mostly by abuse.
c. 421–422
Latin
Contra Iulianum
Augustine of Hippo · 354 – 430
Julian of Eclanum, a deposed Italian bishop and much the sharper logician, had accused Augustine of making God the author of evil and of importing Mani into the church. Augustine answers by assembling the fathers — Cyprian, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Basil — to show that original sin was taught before he was born.
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. 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.
c. 441–449
Armenian
On God
Eznik of Kolb
Four books against pagan fatalism, Zoroastrian dualism, Greek philosophy, and Marcion, by a translator who had studied at Edessa and Constantinople. The section on Zurvanism is a straight description of Persian religion from someone living under Persian rule.
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. 535–545
Greek
Leontius of Jerusalem
An argument that the humanity of Christ is real and complete but has no independent subsistence of its own — it exists in the person of the Word rather than in a person of its own.
701–800
2 works
c. 790–793
Latin
Opus Caroli Regis contra Synodum
Theodulf of Orléans · c. 750–821
A Frankish rejection of the Greek council on images, arguing from a garbled translation that pictures are useful for teaching and decoration but must not be venerated.
c. 796–799
Latin
Contra Felicem
Paulinus II of Aquileia · c. 730 – 802
Three books answering the bishop of Urgell's Adoptionism, arguing that adoption implies a person adopted, and that if the man Jesus is adopted then there are two sons and the incarnation is a partnership rather than a union.
801–900
3 works
first attested c. 830; earlier material, date disputed
Hebrew and Aramaic
Toledot Yeshu
Anonymous
A counter-gospel circulated among medieval Jews: Jesus is conceived in adultery, steals the ineffable Name from the Temple and works his miracles by it, is bested by a rabbi who learns the same trick, and is executed and buried in a gardener's cabbage patch.
9th century; date disputed
Arabic
Anonymous
A pair of letters, one inviting a Christian to Islam and the other declining at length, criticising the Qur'an's composition and Muhammad's career directly.
c. 9th century
Syriac and Arabic
Anonymous
The monk who recognised the boy Muhammad, retold from the Christian side: here he is a Christian ascetic who taught the Arab prophet what he knew, saw his teaching corrupted after his death, and foretold the whole history of Islamic rule before dying.
1–40 of 53 matching · 1780 in the Library