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. 200–100 BC
Hebrew and Greek
Attributed to Baruch son of Neriah
Read aloud by the exiles in Babylon and sent home with money for sacrifices: a confession that the disaster was deserved, a poem identifying Wisdom with the book of the commandments, and a lament in which Jerusalem speaks as a widow watching her children led away.
100–1 BC
1 work
c. 150 BC – AD 50
Greek
Anonymous
Fifteen verses supplying the prayer Chronicles says the worst king of Judah prayed in captivity and does not quote. The sins are more in number than the sand of the sea; the knees of the heart are bent; and the God who appointed repentance did so not for the righteous, who never needed it, but for the sinner.
101–200
2 works
c. 140–155
Greek
Poimen
Hermas
Visions, commands, and parables given to a freed slave in Rome by an ancient woman who is the church and an angel dressed as a shepherd, mostly concerned with whether a Christian who sins gravely after baptism can repent again.
c. 140–160
Greek
Anonymous
Not a letter and not by Clement: a plain sermon urging a congregation to think of Christ as they would of God, to repent while there is still time, and to match profession with conduct.
201–300
3 works
c. 203
Latin
De Paenitentia
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
Two repentances are described: the one that leads to baptism, and the single painful public penance allowed to a believer who falls afterwards.
c. 203
Greek
Quis Dives Salvetur
Clement of Alexandria · c. 150 – c. 215
A sermon on the rich young ruler arguing that the command is to be poor in the soul's attachment rather than in the purse, since a man stripped of property may still be consumed by wanting it. It closes with the story of John and the young man who became a bandit chief, whom the old apostle rode into the hills to reclaim.
c. 200–250
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
The soul as a woman who falls into prostitution, is passed between robbers, bears illegitimate children, and finally turns and weeps — at which the Father sends her own brother down to her as bridegroom, and the bridal chamber restores her.
601–700
1 work
c. 630; attribution debated
Greek
Attributed to Sophronius of Jerusalem · c. 560 – 638
A monk crossing the Jordan finds a naked, sun-blackened woman who levitates at prayer and knows scripture she has never read. She tells him she spent seventeen years in Alexandria taking men for pleasure rather than money, was turned back by an invisible force at the church door in Jerusalem, and has been in the desert forty-seven years.
701–800
1 work
c. 700–740
Greek
Andrew of Crete · c. 650–740
Two hundred and fifty stanzas of penitence, running through the whole Bible and applying every figure in it to the singer's own soul.
1501–1600
1 work
1517
Latin
Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum
Martin Luther · 1483–1546
Ninety-five propositions for academic debate, questioning what indulgences can actually do, what the pope's power over purgatory amounts to, and whether a Christian's whole life is not meant to be repentance.
1601–1700
1 work
1622–1624
German
Jakob Böhme · 1575–1624
The only book of his published in his lifetime: treatises on repentance, resignation, and the new birth, considerably plainer than his speculative works.
11 of 1780 works