The Library
1277 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.
101–200
50 works
c. 108
Greek
Ignatius of Antioch · c. 35–c. 108
Written under armed guard on the road to execution in Rome. Ignatius urges the churches he passes to hold to their bishops and to the reality of Christ's flesh, and begs the Roman Christians not to intervene to save him.
c. 110–135
Greek
Polycarp of Smyrna · c. 69–c. 155
A pastoral letter accompanying a collection of Ignatius's correspondence, urging perseverance, warning a presbyter who had mishandled money, and quoting the New Testament almost continuously.
c. 110–130; survives in fragments
Greek
Papias of Hierapolis · c. 60–c. 130
Five lost books gathering what Papias could learn from those who had heard the apostles, surviving only where Irenaeus and Eusebius quote him — including his notes on how Mark and Matthew came to be written.
c. 124–125; one fragment survives
Greek
Quadratus
The first Christian defence addressed to an emperor, of which Eusebius preserves a single paragraph noting that some healed by Jesus had lived into the writer's own lifetime.
c. 125–140
Greek
Aristides of Athens
A philosopher sorts humanity into races by what they worship — barbarians, Greeks, Jews, Christians — and argues that only the last have understood God, closing with a description of how they treat the poor.
c. 130
Greek
Anonymous
An uncompromising argument that the Jewish law was always meant allegorically and never literally, closing with a version of the Two Ways also found in the Didache.
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.
c. 100–150; date disputed
Greek
Anonymous
A hundred and fourteen sayings of Jesus with no narrative, no passion, and no resurrection, some close to the canonical gospels and others enigmatic in a way that invites an inner, secret reading.
c. 144; lost, known through opponents
Greek
Marcion of Sinope · c. 85–c. 160
A systematic set of contradictions between the Old Testament and the gospel, arguing that the creator God of Israel is a lesser being than the alien God of love revealed by Jesus. Known only from the refutations of Tertullian and others.
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. 150
Greek
Anonymous
The story of Mary before the gospels begin: her miraculous birth to Joachim and Anna, her upbringing in the temple, her betrothal to an older widower, and a defence of her virginity after Jesus's birth.
c. 120–180; survives in fragment
Greek
Anonymous
After the Saviour departs, Mary Magdalene comforts the frightened disciples and reports a vision she alone received; Andrew and Peter object that he would not have spoken privately to a woman.
c. 150; survives in fragment
Greek
Anonymous
A passion narrative that exonerates Pilate, blames Herod and the Jewish leaders, and stages the resurrection itself with two angels and a walking, talking cross.
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.
c. 155–160
Greek
The Church at Smyrna
An eyewitness account, circulated as a letter, of the arrest and burning of the aged bishop of Smyrna, who had known the apostolic generation and refused at the last to swear by the emperor's fortune.
c. 155–160
Greek
Justin Martyr · c. 100–165
A short supplement provoked by the execution of three Christians in Rome, arguing that Christians are punished for the name alone and that whatever any philosopher said truly belongs to Christ.
c. 155
Greek
Justin Martyr · c. 100–165
A philosopher's open letter to the emperor, answering the rumours that Christians were atheists and cannibals by simply describing what they believed and did — including the earliest detailed account of a Sunday gathering.
c. 140–180
Greek
Valentinus · c. 100–c. 160
Not a narrative but a meditation on forgetting and being found: error grows in ignorance of the Father until the Word appears and the names of the elect are read out of the living book.
c. 150–180
Greek
Apocryphon Johannis
Anonymous
A full Sethian cosmology: an unknowable Father, a fall within the divine fullness, and a blind creator god who makes the material world and traps light in human bodies.
c. 160
Greek
Ptolemy
A courteous letter to an enquiring woman dividing the law of Moses into three parts — from God, from Moses, and from the elders — and treating each differently.
c. 140–170
Greek
Epistula Apostolorum
Anonymous
A post-resurrection dialogue in which the risen Christ answers the eleven, written in the form the Gnostics favoured but arguing hard for a real body and a real resurrection.
c. 155–165
Greek
Justin Martyr · c. 100–165
A long, mostly civil debate with a Jewish interlocutor over whether the Hebrew scriptures point to Jesus, covering the law, the virgin of Isaiah, and the church's claim to be the true Israel.
c. 160–170
Greek
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. 170
Syriac
Tatian · c. 120–c. 180
The four gospels woven into a single continuous narrative, with the overlaps removed.
c. 150–200
Greek
Anonymous
Travel tales of the apostle John including a hymn danced in a circle before the passion, and a Christ whose body leaves no footprints and changes shape.
177
Greek
The Churches of Lyons and Vienne
An account sent to the churches of Asia describing a local pogrom: the mob, the amphitheatre, the aged bishop Pothinus, and the slave Blandina, who outlasted her torturers.
c. 176–180
Greek
Legatio pro Christianis
Athenagoras of Athens
A calm, lawyerly petition to Marcus Aurelius answering the three standing charges — atheism, cannibalism, incest — and including an early statement of the Trinity in passing.
c. 175–185; survives in fragments
Greek
Hypomnemata
Hegesippus · c. 110–c. 180
Five lost books of travel and enquiry into what the churches actually taught, preserved where Eusebius quotes them — including the account of the death of James the brother of Jesus.
c. 150–200
Greek
Anonymous
Episodes from the childhood of Jesus between the ages of five and twelve, including sparrows made from clay and brought to life, and a schoolmaster who regrets his lesson.
c. 180; attribution debated
Greek
Athenagoras of Athens
A philosophical defence of bodily resurrection, arguing from the nature of the human being as a composite of soul and body that judgement of one without the other would be incoherent.
c. 180
Greek
Ad Autolycum
Theophilus of Antioch · d. c. 183
Three books to a sceptical friend: on why God is seen only by the pure in heart, on the folly of the poets, and on the greater antiquity of Moses, with a chronology from creation.
c. 180
Greek
Adversus Haereses
Irenaeus of Lyons · c. 130–c. 202
Five books setting out the Gnostic systems in detail and then dismantling them, on the grounds that the God who made matter is the God who redeemed it, and that Christ recapitulates in himself everything Adam lost.
c. 160–190
Greek
Anonymous
A young woman of Iconium breaks her engagement after hearing Paul preach chastity, survives fire and wild beasts, baptises herself, and goes off to teach.
180
Latin
Anonymous
The bare transcript of a hearing in Carthage: a proconsul offering an easy way out, twelve Christians declining it, and a sentence carried out the same day.
c. 180–190
Greek
Anonymous
Peter's contest with Simon Magus in Rome, ending with the sorcerer's flight and fall, and with Peter's own crucifixion head downward after meeting Christ on the road out of the city.
c. 190
Greek
Epideixis
Irenaeus of Lyons · c. 130–c. 202
A short positive summary of the faith for a friend named Marcianus — creation, fall, incarnation, and the prophecies fulfilled — written without the polemic that fills Against Heresies.
c. 150–200; survives in fragments
Greek
Anonymous
The preaching, imprisonment, and crucifixion of Andrew in Patras, framed by long speeches urging converts to withdraw from marriage and the body.
c. 170–200; date disputed
Latin
Anonymous
A damaged list of the books a Roman congregation read publicly, with brief comments on why some are accepted, some allowed privately, and some rejected outright.
c. 190; survives in fragment
Greek
Polycrates of Ephesus · c. 130–196
A courteous refusal: the churches of Asia will keep Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan as their fathers did, whatever Rome prefers, and Polycrates lists the graves that prove it.
1–40 of 50 matching · 1277 in the Library