The Library
1693 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
2 works
begun c. 250 BC, completed over two centuries
Greek
The translators of Alexandria
The Hebrew scriptures rendered into Greek at Alexandria, beginning with the Torah under Ptolemy II and extending over generations to the rest. Its readings often differ from the Hebrew that later became standard, and its Jeremiah is a seventh shorter.
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.
200–101 BC
2 works
c. 160–145 BC; survives in fragments
Greek
Aristobulus of Alexandria
Five fragments preserved by Eusebius, arguing that where scripture gives God hands and feet these are figures for power and standing, and that Plato and Pythagoras had both read Moses in an older Greek translation.
c. 150–100 BC
Greek
Pseudo-Aristeas
The story of how the Torah came to be translated: Ptolemy releases a hundred thousand Jewish slaves, sends gifts to the temple, and receives seventy-two elders who answer a philosophical question each over seven banquets and then complete the work in seventy-two days on the island of Pharos.
1–100
1 work
c. 41
Greek
In Flaccum
Philo of Alexandria · c. 20 BC – c. AD 50
The pogrom of AD 38 in Alexandria told by a witness: the mock-crowning of a beggar to insult the Jewish king, the houses looted, the elders flogged in the theatre, and the governor who allowed it dragged off to exile and killed.
101–200
1 work
c. 198–203
Greek
Stromateis
Clement of Alexandria · c. 150–c. 215
Deliberately unsystematic notebooks arguing that philosophy was God's covenant with the Greeks as the law was with the Jews, and sketching the true gnostic — the mature Christian whom knowledge makes loving rather than superior.
201–300
1 work
c. 238
Greek
Gregory Thaumaturgus · c. 213–c. 270
A farewell speech by a departing student describing exactly how Origen taught: logic first, then physics and ethics, then philosophy read widely, and scripture last of all.
301–400
2 works
c. 375; survives in Jerome's Latin
Greek, surviving in Latin
Didymus the Blind · c. 313 – 398
By a man blind from the age of four who ran the catechetical school at Alexandria and had the scriptures read aloud to him until he knew them entire. The argument turns on participation: the Spirit is shared in and never shares in anything, and only what is uncreated can be participated without being diminished.
c. 387
Greek
Didymus the Blind · c. 313–398
Dictated by a scholar blind from childhood who ran the Alexandrian catechetical school, reading the prophet in the full allegorical manner of Origen.
401–500
2 works
414–442
Greek
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376 – 444
Twenty-nine annual letters announcing the date of Easter and the beginning of the Lenten fast to the churches of Egypt, each expanding into a treatise — on fasting, on the incarnation, on why Jews and Greeks read the same signs differently.
c. 438
Greek
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376–444
A late dialogue restating the case that the one who was born, suffered, and died is the eternal Word himself and not a man joined to him.
501–600
1 work
c. 515
Greek
Zacharias Scholasticus · c. 465 – after 536
A dialogue set in the Alexandrian lecture rooms, in which a Christian student argues against his own professor that the world had a beginning, and that a craftsman who needs eternal matter is not a maker but an arranger.
601–700
1 work
c. 641–642
Greek
Leontius of Neapolis · 7th century
The life of a patriarch of Alexandria who kept a register of the city's poor, called them his lords and masters, and ran hospitals and hostels from church funds.
13 of 1693 works