The Library
1577 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.
1–100
1 work
c. AD 30–45; survives complete only in Armenian
Greek, surviving in Armenian
Quaestiones et Solutiones
Philo of Alexandria · c. 20 BC – c. AD 50
A running catechism on Genesis and Exodus in question-and-answer form: why this word and not another, why this number, why God is said to repent when he cannot.
101–200
2 works
c. 130–145; survives in fragments
Greek
Basilides
Twenty-four books of commentary, of which a few paragraphs survive in Clement and Hippolytus. From a God who is not, a seed containing everything unfolds; suffering is never undeserved, since the martyr is paying for sins we cannot see, and even the sinless infant carries the capacity to sin.
c. 165–180; survives in fragments
Greek
Heracleon
Nearly fifty passages quoted by Origen, who set out to refute them and ended up preserving them. The Samaritan woman's five husbands are the senses; the royal official is the craftsman-god; the descent to Capernaum is a descent into matter.
201–300
9 works
c. 200–204; survives complete only in Georgian
Greek, surviving in Georgian
Hippolytus of Rome · c. 170 – c. 235
A reading of the Song in which the bride is the church and the bridegroom the Word, breaking off at chapter three. The women at the tomb become the new Eve, sent to the apostles as apostles themselves.
c. 204
Greek
Hippolytus of Rome · c. 170–c. 235
A verse-by-verse exposition written during persecution, arguing from the four kingdoms that the end is not as near as the excited were claiming, and dwelling on Susanna as a figure of the church.
c. 200–215; survives in fragments
Greek
Hypotyposeis
Clement of Alexandria · c. 150 – c. 215
Eight books of brief notes on the whole of scripture, condemned by Photius for saying strange things and lost apart from quotations. It preserved the tradition that Mark wrote at Rome from Peter's preaching, and that John, seeing the bodily facts already set down, composed a spiritual gospel.
c. 231–248
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185–c. 253
An immense line-by-line exposition, begun to answer a Valentinian commentary on the same gospel, spending a whole book on the opening words alone.
c. 240; survives in part, in Latin
Greek, surviving in Latin
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Ten books on the Song, prefaced by a warning that no one should read it who is not already past the stirrings of the flesh. The bride is both the church and the individual soul, and the wound she carries is the arrow of love.
c. 246
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185–c. 253
A late commentary, partly surviving in Greek and partly in an old Latin version, patient with the literal sense and unusually attentive to textual variants.
c. 246; survives in Rufinus's abridgement
Greek, surviving in Latin
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Fifteen books on Paul's hardest letter, holding together a real freedom of the will and a real grace, and reading the hardened Pharaoh and the vessels of wrath as descriptions of a mercy working on a longer scale than one life.
c. 260–300
Latin
Victorinus of Pettau · d. c. 304
A short exposition reading the visions as recapitulations of the same events rather than a sequence, with a frankly millenarian ending that Jerome later revised away.
c. 280–300
Latin
De Fabrica Mundi
Victorinus of Pettau · d. c. 304
A short reading of the six days built entirely on the number seven — seven heavens, seven spirits, seven days, seven weeks to Pentecost — and defending the Friday fast and the Sunday assembly from the pattern.
301–400
6 works
c. 363
Latin
Marius Victorinus · c. 290–c. 364
The work of an elderly and celebrated rhetorician whose late conversion caused a sensation in Rome, reading Paul with a Neoplatonist's philosophical vocabulary.
c. 364–367
Latin
Hilary of Poitiers · c. 310–367
Expositions of selected psalms written after his return from exile, applying Greek exegetical method to the Latin psalter.
c. 360–373
Syriac
Ephrem the Syrian · c. 306–373
An exposition of Tatian's gospel harmony, reading each scene for its layers of meaning in the associative Syriac manner rather than the Greek analytic one.
c. 366–384
Latin
Ambrosiaster
A complete Latin commentary on thirteen letters of Paul by an anonymous Roman writer, plain, historically minded, and free of allegory.
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.
c. 390–410
Greek
Theodore of Mopsuestia · c. 350–428
A historically grounded reading of the minor prophets that refuses to find Christ under every verse, insisting each oracle first meant something to its own hearers.
401–500
2 works
c. 405–410
Latin
Pelagius · c. 354–c. 420
A brisk, practical commentary emphasising moral effort and the example of Christ, which circulated widely under other names after its author was condemned.
c. 425–429
Greek
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376–444
A vast doctrinal commentary reading the fourth gospel as a sustained demonstration of the Word made flesh, with heavy emphasis on the eucharist as the flesh that gives life.
501–600
3 works
c. 540
Latin
Primasius of Hadrumetum · d. c. 560
A North African exposition drawing heavily on Tyconius and Augustine, reading the visions as the church's present struggle rather than a timetable.
c. 540–548
Latin
Expositio Psalmorum
Cassiodorus · c. 485–c. 585
A commentary on all one hundred and fifty psalms that pauses constantly to identify figures of speech, treating the psalter as a textbook of rhetoric as well as prayer.
c. 579–591
Latin
Moralia in Iob
Gregory the Great · c. 540–604
Thirty-five books begun as conferences for fellow monks in Constantinople, reading Job at three levels — historical, allegorical, and moral — and using it to map the interior life.
601–700
2 works
c. 680–690
Syriac
Dadisho Qatraya · 7th century
A commentary on an earlier ascetic classic, written for solitaries and much concerned with the discipline of the seven weeks of enclosed retreat.
c. 700–708; unfinished
Syriac
Jacob of Edessa · c. 640–708
A commentary on the six days of creation gathering the natural science of the age — geography, zoology, astronomy — from Greek sources into Syriac.
701–800
5 works
c. 709–716
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
A patient exposition of the third gospel that marks in the margin which father each borrowed passage comes from, so a reader can tell Bede's own words from Ambrose's.
c. 721–725
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
An allegorical reading of the desert tabernacle in which every measurement, curtain, and vessel figures the church and the Christian life.
c. 758–767
Latin
Ambrosius Autpertus · c. 730–784
Ten books reading Revelation as the present life of the church rather than a forecast, with long passages on the interior conflict of the soul.
776, revised 784 and 786
Latin
Beatus of Liébana · c. 730–800
A compilation of earlier commentary on Revelation assembled in the Asturian mountains, and copied for centuries in manuscripts illuminated with the most startling images in medieval art.
c. 792
Syriac
Ktaba d-eskoliyon
Theodore bar Koni · 8th century
Questions and answers on the whole Bible, closing with an account of the religions and sects of Mesopotamia, including Manichaeans, Marcionites, and Muslims.
801–900
1 work
c. 850
Syriac
Ishodad of Merv · 9th century
Commentaries on the whole Bible in the Antiochene manner, preserving the readings of Theodore of Mopsuestia and other authors whose Greek texts were destroyed.
1001–1100
3 works
c. 1030–1043
Arabic
Firdaws al-Nasraniyya
Ibn al-Tayyib · d. 1043
A commentary on the whole Bible in Arabic by a Baghdad physician, philosopher, and priest who also wrote on Aristotle and on medicine.
c. 1044
Latin
Gerard of Csanád · c. 980–1046
A commentary on the song of the three young men, digressing constantly into complaints about pagan Hungarians, false teachers, and the state of learning on the frontier.
c. 1085–1100
Greek
Theophylact of Ohrid · c. 1050–after 1107
Clear, compressed commentaries on the gospels and epistles distilling Chrysostom and the earlier fathers into something a parish priest could actually use.
1101–1200
7 works
c. 1100–1200
Latin
Glossa Ordinaria
The school of Laon and later hands
Patristic comment set in the margins and between the lines of the Bible itself, so that text and interpretation were read together on the page.
c. 1133–1137
Latin
Peter Abelard · 1079–1142
A commentary containing his account of the atonement: that Christ's death works by kindling love in us rather than by paying a price to God or to the devil.
c. 1157–1164
Latin
Rufinus of Bologna · 12th century
The first full commentary on Gratian, defining natural law and working out where custom, papal decree, and conscience each hold.
c. 1160–1170
Latin
Stephen of Tournai · 1128–1203
A lucid commentary on Gratian written for French students, later followed by a bitter letter complaining that theology students now argue about the Trinity in the street.
c. 1150–1171
Syriac
Dionysius bar Salibi · d. 1171
Commentaries on the whole Bible giving both the literal and the spiritual sense, alongside treatises against Muslims, Jews, Armenians, and Chalcedonians.
c. 1170–1195
Greek
Theodore Balsamon · c. 1130–after 1195
A commentary on the whole body of church canons, reconciling them with imperial law and ruling on what remained in force.
1–40 of 52 matching · 1577 in the Library