The Library
1774 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.
1400–1301 BC
1 work
c. 1400 BC
Ugaritic
Ilimilku the scribe
Danel, a righteous man who judges the case of the widow and the orphan at the gate, is granted a son. The goddess Anat covets the boy's bow, offers him immortality for it, is refused with the answer that death is the lot of all men, and has him killed. The land dries up for seven years.
200–101 BC
2 works
c. 150–100 BC
Greek
Anonymous
Two elders spy on a wife in her garden, threaten her, and accuse her of adultery when refused. She is condemned on their word until the young Daniel separates the witnesses and asks each under which tree it happened. They name different trees.
c. 150–100 BC
Greek
Anonymous
Daniel proves the idol Bel does not eat by scattering ashes on the temple floor overnight and showing the king the footprints of the priests and their families, then kills a living dragon by feeding it cakes of pitch, fat, and hair.
201–300
1 work
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.
401–500
1 work
c. 407
Latin
Jerome · c. 347 – 420
Written specifically to answer Porphyry, who had argued that Daniel was composed in the second century BC by someone describing events already past. Jerome reproduces the argument at length before rejecting it, and treats the fourth kingdom as Rome and the little horn as Antichrist.
5 of 1774 works