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.
2100–2001 BC
1 work
c. 2100 BC
Sumerian
The court of Ur-Nammu
The oldest surviving law code, opening with a king who claims to have removed the crooked measure and stopped the powerful from seizing the widow's ox, then setting fines in silver for injuries — a broken bone, a severed nose — rather than demanding the matching mutilation.
1800–1701 BC
1 work
c. 1754 BC
Akkadian
Hammurabi of Babylon
Two hundred and eighty-two rulings cut into a black diorite pillar beneath a relief of the king receiving the rod and ring from the sun god. If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye; if a builder's house collapses and kills the owner's son, the builder's son is put to death.
200–101 BC
1 work
c. 150–100 BC
Hebrew
11QT
Anonymous
The longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, rewriting the law with God speaking in the first person throughout — no Moses as intermediary. It specifies a temple with three concentric courts that was never built, a calendar of new festivals, and a law for the king limiting his army and forbidding him more than one wife.
1–100
2 works
c. AD 30–45
Greek
De Specialibus Legibus
Philo of Alexandria · c. 20 BC – c. AD 50
Four books sorting every particular commandment under one of the ten, so that circumcision, the priesthood, the festivals, marriage, courts, and the treatment of slaves all turn out to be applications of a single decalogue.
c. AD 30–45
Greek
De Decalogo
Philo of Alexandria · c. 20 BC – c. AD 50
Why the ten were spoken by God directly and the rest through Moses, why they divide into two tables of five, and why a voice rather than a body was the fitting form for God to take at Sinai.
101–200
5 works
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. 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. 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.
197
Latin
Apologeticum
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
A defence addressed to the governors of the empire, arguing that Christians are tried by a procedure used for no other crime, and that the blood of the martyrs is seed.
c. 200
Hebrew
Redacted by Judah ha-Nasi · c. 135 – c. 217
Six orders covering agriculture, festivals, women, damages, holy things, and purities, recording the disputes of the sages in the barest form — this one says, that one says — and often declining to settle them.
201–300
4 works
c. 239–242; survives in Latin
Greek, surviving in Latin
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Sixteen sermons on the sacrificial code, opening with the flat claim that read literally these chapters are useless, and then reading every offering, every fat portion and kidney, as a movement of the soul or an aspect of Christ.
c. 3rd century
Hebrew
The school of Rabbi Ishmael
A running halakhic and narrative commentary on Exodus from the plagues to the covenant, arguing every law out of the wording and telling the crossing of the sea as a debate among the tribes over who would enter the water first.
c. 250
Latin
De Cibis Iudaicis
Novatian · c. 200 – c. 258
Written from hiding during the persecution to a congregation asking about the food laws. The unclean animals were never about animals, Novatian argues — they name human vices, and what the law forbade was the swine's filthiness and the vulture's appetite for another's death.
c. 250–300
Hebrew
Anonymous
A companion to the Mishnah following the same six orders but four times longer, preserving the alternative rulings, the fuller debates, and the cases the Mishnah left out — including the earliest rabbinic references to the minim and to healing in the name of Jesus son of Pantera.
301–400
1 work
c. 400
Hebrew and Aramaic
Talmud Yerushalmi
The academies of Galilee
The Mishnah with the discussion the Galilean academies built around it, closed abruptly and unevenly — whole orders are missing — apparently because the conditions that supported the schools gave out under Christian imperial rule.
401–500
1 work
412
Latin
De Spiritu et Littera
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
The first sustained answer to Pelagius: the law shows what to do but cannot supply the will to do it, which only grace poured into the heart provides.
601–700
1 work
697
Latin
Cáin Adomnáin
Adomnán of Iona · c. 624–704
A law promulgated at a synod of Irish and Pictish kings and clergy, imposing heavy penalties for killing or wounding women, children, and clerics in war.
1101–1200
1 work
c. 1184
Armenian
Datastanagirk
Mkhitar Gosh · c. 1130–1213
A code of civil and ecclesiastical law compiled for Armenians living under foreign rulers, so that they might be judged by their own law rather than a stranger's.
1201–1300
2 works
1234
Latin
Liber Extra
Raymond of Peñafort · c. 1175–1275
Papal decisions since Gratian, edited into five books and promulgated as the exclusive law of the church, with all earlier collections declared superseded.
c. 1271–1276
Latin
Speculum Iudiciale
William Durandus · c. 1230–1296
A complete manual of judicial procedure — summons, evidence, witnesses, appeals — for church courts, which by then handled marriage, wills, and much else.
1301–1400
1 work
1368
Latin
Statuta Antiqua
The Carthusian Order
The consolidated law of the Carthusian order, codifying the customs of two and a half centuries into a single body of statutes.
1401–1500
1 work
1402
Latin
Jean Gerson · 1363–1429
Lectures on what makes an act sinful, on the binding force of human law, and on when a Christian's conscience may resist an ecclesiastical command.
1501–1600
4 works
25 June 1530
Latin
Philipp Melanchthon · 1497–1560
Twenty-eight articles presented to the emperor, stating what the evangelical churches teach and what abuses they have corrected, phrased as conservatively as honesty allowed.
28 January 1573
Latin
The Polish nobility
A sworn agreement among nobles of differing religions that they will not shed blood over faith, made a condition of every subsequent royal election.
1593–1597; later books posthumous
English
Richard Hooker · 1554–1600
A defence of the English church against Puritan critics, grounded in a doctrine of law running from eternal law through natural reason to human custom.
13 April 1598
French
Henry IV of France · 1553–1610
A settlement granting Huguenots freedom of conscience, limited public worship, civil equality, and fortified towns, after thirty-six years of religious war.
26 of 1577 works