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The Library

Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

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.

500–401 BC

The Fifth Century BC

1 work

c. 430 BC

Greek

The Histories

Herodotus of Halicarnassus · c. 484 – c. 425 BC

Nine books on how the Greeks and the Persians came to war, digressing constantly and to great profit: the whole of Egypt in book two, then Cyrus taking Babylon by diverting the river, Cambyses in Egypt, Darius organising the satrapies, and Xerxes at Thermopylae and Salamis.

Greco-Roman · HistoryEstherEzraNehemiahDanielIsaiah

301–400

The Fourth Century

2 works

337–345

Syriac

The Demonstrations

Aphrahat · c. 280–c. 345

Twenty-three treatises by the Persian Sage on faith, love, fasting, prayer, war, humility, and the sons of the covenant — written entirely outside the Greek theological world.

Syriac · TreatisesGenesisDaniel

c. 340–380 and later

Syriac

The Acts of the Persian Martyrs

Anonymous

Accounts of the great persecution under Shapur II, in which Christians were taxed at double rate as suspected partisans of Rome and their clergy killed when they refused to collect it. Simeon bar Sabbae is executed with a hundred of his clergy on the eve of Good Friday.

Church of the East · Martyr actsMatthewRevelationDanielRomans

501–600

The Sixth Century

2 works

c. 540–544

Syriac

The Synodical Canons

Mar Aba I · d. 552

Rulings by a convert from Zoroastrianism who became patriarch, chiefly on marriage law, forbidding the close-kin unions customary in Persian society.

Church of the East · Canon law

c. 575–582

Greek

The Histories

Agathias · c. 530 – c. 582

A continuation of Procopius by a working lawyer and poet, covering the last Gothic campaigns and the Persian war, and containing a long digression on Zoroastrian religion and Sasanian royal history drawn from the Persian archives.

Byzantine · HistoryDanielIsaiah

601–700

The Seventh Century

2 works

c. 628–638

Greek

The Histories

Theophylact Simocatta

The reign of Maurice and the Balkan and Persian wars, written in prose so mannered that later Byzantines used it as a style exercise. It opens with a dialogue in which Philosophy introduces History, and contains the earliest Western notice of the Turks and of China.

Byzantine · HistoryDanielRevelation

c. 660–680

Syriac

The Khuzistan Chronicle

Anonymous

A short Syriac chronicle covering the end of the Sasanian empire and the Arab conquest, written by a Christian in what is now south-western Iran.

Church of the East · Chronicle