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.
100–1 BC
1 work
c. 75–50 BC
Hebrew
1QpHab
Anonymous
Habakkuk read clause by clause as a coded prophecy of the writer's own generation. The Chaldeans are the Kittim, Rome; the wicked priest is a named contemporary; and God told Habakkuk to write but did not tell him when the end would come — that was revealed only to the Teacher of Righteousness.
1–100
2 works
c. AD 20–40
Greek
Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit
Philo of Alexandria · c. 20 BC – c. AD 50
On Abraham's question at the covenant of the pieces, expanding into an account of prophetic ecstasy — the mind setting when the divine light rises — and of the Word as the divider who cuts all things into their opposites.
c. AD 30–45
Greek
De Vita Mosis
Philo of Alexandria · c. 20 BC – c. AD 50
Two books making Moses king, lawgiver, priest, and prophet at once, written plainly enough for readers who had never opened the Pentateuch, and including the story of how the Seventy produced identical translations in separate cells.
101–200
8 works
c. 140; lost, known through references
Greek
Aristo of Pella
A Jewish Christian and an Alexandrian Jew dispute the messiah from the prophets, and the Jew asks for baptism at the end. Celsus read it and thought it deserved pity rather than hatred; Origen defended it.
c. 130–200
Greek or Latin
Anonymous
God rehearses everything he did for Israel in the wilderness and declares that the house is now to be given to a people coming from the east, closing with Ezra on Mount Zion watching a great multitude receive crowns from the Son of God.
c. 155–165
Greek
Justin Martyr · c. 100–165
A long, mostly civil debate with a Jewish interlocutor over whether the Hebrew scriptures point to Jesus, covering the law, the virgin of Isaiah, and the church's claim to be the true Israel.
c. 165–180; survives in fragments
Greek
Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla
About sixteen short sayings quoted by hostile writers. I am the Father and the Son and the Paraclete; man is a lyre and I fly over him like a plectrum; Christ came to Priscilla in the form of a woman and put wisdom into her; after me there will be no prophecy but the end.
c. 172–180; survives in fragments
Greek
Apollinaris of Hierapolis
An apology addressed to Marcus Aurelius, reporting the Thundering Legion whose prayers were said to have broken a drought on campaign, together with the first written attack on the new prophecy spreading through Phrygia.
c. 190
Greek
Epideixis
Irenaeus of Lyons · c. 130–c. 202
A short positive summary of the faith for a friend named Marcianus — creation, fall, incarnation, and the prophecies fulfilled — written without the polemic that fills Against Heresies.
c. 192; survives in fragments
Greek
Anonymous
A writer who says he hesitated for years before putting anything down describes Montanus falling into a frenzy and speaking in a way the tradition knew nothing of, and the two women who caught it from him — and notes that none of them has been proved a martyr.
c. 197; survives in fragments
Greek
Apollonius
An attack on the new prophecy that goes after its finances rather than its theology: Montanus paying salaries to preachers, Priscilla and Maximilla leaving their husbands, prophets who dye their hair, paint their eyelids, play dice, and lend at interest.
201–300
4 works
c. 200–204
Greek
Hippolytus of Rome · c. 170–c. 235
A systematic reading of Daniel and Revelation to establish who the antichrist will be, where he will come from, and how the faithful are to recognise the last days without panicking.
c. 239–242
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Twenty sermons taken down by shorthand writers as Origen preached at Caesarea, wrestling with a God who says he repents, who deceives the prophet, and who hands his own people over — and refusing every easy way out of the difficulty.
c. 242; survives in fragments
Middle Persian
Mani · 216–274 or 277
Mani's own summary of his religion, written in Persian and presented to the emperor Shapur I. It opens with the claim that wisdom has come down through Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus in turn, and has now come complete through the seal of the prophets.
c. 250–300
Greek or Latin
Anonymous
Two chapters of unrelieved threat against the nations — Babylon, Asia, Egypt, Syria — written for Christians under persecution and promising that the sword will come, that mothers will be widowed and their houses given to others, and that the elect are to hold on and not fear.
301–400
1 work
c. 314–324; ten of twenty books survive
Greek
Demonstratio Evangelica
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260 – c. 340
The companion to the Preparation, and the harder half: having shown why Christians abandoned Greek religion, Eusebius now has to show why they kept the Jewish scriptures while refusing the Jewish law. The answer runs through the prophets text by text, arguing that the patriarchs lived by a religion older than the law and that Christians have returned to it.
401–500
2 works
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.
c. 445–450
Latin
Quodvultdeus · d. c. 454
Written in exile at Naples by the bishop of Carthage, expelled when the Vandals took the city. It runs through scripture as a series of promises made and kept, and reads the catastrophe that has just happened to his own church as one more chapter rather than as the end.
601–700
1 work
c. 690–692
Syriac
Anonymous
A prophecy written under the name of a fourth-century martyr, explaining the Arab conquest as a divinely permitted scourge and foretelling a Last Roman Emperor who will surrender his crown at Jerusalem.
1101–1200
3 works
c. 1146–1179
Latin
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
Nearly four hundred letters to popes, emperors, abbots, and ordinary people, rebuking Frederick Barbarossa and defending her nuns' right to bury an excommunicate.
c. 1183–1200
Latin
Liber de Concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti
Joachim of Fiore · c. 1135–1202
A system of correspondences between the two testaments yielding three ages of history — of the Father, the Son, and a coming age of the Spirit in which the church will be renewed.
c. 1196–1199
Latin
Joachim of Fiore · c. 1135–1202
Revelation read as a map of church history in seven ages, with the present standing just before the final crisis and the renewal that follows it.
22 of 1774 works