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.
101–200
1 work
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
2 works
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. 250–300
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
2 works
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.
c. 400–450
Hebrew and Aramaic
The academies of Galilee
A verse-by-verse midrash on Genesis, reading the book as a set of openings rather than a narrative: why it begins with the second letter of the alphabet, what God consulted before making man, and repeated disputes with those who argue from in our image that there is more than one power in heaven.
401–500
2 works
c. 400–500
Hebrew and Aramaic
The academies of Galilee
Thirty-seven homiletic units on Leviticus, each built outward from a verse elsewhere in scripture and arriving at the reading by a long route. It is preaching rather than commentary, and much of it is about poverty, charity, and the body.
c. 500; edited into the following centuries
Hebrew and Aramaic
Talmud Bavli
The academies of Sura and Pumbedita
The Mishnah with centuries of Babylonian debate wrapped around it, digressing without warning from a rule about a lost ox into medicine, dream interpretation, biography, or a story about God losing an argument to a majority of rabbis.
501–600
1 work
c. 500–600
Hebrew and Aramaic
The academies of Galilee
Sermons for the festivals and the special sabbaths rather than for the weekly cycle, including a sequence of seven for the weeks of consolation after the fast of the ninth of Av, working through Isaiah's comfort ye, comfort ye my people.
701–800
1 work
c. 750–800
Hebrew
Anonymous
A retelling of Genesis and Exodus as continuous narrative rather than verse-by-verse comment, full of material found nowhere earlier: the ten trials of Abraham, Samael riding the serpent, the sun and moon quarrelling, and Ishmael's descendants as a kingdom of the writer's own day.
9 of 1774 works