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.
1–100
1 work
c. 50–70; reconstructed, no manuscript survives
Greek
Reconstructed
A collection of sayings of Jesus — beatitudes, woes, the Lord's Prayer, the mission charge, the coming judgement — with almost no narrative and no passion account. It exists only as a reconstruction from the material Matthew and Luke share against Mark.
101–200
2 works
c. 144; reconstructed from quotations
Greek
Marcion of Sinope · c. 85 – c. 160
One gospel and ten letters of Paul, with the Old Testament discarded entirely and everything Marcion judged to be Judaizing interpolation cut away. There is no nativity; the Lord simply appears at Capernaum in the fifteenth year of Tiberius.
c. 175–180; reconstructed from Origen
Greek
Alethes Logos
Celsus
The first sustained intellectual attack on Christianity, recoverable almost whole because Origen quoted it line by line to answer it. Jesus was a bastard fathered by a soldier and a magician trained in Egypt; God does not come down; the faith recruits wool-workers and cobblers who tell children to disobey their fathers.
3 of 1774 works