Skip to content

The Library

Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

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.

301–400

The Fourth Century

1 work

c. 300–305

Greek

On the Mysteries of the Egyptians

De Mysteriis

Iamblichus of Chalcis · c. 245 – c. 325

An answer to Porphyry, who had asked why gods should need rites at all. Iamblichus replies that the soul cannot think its way up: it is joined to the divine by acts whose power lies in the acts themselves, not in the understanding of whoever performs them — names, stones, incense, and prayer.

Greco-Roman · Treatise1 CorinthiansActsColossiansRead elsewhere