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.
201–300
2 works
c. 200–204; survives complete only in Georgian
Greek, surviving in Georgian
Hippolytus of Rome · c. 170 – c. 235
A reading of the Song in which the bride is the church and the bridegroom the Word, breaking off at chapter three. The women at the tomb become the new Eve, sent to the apostles as apostles themselves.
c. 240; survives in part, in Latin
Greek, surviving in Latin
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Ten books on the Song, prefaced by a warning that no one should read it who is not already past the stirrings of the flesh. The bride is both the church and the individual soul, and the wound she carries is the arrow of love.
701–800
1 work
c. 711–716
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673 – 735
Seven books on the Song, opening with an attack on Julian of Eclanum for reading it as a wedding poem, and closing with an anthology of Gregory the Great on the same text assembled so that readers without a library could still have him.
901–1000
1 work
977
Armenian
Gregory of Narek · c. 950 – c. 1003
Written at twenty-seven at a king's request, reading the Song as the marriage of Christ and the church and defending, at length, the right to read a love poem as scripture at all.
4 of 1774 works