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.
1300–1201 BC
1 work
c. 1300 BC
Akkadian
Ludlul bel nemeqi
Attributed to Shubshi-meshre-Shakkan
A nobleman loses office, health, friends, and standing, and can find no fault in himself. His diviners cannot read his case, his god has abandoned him, and what is good to a man is an abomination to his god — until three dreams bring a stranger who restores him.
1000–901 BC
1 work
c. 1000 BC
Akkadian
Saggil-kinam-ubbib
An acrostic dialogue in twenty-seven stanzas between a sufferer and his friend. The sufferer says the godless prosper and the pious starve; the friend defends the order of things; and by the end the friend concedes that the gods gave humanity crooked speech and lies from the beginning.
1–100
1 work
c. 100
Hebrew or Aramaic, surviving in Latin and Syriac
Anonymous
Seven visions in which Ezra, sitting in the ruins of Jerusalem, refuses to accept the angel's answers: why does God let the wicked prosper, why were so few made to be saved, and what use was a law that no one could keep. The consolations do not silence him.
301–400
1 work
388–395
Latin
De Libero Arbitrio
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
A dialogue on where evil comes from if God is good, answering that evil is not a substance but a turning of the will away from the greater good to a lesser one.
4 of 1774 works