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
7 works
c. 140–160; survives in fragments
Greek
Valentinus · c. 100 – c. 175
Six or seven passages preserved by Clement and Hippolytus, plus a short poem in which the poet sees all things hanging on spirit and borne by it. One fragment describes the angels taking fright at Adam because the being they had made spoke greater things than they had put in him.
c. 140–180
Greek
Valentinus · c. 100–c. 160
Not a narrative but a meditation on forgetting and being found: error grows in ignorance of the Father until the Word appears and the names of the elect are read out of the living book.
c. 160
Greek
Ptolemy
A courteous letter to an enquiring woman dividing the law of Moses into three parts — from God, from Moses, and from the elders — and treating each differently.
c. 165–180; survives in fragments
Greek
Heracleon
Nearly fifty passages quoted by Origen, who set out to refute them and ended up preserving them. The Samaritan woman's five husbands are the senses; the royal official is the craftsman-god; the descent to Capernaum is a descent into matter.
c. 160–180
Greek
Excerpta ex Theodoto
Theodotus, compiled by Clement of Alexandria
Clement's working notes on the Eastern Valentinians, copied out with his objections sometimes attached and sometimes not, so that it is often unclear who is speaking. Includes the famous summary: knowledge of who we were, what we have become, where we were, where we have been thrown.
c. 150–200
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Letter to Rheginos
Anonymous
A short letter to a student worried about death, arguing that the resurrection is not a future event to be waited for but a present one already accomplished — flee the divisions and the fetters, and you have risen already.
c. 150–200
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
The Lord prepares James for his own martyrdom before and after the crucifixion, and teaches him the passwords for getting past the toll-collectors of the heavens: I am a son from the Father, and I go to what is mine.
201–300
2 works
c. 200–250
Greek, surviving in Coptic
Anonymous
The longest Valentinian text to survive, and the most systematic: a single Father rather than a pair, a fall caused by the Word's own excess of love rather than by Sophia's error, and a redemption in which even the material order is finally reconciled.
c. 250–300
Greek
Anonymous
A loose collection of sayings and reflections on the sacraments — baptism, chrism, eucharist, redemption, and the bridal chamber — rather than a narrative gospel.
9 of 1774 works