Hellinistic-judaic and ancient Christian historical works in the «Library» of Photius

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the work «Myriobiblion» by the Patriarch of Constantinople Photius (IX century), and specifically the proto-Christian works in it. These works played an important role in the formation of early Christian literature, standing at the junction of Judaism, ancient philosophy and Christianity. Through them the synthesis of Eastern and Western literary traditions was carried out. Photius' Myriobiblion attempts to integrate them into the cultural layer of Christian literature, despite the fact that the religious and philosophical views of their authors are often seriously different from Christian dogmas. Particular attention is paid to the hellenized Jew Joseph Flavius, whose works Photius devotes as many as 4 codes. A study of Photius's annotations shows that proto-Christian works, in general, were positively perceived in Christian society, they aroused interest primarily from the point of view of describing New Testament events «from the inside». However, there were still few such works, in «Miriobiblion» we counted only 7 such works out of 280.