Common Ground
Book Timeline
Solid dot = book · hollow dot = historical event · tap a dot to jump to it
Before the Axial Age
before 800 BCE
c. 1500–1200 BCE
Rig Veda
Vedic tradition
The oldest Vedic hymns, kept by memory for centuries before anyone wrote them down.
The Axial Age
800–200 BCE
776 BCE (traditional date)
○ First Olympic Games
The traditional start of the ancient Greek games at Olympia.
c. 8th century BCE
The Iliad
Homer
Eight weeks of the Trojan War, built around the anger of Achilles.
Study guide →about 70 years later
c. 800–500 BCE (earliest)
The Upanishads
Vedic tradition
Philosophical dialogues on the self and ultimate reality, passed on orally before being written.
Study guide →about 60 years later
586 BCE
○ Babylon destroys Jerusalem
The First Temple falls and many Judeans are taken to Babylon.
c. 6th–5th century BCE (final form)
The Torah
Hebrew Bible
The five books of Moses, with traditions older than the form we have now, reaching final shape around the exile.
Study guide →539 BCE
○ Cyrus takes Babylon
The Persian king conquers Babylon and later lets the exiles return.
about 60 years later
479 BCE
○ Confucius dies
The teacher's students go on to collect his sayings.
458 BCE
The Oresteia
Aeschylus
Three Athenian tragedies in which a cycle of family revenge ends in a court of law.
Study guide →c. 441–406 BCE
Sophocles
The Theban plays
Athenian tragedies about Oedipus and his family.
Study guide →c. 405 BCE (staged after his death)
The Bacchae
Euripides
The god Dionysus comes to Thebes, is refused by its king, and takes his revenge.
Study guide →c. 5th–3rd century BCE
The Analects
Confucius and his students
Sayings and conversations of Confucius, gathered by his students.
Study guide →399 BCE
○ Socrates is put to death
Athens convicts him and he drinks hemlock.
c. 399–390 BCE
The Apology
Plato
Plato's account of Socrates defending himself at his trial.
Study guide →c. 380–360 BCE
The Phaedo
Plato
Socrates' last day: arguments that the soul survives death, and the cup of hemlock.
Study guide →c. 4th century BCE
Tao Te Ching
Attributed to Laozi
Eighty-one short chapters on the Tao and how to live with it.
Study guide →c. 335–322 BCE
The Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle
What a good human life is, and how character is made by habit.
Study guide →336–323 BCE
○ Alexander the Great's conquests
Greek rule and culture spread from Egypt to India.
about 70 years later
c. 260 BCE
○ Ashoka embraces Buddhism
The Mauryan emperor turns to Buddhism after a bloody war and promotes it widely.
c. 3rd century BCE
The Dhammapada
Buddhist tradition
A collection of short verses attributed to the Buddha.
Study guide →Rome and Late Antiquity
200 BCE–600 CE
c. 200 BCE–200 CE
Bhagavad Gita
Hindu tradition
Krishna advises Arjuna on duty and action on the eve of battle.
Study guide →about 150 years later
c. 55 BCE
On the Nature of Things
Lucretius
A Latin poem arguing that the world is made of atoms and that death is nothing to us.
Study guide →44 BCE
On Duties
Cicero
A Roman statesman's letter to his son on what a good person owes others.
Study guide →27 BCE
○ Augustus becomes the first Roman emperor
The Roman Republic gives way to the Empire.
29–19 BCE
The Aeneid
Virgil
Rome's founding epic, following Aeneas from burning Troy to Italy.
Study guide →c. 30–33 CE
○ Jesus is crucified
Executed by Roman authorities in Judea.
c. 62–65 CE
Letters from a Stoic
Seneca
Letters to a friend on how to live well, written near the end of Seneca's life.
Study guide →c. 50–110 CE
The New Testament
Christian tradition
Gospels, letters, and other early Christian writings.
Study guide →70 CE
○ Romans destroy the Second Temple
Jerusalem's Temple is destroyed during the Jewish revolt.
c. 100–135 CE
The Enchiridion
Epictetus, compiled by Arrian
A short handbook of Stoic practice from a former slave who taught philosophy in Greece.
Study guide →c. 2nd–3rd century CE
Gnostic texts
Nag Hammadi library
Early Christian-era writings found in Egypt in 1945.
Study guide →about 150 years later
325 CE
○ Council of Nicaea
Church leaders meet to settle disputes and set out a shared creed.
about 70 years later
c. 397–400 CE
The Confessions
Augustine of Hippo
A bishop tells God the story of his life, then asks what memory and time are.
Study guide →about 80 years later
476 CE
○ The Western Roman Empire ends
The last western emperor is deposed.
c. 524 CE
The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius
A condemned consul writes in prison on fortune, happiness and providence.
Study guide →The Medieval World
600–1500
610–632 CE, compiled c. 650
The Quran
Islamic tradition
Revealed to Muhammad over about twenty-two years, then gathered into one book.
Study guide →622 CE
○ The Hijra
Muhammad and his followers move from Mecca to Medina; year one of the Islamic calendar.
about 430 years later
1054 (traditional date)
○ East-West Schism
The Eastern and Western churches formally split.
about 250 years later
c. 1308–1314
Inferno
Dante
The first part of the Divine Comedy, Dante's descent through Hell.
Study guide →1347–1351
○ The Black Death
Plague kills a large share of Europe's people.
about 100 years later
c. 1450
○ Gutenberg's printing press
Movable-type printing makes books far cheaper to produce in Europe.
1492
○ Columbus's first voyage
Sustained contact between Europe and the Americas begins.
The Modern Era
1500–1900
1517
○ Luther's 95 Theses
The event usually marked as the start of the Protestant Reformation.
about 270 years later
1789
○ French Revolution
The monarchy is overthrown and France rewrites its government.
1843
Fear and Trembling
Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard on Abraham, faith, and the binding of Isaac.
1859
○ Darwin's On the Origin of Species
Evolution by natural selection is set out in print.
1886
Beyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche
Nietzsche's challenge to the moral assumptions of earlier philosophers.
The Twentieth Century
1900–2000
1914–1918
○ World War I
A global war centered on Europe.
1942
The Myth of Sisyphus
Camus
Camus on whether life is worth living when it has no given meaning.
1939–1945
○ World War II
A global war that ended with the Holocaust and the atomic bomb.
1949
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Joseph Campbell
Campbell's study of the hero's journey pattern across world myths.
1951–1966
Alan Watts's books
Alan Watts
Watts's popular books bringing Zen and Taoist ideas to Western readers.
recorded 1957–59, published 1962
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Carl Jung
Jung's autobiography, told largely through his inner life.
1964
Man and His Symbols
Carl Jung and colleagues
Jung's introduction to his ideas for general readers, finished by his colleagues.
filmed 1985–86, book 1988
The Power of Myth
Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
Campbell's conversations with Moyers on myth in modern life.
1989
○ The Berlin Wall falls
The Cold War division of Germany begins to end.
Dates are scholarly approximations. A range means the text took shape over that span. The Vedas and the Torah were passed on orally and written down much later than the dates shown.