33 works across 28 centuries, back to Iliad and Odyssey.
Following one thread, 5 works from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to The Hebrew Bible. Back to all 33 works
1997
J. K. Rowling
Late 20th century. Britain. Written in English.
An orphan raised by cruel relatives learns at eleven that he is a wizard and enters Hogwarts, a boarding school for magic, where he and two friends uncover a plot to steal an alchemical stone that grants immortality. It joins the British boarding-school story to the English children's fantasy tradition and sets the plot up as a clue-planted mystery.
1950
C. S. Lewis
Mid-20th century. England. Written in English.
Four children evacuated from London pass through a wardrobe into Narnia, where the lion Aslan dies and rises again to break the White Witch's winter.
Thematic kinship, probable.
Rowling has said she loved the Narnia books as a child. Like the wardrobe, the barrier at King's Cross is a hidden doorway from wartime or suburban drabness into a magical world where a child has a destined part in the struggle against an evil power.
c. 70 (Mark)
Anonymous (attributed to Mark, Matthew, Luke, John)
Early Roman Empire. Roman Palestine and eastern Mediterranean. Written in Koine Greek.
Four accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, centred on a sacrificial death for others.
Direct source, well documented.
Aslan's surrender to the Witch in place of the traitor Edmund, his mocking and killing on the Stone Table and his return at dawn retell the Passion and Resurrection. Lewis described Narnia as imagining how Christ might appear in another world.
Thematic kinship, probable.
Hughes wrote as a Christian Socialist, and the Gospel ethic of sacrifice and courage drives the book's moral turn. The scene where the frail George Arthur kneels to pray in a dormitory of jeering boys, and Tom then defends him, is built on New Testament teaching.
c. 250 BCE (Torah)
Anonymous
Hellenistic. Ptolemaic Alexandria. Written in Koine Greek.
Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures made for the Jewish community of Alexandria.
Direct source, well documented.
The Gospel writers quote the Hebrew scriptures mostly in the Greek of the Septuagint. Their accounts of Jesus are framed as fulfilment of those quoted prophecies.
c. 500 BCE (major compilation)
Anonymous
Iron Age to Persian period. Judah and Babylonian exile. Written in Hebrew.
Scriptures of ancient Israel, including the Torah, prophets such as Isaiah with its suffering servant, and wisdom writings.
Direct source, well documented.
The Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, beginning with the Torah, made for Alexandrian Jews who no longer read Hebrew.
This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.
