Sibylline oracles (Hastings' Dictionary)

Thecollection of Jewish and Christian poems which pass under the name of the Sibyl covers in its time of production a eriod of many centuries, reaching back into at east the 2nd cent. B.c., and coming down (when its latest developments are included) far into the Middle Ages.

hen we take further into account that, even in its first Jewish and Christian forms, Sibyllism was merely an attempt to transplant a feature of literature that was centuries old, and already effete in the pagan world, it will be seen that it constitutes a very important element in historical theology, and one which has had every influence upon the mind of man that could be secured for it by the exercise of authority (operat- ing through the State as in Roman life, or through great names as in the case of the Christian Church), supported as that authority was by the natural love of the secret and mysterious which charac- terizes the major part of men in all periods of human history.

The original Sibyl is very nearly the equivalent of ‘prophetess’ in the Gr. and Rom. world; the derivation of her name from an assumed com- bination of Zés (for Geds) and BovdAy (in a form BuAdd) goes back to Varro (cf. Lact. Div. Inst. i.

6); and, although it may be (and probably is) invalid philologically, it is sufficient evidence of the character assigned to the persons known as Sibyls, who had the knowledge (as it was pega) of the Divine will in the fatalistie sense, and were in the habit of recording the fiats of that Divine will in various oracular and prophetic ways.

Accordingly, they could be consulted, either in some special antrum or grotto, or through an inspection of such prophecies as they had com- mitted to writing. Now, according to the ancients, there were a number of such Sibyls, known some- times by actual names, and sometimes by the places where they prophesied, as the Chaldzan, . i: atl etiantie ee SIBYLLINE ORACLES Erythrean, Delphic, ete.

But for practical pur- oses the one that exercised the commanding in- uence over the Christian Church to which we have alluded above is the Cumean Sibyl. It is necessary to bear in mind that this commanding influence is merely a case of survival from the Roman State religion. And the question for the student of the Sib. Oracles as we have them extant, is as to the extent of the survival.

It can be tested under the heads of (1) the language, (2) the form, (3) the matter of the ancient and the more modern oracles. The Rom.

tradition affirmed that these oracles had originally been offered by a certain Sibyl to a certain Roman king (say Tarquinius Superbus), but at an excessive price ; the price being refused, she departed and destroyed a certain part of her books, and returned to offer the remainder at the original price; and, after this process had been “6 pela a certain number of times, the king was sufficiently interested to buy the remainder, which thus became in the Roman government a State deposit of information concerning the future, placed under the control of the augurs or viri quindecemvirales, and to be consulted in time of exigency.

ere is no need to spend time in criticising the details of such a story, which is merely an attempt to find a venerable origin for a Roman practice ; for it is certain that the Roman govern- ment had such books of Sib. oracles, which they from time to time augmented or retrenched by various editorial processes. What is important to remember is—(i. ) that these oracles were for the most part, perhaps wholly, in Greek; (ii.)

that they were in hexameter verse, probably with the literary devices of alphabetic and acrostic writing; (iii.) that they were concerned inter alia with the fortunes of the werld at large and of the empire, the ages of the universe, and the collapse and rejuvenescence thereof. The first of these points, and, in part, the second, may best be illustrated by references to an actual oracle which has come down to us, preserved by Phlegon, de Mirabdil. c.

10, apparently from a Roman writer, Sextus Carminius, and dated in the year A.V.C. 629 (=B.C. 124). It relates to the birth of a hermaphrodite, which the oracle alludes to in the words— kal rol wore dnpl yuvaixa *"Avipbyuvov réEeoOax Exovrd wep’ Epoeva mavra Nyrlaxat 0’ 80a Ondtrepar palvovor yuvaixes. Obviously, the oracle was made to suit the portent, and it was composed in hexameters.

At this time, then, we know the method of formation of the oracles, and that the collection was subject to accretion or modification. They were written, as all later oracles and books of oracles, in the religious metre and language of Homer. Moreover, on ex- amination it will be found that the oracle is acrostie, and apparently based upon an earlier acrostic which has been used, which was itself metrical.

The books were therefore treated as sortes by the augurs, but handled with freedom in secret so as to adjust the prophecies to the needs of the time. That they contained some scheme of the ages of the world and of the droxardoracis rdvrwy, is clear from Virgil’s ‘Ultima Cumzi venit iam carminis etas ; Magnus ab integro seclorum nascitur ordo.’ (clog. iv. 4), and a number of similar considerations. All of these features are abundantly illustrated in the Jewish and Christian Sib. books.

It was necessary that they should be if the world was to swallow the literary deception that was being practised upon it. SIBYLLINE ORACLES 67 It must not be supposed that such a gigantic and long-continued fraud could have been carried on without meeting with criticism from a people as acute and polished as the Greeks.

hile it is certain that almost all the Fathers of the Church were firm believers in the inspiration of the Sibyls (for we need not doubt the honesty of Justin and Clement, of Tertullian, of Lactantius, and a host of others, though it is equally clear that the deceived must have been near of in to the deceivers), it was not possible that such keen wits as Lucian and Celsus should come under the spell.

They saw at once that the Christians were making oracles to suit their own propaganda, and were quick to proclaim the fact; and Lucian, in particular, himself turned Sibyllist in order to tell in mock heroics the fortunes of Peregrinus and of Alexander of Abonoteichos. This extant criticism and ridi- cule must have been widely extended. We can trace from the successive Sibyllists themselves the objections which they had to meet.

One, of necessity, was the dependence of the Sibyl upon Homer, for Sibyllism is closely related to Centoism, and borrows lines and expressions freely from Homer. It was necessary, therefore, for the assumed Sibyl to explain that the borrowing was really on the side of that thief Homer.

Accord- ingly, the Sibyl] herself attacks the supposed later poet in the following lines— kal tis Wevdoypados epéoBus Bpords ocera abris pevddrarpis’ Soe 5¢ pdos év dmqow énow coe éxéwy yap éuav pérpwv TE Kpartioet, j (Orac. Sib. iii. 419 ff.) ; and this judgment is endorsed by Tatian, who in his tract Against the Greeks, § 41, maintains the superior date of the Sibyl to Homer.

A closer examination, however, of the oracles reveals that Homer is not the only writer pilfered; there is a constant coincidence with fragments of Orphic hymns, which would certainly be much more pro- nounced if we were not limited in our comparison to the few fragments that have been conserved of this branch DF literature: Now, it is worth noticin that Clement of Alexandria (the best read of all the early Fathers in the matter of Greek literature) expressly declares that the Sibyl is earlier than Orpheus; while, to quote another author of nearly the same date, Tertullian will have it that the Sibyl] is older than al/ other literature (cf.

Tert. adv. Nationes, ii. 12). It is clear from these testimonies that there had been from the first a critical dispute over the antiquity of the supposed Sibylline verses ; at all events, the anti-Homeric strain in the Siby! which we have quoted above occurs in verses which Alexandre assigns to the time of Antoninus Pius, and the writers who endorse the sentiment belong very nearly to the same period.

And before this time there must have been an active Sibylline propaganda carried on by the early Christians, most of whom were deceived and some of them deceivers. Something of a similar kind to this contest between Homer and the Sibyl and Orpheus and the Sibyl for priority, appears to have taken place at a later date in regard to Virgil. ‘We have alread ointed out that the acquaintance of Virgil with ibylline oracles may be assumed.

It does not follow that these oracles have anything to do with the extant collection ; rather they seem to be the Roman collection, which Virgil must have known by report, and } apa by actual study of published or unpublishe ook oe Now it has been shown by Dechent (Ueber das erste, zweite und elfte Buch ae Sib. Weissagungen, 1873) that the eleventh book of the Oracles has coincidences of language with Virgil.

The Siby) describes, for example, 68 SIBYLLINE ORACLES SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH the flight of Aineas from Troy in ll. 144 ff., which | Bk. qi. IL 480-Sn., by Obristian bande te tae ee begin— dpke 8 éx yevefs re kal aiuaros ’AcoapdKovo mats KAuTOs Npwwv, Kparepds Te Kal dAKiwos avhp, which may be compared with ‘Romulus, Assaraci quem sanguinis [ia mater Educet’ (Virg. dn. vi. 779).

After describing the person and fortunes of Aineas, the writer proceeds to explain that her verses will be stolen by a later poet, much in the same language as we noted in Bk. iii. for Homer— kal ris rpécBus dvhp codds éooerat abris dodds Totow emote. Aoyous pérpors éréeoor Kparioas® avtds yap, mpwricros éuas BiBous dvamhwdoet kal epee wera Taira. But here we must, in view of the coincidences in language between the Sibyl and the #neid, under- stand Virgil and not Homer as the supposed thief.

Obviously, the Sibyllist, who is so anxious to be prior to Virgil, must have written a good while after Virgil, as is also shown by the reference to Virgil as hiding the oracles. Alexandre refers this part of the oracles to the year A.D.

267; and it is interesting to observe that, not long after that date, the emperor Constantine in his oration to the Nicene Fathers invokes the authority of the Sibyl, and suggests the dependence of Virgil upon her writings, quoting Virgil for convenience in a Greek rendering. It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that the question of relative priority between Virgil and the Sibyl belongs to this period of time.

It is to be noted, however, that the earliest of all the books of oracles does not seem to have encoun- tered any such hostile reception. Parts of what is now edited as the third book, Il. 97-294, 491-fin., are assigned by Alexandre to the year 166 B.c.

It is not decided whether the production of these verses was due to some active inquiry which was being made at the time after extant oracles, which search might easily have led to the fabrication of them y some learned Alexandrian Jew, or whether it is only one more example, to be added to many belonging to this time, of the transference of the text of the LXX into Gr. verse.

Whatever may be the reason, it is certain that the versified story of the destruction of the tower of Babel, with the poetic ge pa that it was accomplished by the agency of mighty winds, was accepted as a fresh historical authority by contemporaries (A bydenus, Polyhistor, and, following them, Josephus), and as confirming the accuracy of the biblical record from which it is derived, by Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius.

So that it does not appear that the earliest Jewish portions of the Sibylline books rovoked the same hostility as those which are ater and definitely Christian. They appear to have met with an unquestioning acceptance. It will be convenient to set down here the dates which have been assigned to the extant books. Our first scheme is that of Alexandre, whose Hacursus ad Sibyllinos Libros is the store- house of material for all who wish to have a thorough knowledge of the esubject.

According to him— Bk. iii. ll. 97-294 and 489-fin. is a Jewish work, written in Egypt in the year 166 or 165 B.o, BE. iv., the oldest of the Christian Sibyllines, was written in Asia in the 1st cent. a.D. under Titus or Domitian. The Prowmimn to the collection (a fragment preserved by Theophilus of Antioch) and Bk. viii. ll. 217-429, are probably by the same Christian hand, and written in the beginning of the 2nd cent. under Trajan or Hadrian. Bk. viii. ll.

1-217, written by a Christian of a millenarian type, in Egypt in the reign of Antoninus Pius. Bk. iii. ll. 295-48$ and Bk. v. are Judxo-Christian, and were written in Egypt in the reign of Antoninus Pius. Bks. vi. and vii. are Christian (? heretical), and written in the regn of Alexander Severus, about a.p. 234. rd cent. Bks. i. ii. and iii. Il. 1-96, by Christian hands, in Asia in the middle of the 8rd cent. Bks. xi. xii. xiii. xiv., Judwo-Christian, written in Egypt about the year 267 A.D.

With this scheme of Alexandre may be compared that pro- pounded by Ewald. According to Ewald (Abhandlung uber Entstehung Inhalt und Werth der Sib. Bucher, Gottingen, 1858) we have— Bk. iii. ll. 97-828, about B.o. 124. Bk. iv., about A.D. 80. Bk. v. ll. 52-580, about a.p. 80. Bks. v. ll. 1-51, vi. vii., in A.D. 188 Bk, viii. ll. 1-360, about A.D. 211. (Bk. viii. Il. 361-500, Ewald declares to be non-Sibylline.) Bks. i. ii. iii, 11. 1-96, about a.D. 300. Bks. xi. xii. xiii. xiv.

, much later; Ewald imagines references te the emperor Odenatus and to the rise of Islam | Further discussions of dates of the whole or parts of the different books may be found in Friedlieb, Orac. Sibyl. (Leipzig, 1852), or Bleek (Theol. Zeitschrift, Berlin, 1819), or Dechent (see above). The different judgments arrived at by these writers would probably be rectified by a closer study of the whole body of Sibylline literature.

So far, the best guide is Alexandre, whose Hacursus is a monument of patiently accumulated facts,