William J. Deane · 13 of 16

The Sibylline Oracles. · Part 2

The book closes, as we have seen above, with an epilogue containing an account of the Sibyl’s origin, and asserting her claim to inspiration. In this composition we see the object of the writer very plainly. He employs the popularity enjoyed by the “Oracles” to enforce his own views, presenting the history of his own people up to Noah’s time as a past record, and narrating subsequent events in the form of prophecy, the rôle of antiquity being thus well maintained, and his own age virtually asserted. He sets before the Gentiles a high ideal, showing them to what they ought to aspire, and warning them that they can hope to attain this position only by favouring and supporting the chosen people, and following their bright example. And he recalls the Hebrews, especially those dwelling in foreign countries, to the observation of the law, and to the remembrance of Messianic hopes which are now approaching fulfilment. It is just possible that Virgil, in his description of the golden age, may have reproduced some of the ideas which had emanated from the Sibyl, whose verses may have been carried to Rome by the commissioners who were sent to seek for Sibylline books in Egypt, and that he alludes to our poet when he says (Ecl. iv. 4): “Ultima Cumæi venit jam carminis ætas.” The second section of this book is almost wholly occupied with denunciations of judgments and calamities upon nations more or less hostile to Israel. Babylon shall suffer heavily for her offences against the holy people; Egypt shall be pierced with the sword “in the seventh generation of kings,” and then shall rest in peace; Gog and Magog, whose unknown country lies between the Ethiopian rivers, shall be stained with blood; for Libya and western lands a bitter time is approaching. Nor shall signs of the coming calamities be wanting; comets, plagues, famines, wars, earthquakes, shall herald the fate of these nations. Proclamations of woes on particular towns and countries follow. Rome shall have to restore to Asia the wealth which she plundered. Then we have the paronomasias:

ἔσται καί Σάμος ἄμμος, ἐσεῖται Δῆλος ἄδηλος, καὶ Ῥώμη ῥύμη.

After these tribulations peace shall ensue in Asia and Europe, and a time of Messianic prosperity. Then the Sibyl turns again to gloomy vaticinations, and utters oracles concerning Antiochus Epiphanes, “a man clad in purple, barbarous, iniquitous, fiery,” and his successors; she speaks of Phrygia, Troy, Lydia, Cyprus, Italy, and other countries, taking occasion to inveigh against Homer as a writer of lies (ψευδογράφος), one who plagiarised from Sibyl’s oracles, and falsified what he borrowed. The section ends with announcing the destruction of Carthage and Corinth.

The book next in age to the preceding one is the fourth, the production of a Jew or a semi-Judaising Christian, composed after the fall of Jerusalem under Titus or Domitian. The date is fixed by two allusions in the poem: first, the destruction of Jerusalem (vers. 115–127); and next; the mention of the eruption of Vesuvius (A.D. 79) as a recent calamity, and the precursor of Divine vengeance on the destroyer of the Jewish nation. “When from the cloven rocks of Italy, a fire returning shall blaze unto the broad heaven, and shall burn up many cities, and destroy the lives of men, filling the vast air with flaming ashes, and drops of. bloody hue shall fall from heaven, then shall men know the wrath of God for that they slew the guiltless race of the pious” (vers. 130–136). Prophecies of this calamity were prevalent among the heathen. Plutarch twice alleges a supposed Sibylline oracle on the subject, which speaks of the overthrow of Cumae and Dicaearchia, i.e. Puteoli, by fire from the Besbian mountain. And the astonishment with which the news of it was received, and the effect upon men’s minds, may be gathered from the accounts which have come down to us. Dio Cassius asserts that the ashes reached even Syria and Egypt. To the Jews, suffering from their late disasters, and prone to look for God’s interposition in their behalf, the calamity seemed to be a well-deserved judgment on their conquerors, and a sign of the punishment which was to subdue the enemy, and re-establish their own fallen state. The supposed Christian origin of the book is inferred from certain allusions contained in it; but these are very far from being decisive. Thus the saying of grace before meals is (vers. 25 f.) noticed as a special mark of the pious, and the turning with horror from temples which flow with the blood of sacrifices. But the grace at meals was a special rabbinic practice, and the animal sacrifices referred to may be those offered by heathens. And if the author praises the people for being averse from unlawful and usurious gain, he is not necessarily alluding to Christians, but rather applauding the ideal Hebrew, however inappropriately to what we know of their actual character. We find also a seeming reference to the total immersion practised by the early Christians in the rite of baptism. “Ah! wretched mortals, lay down your swords; away with groans, and murder, and violence, and wash your whole bodies in the perennial waters, and raising your hands on high, ask pardon for past sins” (vers. 161 ff.). but this may just as well be said of the proselyte baptism practised by the Jews. In another passage the reproaches heaped on the pious are just such as are complained of in the apologetic writings of the Christians, whom their traducers “attack with derision and calumny, attributing their own evil deeds to the holy worshippers of God” (vers. 37 ff.). This, again, is too vague to determine the question either way. An epilogue about the condition of men after the judgment was thought to be sufficiently orthodox and in accordance with Christian notions to be transferred bodily to the Apostolical Constitutions, where it will be found in Book v. chap. 7. The episode there is indeed somewhat longer than that contained in the MSS. of the Sibyllines, and the editors of the latter have added the verses thus preserved to their editions, judging rightly that there is sufficient authority for the insertion.

There are some points of great interest in this book. Let us glance at the contents. Commencing with an address to the nations of Europe and Asia, the Sibyl claims direct inspiration from the true God, whose attributes are finely expressed; and, in opposition to the false oracles of Apollo, she professes to be able to narrate events from the first to the tenth generation; which, in Sibylline utterance, is always the last. Before doing this she digresses into the praise of those who serve the great God and bless Him before they eat or drink, and offer no bloody sacrifices, living honestly and chastely, the laughing-stock indeed of evil men, but approved of the Lord, who shall punish the mockers at the judgment, separating the righteous from the wicked. The allusion, as we have already noticed, is not necessarily to the Christians, and the passage is remarkable as, like one above mentioned, offering no support to millennial opinions, or to the notion of a first resurrection which prevailed among some of the Jews of this period. The view here entertained is (like that enunciated in the Ascension of Isaiah, etc.) rather that of an universal judgment to be followed immediately by the felicity of the righteous. This happy reward is to be received on earth and enjoyed in the body; that a resurrection is to precede it seems to be implied. There is no mention of Christ in this account of the last days, which is inconceivable if the book is written by a Christian. But all such speculations, not based altogether on revelation, are necessarily vague, and often contradictory. After this reference to the great consummation, the Sibyl proceeds to notice six generations of Assyrian kings, commencing from the time of the Flood, followed by two of Median origin, and one each of Persian and Macedonian, the last ushering in the Roman dominion. We are told of a battle between the Medes and Persians at the Euphrates, which resulted in the victory of the latter; of the Trojan war, when “boastful Greece” brought ruin on the fields of Phrygia; of a famine in Egypt of twenty years’ duration, the Nile withholding its crop-nourishing waters; of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, with its disastrous termination; of eruptions of Ætna, and earthquakes in Italy, in one of which Croton was destroyed; of the war which raged in Peloponnesus; and of the destiny of many other nations, the verses concerning which seem to be remnants of old heathen oracles, and are curious if not instructive.

The allusion to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple gives occasion for the earliest notice of the legend concerning Nero, which was at one time so widely prevalent. According to this notion, Nero did not commit suicide on hearing of the proclamation of Galba and the desertion of the army, but escaped secretly to the East, and will return some day, enacting the part of Antichrist, and making havoc of the Church. Mention of impostors who assumed to be Nero is found also among the heathen writers who have treated of this period—Suetonius, Tacitus, and others. The cruel persecution of the Christians under this emperor led them to look upon him as the type of the great enemy of the gospel whose advent they expected in the last days. Many have fancied that St. Paul referred to Nero in speaking of “that Wicked one” who was to be revealed in time (2 Thess. ii.). Indeed, so intense was the hatred of Nero, entertained alike by Jews and Christians, that no evil was too monstrous to be assigned to him—the former regarding him as virtually the destroyer of their city and polity, the latter finding in him all the attributes of the great enemy of God and man, whose appearance they were led to expect. The near approach of the final consummation was supposed to be heralded by the eruption of Vesuvius, which was regarded as an instance of Divine vengeance, and was to be followed by the return of “the exile from Rome, who should come from the far Euphrates, wielding his mighty sword, attended by myriads of soldiers.” Other signs of the times are the demolition of Salamis and Paphos by an earthquake, which visited Cyprus A.D. 71, and which is mentioned by other authors, the destruction of Antioch, and the restitution to Asia of the wealth which Rome had plundered from her. This last event was the subject of a common expectation at that time, seized upon with avidity by the Jews out of their hatred for their conquerors. Zactantius (vii. 15) expresses the general feeling or hope when he says: “The Roman name, which now is supreme in all the world, shall be utterly abolished, the empire shall return to Asia, and once again the East shall bear rule.” Tacitus tells (Hist. v. 13) how an impression had prevailed that in certain sacred writings it had been foretold that at this time the East should gain the mastery, and that Judaea should send forth conquering princes. In view of these coming occurrences the Sibyl, as we have seen, urges all men to repent and be baptized, for God was about to destroy the world and its inhabitants with fire. The book ends with the following paragraph, which is worth quoting, as showing the belief of a Jew or a semi-Christian in the latter half of the first century: “But when all things shall be reduced to dust and ashes, and God shall have put to sleep the awful fire which He kindled, He will again change the bones and dust of men, and make them such as once they were. And then shall be the judgment; and God Himself shall judge the world again; and those who have done iniquity, them the earth shall cover with its heaps, and the depths of darksome Tartarus and Stygian Gehenna. But the pious shall live again in the world (κόσμον), enjoying the incorruptible happiness of the immortal God, who shall give them spirit, life, and grace. And all shall see each other, looking on the sweet, joyous light of the sun. How blessed is he who shall live in that time!”

Belonging to the same period as the fourth book, or a little later, is the fifth, a few verses possibly being interpolated at the beginning. This is partly the work of an Alexandrian Jew, and seems to have been written, like other productions of the Alexandrian school, in order to introduce among the Gentiles Jewish ideas concerning monotheism and Messianic hopes. But there are some items which are clearly of Christian origin, as the one quoted further on identifying Jesus with Joshua. The writer of some passages appears to have had some acquaintance with the Revelation of St. John, and may possibly have been a renegade catechumen, and the same person who composed the interpolations in the third book, showing such implacable hatred to Rome on, account of her treatment of the holy people. The frequent references to Egypt and Alexandria sufficiently prove the birthplace of this poem; and the statements concerning the Roman emperors, down to the time of the Antonines, indicate its date. The writer, who calls herself the sister of Isis, deals largely with history, beginning with Rome, and passing thence to other kingdoms and lands, and concludes with a description of a war among the signs of the Zodiac, during which stars shall fall from heaven, and shall cause the total conflagration of the world. The Roman emperors, from Julius Caesar to Hadrian, are indicated by the value of the numbers, which in the Greek the initials of their names afford. Thus, J. Caesar is he whose name shall begin with “twice ten” (K), Augustus he who has the first of letters (A), Tiberius he whose initial is three hundred (T), and so on. Hadrian is not designated by his number; he is called “the man of the silver head, who has the name of a sea.” After him are to follow three Antonines. This concludes the oracular utterances respecting Rome. The rest of the book concerns itself with the affairs in Egypt, Judaea, and some other countries, comprising doubtless many ancient oracles once extant. Some few points in the historical allusions are worthy of mention. Thus here and elsewhere mention is made of the conquest of the Persians and Medes, and the destruction of Babylon by Tiberius,—events which history has failed to record, and which belong to that affectation of universal dominion which was the product of the early Roman empire. Of course at this period the ancient Babylon was a shapeless ruin, which sheltered a few miserable Jews and natives, who contended with the wild beasts of the desert for a home in this desolate region. The connection of the Romans with this place was very slight. When L. Vitellius had the command in Syria, he took part in a civil war among the Parthians, and on one occasion led his forces to the Euphrates, and for a short time occupied the site of Babylon. This proceeding was magnified by rumour; and becoming in the course of time confused with Trajan’s expeditions to the East, and the capture of Seleucia and Ctesiphon in the days of M. Aurelius Antoninus and L. Verus, it was regarded as Rome’s great victory over the far-famed capital of Chaldaea. The expectation of Nero’s return, as the superhuman enemy of God, crops up again in this book. He is to come from Persia and overrun Egypt (vers. 92 ff.); but, daring to attack the sacred city, shall be overthrown by a mighty king sent from heaven, and then shall ensue the universal judgment. Nero appears, too, as the devastator of Greece; and some of his prominent crimes are mentioned with abhorrence. When he flees from Rome, he is said “to leave Babylon,” this name being often given to Rome in the Sibylline Oracles—a fact which may help expositors of 1 Peter and the Revelation. After the destruction of the Holy Temple, and when this Adversary shall have reigned three years, a star shall fall from heaven and dry up the sea, and consume “Babylon” itself and the land of Italy. Here there is evidently some acquaintance with Christian apocalyptic literature, though the knowledge is dim and imperfect. The writer’s hatred of the Roman name has led him to attribute unheard-of atrocities to the Antonines. Beliar, Antichrist, or Nero redivivus, who will have such power as was never before given unto man, will overthrow the three princes that spring from Hadrian, and compel them not only to slay one another, but even to eat one another’s flesh, so that the sons make a banquet of the father’s limbs (vers. 220 ff.). Most of the so-called Oracles are saved from gross error by being confined to events that had already happened, but this was really a prediction, and was not warranted by the event; but it is curiously paralleled by a statement in the Fourth Book of Esdras xii. 21 ff., which Alexandre supposes to refer to these times: “And whereas thou sawest three heads resting, this is the interpretation: In his last days shall the Most High raise up three kings, and they shall renew many things therein, and they shall have dominion of the earth and of those that dwell therein, with much oppression, above all those that were before them, therefore are they called the heads of the eagle. And whereas thou sawest that the great head appeared no more, it signifieth that one of them shall die upon his bed, and yet with pain. For the two that remain shall be slain with the sword. For the sword of the one shall devour the other; but at the last shall he fall through the sword himself.” In connection with the oracle against Rome, occur a few lines dooming Gauls and Britons to destruction (vers. 199 ff.) for taking part in the ruin of Jerusalem. Vespasian, it seems, summoned a Gallic legion from Syria to act against the Jews, and thus gave occasion for the Sibyl’s invective, which includes the destruction of Ravenna as being the port whence the expedition sailed. Such reckless assertions, resting on no basis of fact, are very usual with this poet. Thus, to vilify the conqueror of Jerusalem, he states that Titus dethroned his father (ver. 39); in another place (vers. 227 ff.) he thus inveighs against Rome: “Unstable and of evil counsel, and by evil fate begirt, beginning of sorrows to men and alike their end, while nature by thee is now outraged, now preserved, teeming with evil and misery, who ever longed for thee? Who did not burn with wrath against thee? What fallen king ever died in thee an honourable death? Ill hast thou everything disposed; thou hast brought in a flood of wickedness; by thee the fair frame of the earth is changed.” Contrasted with the iniquity and consequent destruction of Rome is the predicted prosperity of Zion. When Persia is at peace, and war shall no longer be found in her borders, the holy race of Jews shall once more arise superior to their enemies. Here follows a passage (vers. 255 ff.) which seems of Christian origin: “Now a certain excellent man shall come again from heaven, who spread forth his hands upon the very fruitful tree, the best of the Hebrews, who once made the sun stand still, speaking with beauteous words and pure lips.” There is here evidently an allusion to the crucifixion of our Blessed Lord, which reminds one of the Catholic hymn, where the cross is spoken of as a tree—“flore, fronde fertilis,” and the lines in the “Lustra Sex”:—

Crux fidelis, inter omnes Arbor una nobilis, Silva tamen nulla profert Fronde, flore, germine; Dulce ferrum, dulce lignum, Dulce pondus sustinent.

The identification of Christ with Joshua is a mixture of Jewish and Christian legend which is unique. It is no question of symbolism here, as Joshua in Christian writings is treated as a type of Christ, but rather the confusion is such as might be made by an ignorant person reading Heb. iv. 8, “if Jesus had given them rest,” and concluding that Jesus Christ led the Jews into Canaan. The author, indeed, identifies himself with the Jews, as where he prays (vers. 327 ff.): “Spare Judaea, Almighty Father, that we may see Thy judgments;” and were it credible that the whole book was the work of one author, we should regard his religion as syncretic, and in full accord neither with law nor gospel. But the book, as we have said, is of composite character, containing heterogeneous elements. One writer may have been a Christian, another filches occasionally from Christian sources, but has no lively faith in Christ; like many of his countrymen at this time, he suspends his judgment, and instead of making a decision expends his energies in denunciations of the hated power of Rome, and in speculations concerning the future. We need not recount these various predictions, which are of similar character throughout, and have no historical value. They. commonly introduce the victories and overthrow of Antichrist, or the Adversary, and contrast them with the prosperity of Israel under the Messiah. The author in the case of the latter subject is generally, but not invariably, in agreement with Revelation. He speaks of the New Jerusalem which Messiah shall build, a city, brighter than sun, and moon, and stars; but, in opposition to those who gave a spiritual interpretation, to such predictions, he places therein a temple, ἔνσαρκον, corporeal, material, whereas St. John says (Rev. xxi. 22) he saw no temple there. He proclaims the extinction of the two great luminaries in the heavens, but, apparently, not at the same time. When the moon’s light is quenched an universal war shall ensue, which shall be specially localised in Macedonia, where the Adversary shall overthrow the Antonines, and, returning thence, shall waste Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, Judaea alone being left at peace. When the sun shall set, never more to rise, the whole world shall lie in darkness, except the land of Israel, which shall have light from the Lord. This awful time shall be preceded in Egypt by the freezing of the river Nile, and an irruption of barbarians into Asia and Thrace, and shall be followed by the destruction of the Egyptian idols, Isis and Serapis, and the erection in Egypt of a temple to the true God, which shall last to the end of the world, when it will be destroyed by the Ethiopians, who then, with the rest of the evil-doers, will meet with their just punishment at the hands of Almighty God. The Sibyl leaves the world in flames, saying nothing of what shall be afterwards. This gap is supplied by a later oracle.

The next piece consists of Books vi. and vii., which, from internal evidence, seem to have been written by a Christian, one, however, who was very far from being orthodox, and held the doctrines of some of the sects of later apostolic times. Ewald sets the date at the end of Adrian’s reign, Alexandre nearly a century later. The latter relies on some lines in Book vii. (vers. 41 ff.) which speak of the rise of a new Persian kingdom, infamous with vice, and an expedition of the Romans against it, which terminated unfavourably, and which he supposes to refer to the proceedings of the Emperor Alexander Severus, A.D. 232. But the allusion is very obscure, and it is certain that the emperor on this occasion returned in triumph to Rome, and that the Persian monarch was restrained for many years from hostile operations; so that we cannot fix the date of the poem from this passage, which in fact would equally well apply to the defeat of Crassus by the Parthians. The threat against Judaea for its treatment of Messiah (vi. 21 ff.) may be a prophecy after the punishment had fallen, as are so many of the “Oracles.” The heresies which the author affects are such as were rife in early Christian times, and we shall probably not be wrong in setting the date of this piece in the latter half of the second century.

The sixth book, a very short one of only twenty-eight lines, is not a vaticination, but a hymn to Christ, in which are set forth His Divine nature, His appearance and ministry in the world, and His future return. These facts are produced in orthodox language, which is deemed worthy of quotation by Lactantius and Gregory Nazianzen, and was not unknown to Augustine. In the mention of our Lord’s baptism occurs the legend of the fire which then appeared, to which we shall refer again below. The Sibyl applies the verb “he saw” in Matt. iii. 16 to Christ, not to John: “He, escaping from the fire, first shall see the sweet Spirit of God coming upon Him.” Thus far all is not unorthodox; but following the tenets of the Cerinthians and Ebionites, the writer holds that Jesus, a mere man, son of Joseph and Mary, received the Divine nature at His baptism by the descent of the Holy Ghost, who united Him with Christ, the eternal Word of God. He recognises two natures in Jesus Christ, and one Person, and always professes belief in His divinity. His words concerning the Cross have continually been quoted as confirming the doctrine of the Hypostatic union for which the Council of Ephesus contended. “O blessed tree,” he says, “on which God was stretched,” or, as the Latin versifier puts it—

O lignum felix in quo Deus ipse pependit.

Contrary to the tradition which represented Helena as the finder of the Holy Cross (and therefore supporting the earlier date assigned to this book), the Sibyl says that the earth could not keep the sacred wood, but that, it was transported to a heavenly home, to appear again at the last day, “the sign of the Son of man” (Matt. xxiv. 30). The same expectation is found elsewhere, e.g. in the acrostic in Book viii. 244, which is rendered—

Insigne et cunctis aderit mirabile visu Nullo sat cultu fidis venerabile lignum.

In these early times it is plain that the Cross alone, without the figure of Christ upon it, was the object of veneration. The crucifix was of later origin. Before leaving this book we may observe that in the solitary denunciation which it contains, Judæa is addressed as “Land of Sodom,” an appellation of Jerusalem common alike to the prophets and the Apocalypse (comp. Isa. i. 9, 10; Ezek. xvi.; Rev. xi. 8).

The seventh book, which from internal considerations is rightly considered to be the work of the same author as the preceding, is of conglomerate character, and returns to the usual form of Sibyllines, consisting, that is, of predictions concerning various nations, interspersed with certain mystic and theological statements. The first part is fragmentary, containing oracles concerning Rhodes, Delos, Cyprus, and Sicily. In it is comprised a paragraph from a poem on the Flood, which is also found in Book i. This contains the curious myth that Phrygia was the first country to emerge from the waters, and became the originator of idolatry. The same legend is found in other of the Oracles, e.g. i. 19 6, iii. sect. 2. 140, v. 129, and seems to have been derived without examination from the prevalent opinion that the belief in the most ancient of the pagan divinities and the most antique rites of heathenism arose in that part of the world. There is another tradition which makes the ark ground on an Ararat in Phrygia, near the city Apamea Cibotus (i. 261). This is an offshoot of the preceding myth. After some other prophecies we come to the mention of Christ, “the Begotten, the great God,” appearing in judgment. Certain signs shall herald His advent, specially a mighty column of flame in the heavens, which shall drop fiery destruction on the wicked. In mentioning Christ’s dominion over the angels, the writer has expressions very similar to those used by Hermas in the Pastor (vers. 3, 4), where he speaks of the angels as controlling all creation. Still more striking is the parallelism concerning the three towers raised in heaven wherein dwell three daughters of God—Hope, Piety, and Religion (σεβασμοσύνη), and which are prepared by Christ for the reception of the righteous. Hermas in his third vision sees a tower raised in heaven, which is to be the habitation of the just; but instead of three Virtues dwelling there; he makes seven, viz. Faith, Temperance, Simplicity, Knowledge, Innocence, Gravity, Charity. It is strange that neither Hermas nor the Sibyl availed themselves of St. Paul’s enumeration of the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity. The Sibyl, however, errs widely from Holy Scripture and the lines of orthodoxy when foretelling the adoption of certain sacred rites (vers. 76 ff.) which shall obtain in Messiah’s time: “Thou shalt offer sacrifice,” we read, “to the great immortal God, not melting with fire the grain of incense, nor slaying with the knife the shaggy lamb; but, in company with all who share thy blood, taking woodland birds, thou shalt pray and let them fly, turning thine eyes to heaven, and thou shalt pour water in libation into the pure fire with these words: O Father, as the Father begat Thee, the Word, I send forth this bird, the swift messenger of my words, with holy water besprinkling Thy baptism through which from the fire Thou didst appear.” The Greek is obscure, but the ceremony, consisting in letting a bird fly to convey prayer to heaven, is plain enough, and is a remnant of Judaism unknown to any Christian community. The allusion also to the fire in the Jordan at Christ’s baptism is evident. A paragraph concerning false prophets who feign themselves Hebrews, Alexandre calls the last gasp of expiring Judaism (vers. 132 ff.). It upbraids these men with magnifying the evil of the coming epoch, and striving to change the ancient Jewish discipline. They and all such shall perish, and a new world shall appear “in the third allotment of rolling years, within the first octave.” This mysterious date has been variously interpreted, and more pains have been wasted on it than its importance demands. Alexandre, who has examined the matter with his accustomed diligence, decides that the writer refers to the year 350 of the Actiatic era, which corresponds to A.D. 380. At this time the final age commences, Antichrist is to appear, and be finally defeated; then shall follow the last great convulsion, and the terrestrial reign of the pious under the sovereignty of Messiah, God Himself being with them and teaching them.