The Sibylline Oracles and the Prophets

[rgprice]

There are a lot of commonalities between the Sibylline Oracles and the books of the Prophets. I long assumed that the books of the Prophets were written log before the Sibylline Oracles, but if in fact many books of the Prophets were written in the 2nd century BCE, then this raises the possibility that the same people were producing the Sibylline Oracles and various works of the Prophets.

Some of this may just be coincidence or the fact that this prophets style was well established. But there is also the possibility that Jews who worked with Sibylline literature learned from it and emulated its style in the works of their own Prophets. In particular, I am struck by some similarities in style between the book of Isaiah and Book 3 of the Sibylline Oracles.

I've got to go, but I'll post some examples later.

[neilgodfrey]

In case you haven't read it already . . . .

Shum, Shiu-Lun. “The Use of Isaiah in the Sibylline Oracles, Qumran Literature and Romans (a Source-Influence Study).” Ph.D., University of Glasgow, 1999. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1063/.

[rgprice]

Interesting, but I was thinking of the possibility of the influence goin gin the other direction. Why strikes me is not any particular intetextuality, but simply the style and devices.

Here is an example passage from Book 3. This section is likely part of an original "pagan" passage that Jews later built upon:

And unto life-sustaining Phrygia
Straightway shall there a certain token be,
When Rhea's blood-stained race, in the great earth
Blooming perennial in impervious roots,
Shall, root and branch, in one night disappear
With a city, men and all, of the Earth-shaker
Poseidon; which place they shall sometime call
Dorylaeum, of dark ancient Phrygia,
Much-bewailed. Therefore shall that time be called
Earth-shaker; dens of earth shall he break up
And walls demolish. And not signs of good
But a beginning of evil shall be made;
The baneful violence of general war
Ye'll have, sons of Aeneas, Dative blood
Of Ilus from the soil. But afterwards
A spoil shalt thou become for greedy men.
O Ilium, I pity thee; for there shall bloom
In Sparta an Erinys very fair,
Ever-famed, noblest scion, and shall leave
On Asia and Europe a wide-spreading wave;
But to thee most of all she'll bear and cause
Wailings and toils and groans; but there shall be
Undying fame with those who are to come.
And there shall be an aged mortal then,
False writer and of doubtful native land;
And in his eyes the light shall fade away;
Large mind and verses measured with great skill
Shall he have and be blended with two names,
Shall call himself a Chian and shall write
Of Ilium, not truthfully, indeed,
But skillfully; for of my verse and meters
He will be master; for he first my books
Will open with his hands; but he himself
Will much embellish helmed chiefs of war,
Hector of Priam and Achilles, son
Of Peleus, and the others who have care
For warlike deeds. And also by their side
Will he make gods stand, empty-headed men,
False-writing every way. And it shall be
Glory the rather, widely spread, for them
To die at Ilium; but he himself
Shall also works of recompense receive.

Here is what I have written about this in the book I'm working on:

Let’s recall that all Sibylline works are really retrospective accounts of the past, which present themselves as ancient premonitions of the future. This section of the text is talking about tales of Troy. This passage starts off talking about earthquakes. Poseidon was considered by the ancient Greeks to be the god who controlled earthquakes. In the Homeric epics Poseidon is called the “earthquake-lord.” Dorylaeum was a town in the region of Phrygia that was noted for its natural hot baths. Dorylaeum was also frequented by earthquakes. Phrygia is an area in what is now western Turkey. Phrygia features in the epic stories of the Trojan War. According to the Homeric epics, King Priam married a Phrygian princess and the Phrygians allied with the Trojans against the Greeks in the war. Ilus is the legendary founder of Troy. The passage says that the Trojans will become a spoil of war, of course indicating that Troy will fall. The passage goes on to mention Erinys, which is another name for Helen of Sparta, who becomes known more widely as Helen of Troy. Helen is, of course, claimed to be the cause of the Trojan War.

So, this first part of the passage seems to be saying that the earthquakes from this region are indicative of its violence. This violence from Phrygia infects Troy and imbues itself upon the people of Troy. The passage then goes on to talk about Homer and the recording of the Homeric epics. The passage refers to Homer as the “aged mortal” who is a “false writer” and whose vision fades away. Homer is referred to as “a Chian,” which is a reference to the island of Chios, from which he supposedly hailed. That the Sibyl claimed Homer wrote falsehoods about the Trojan War is something that is widely attested to in the ancient literature.

For me, its just the overall style and the way that events and individuals from the past are alluded to, sometimes in semi-veiled terms. Of course this could just be calked up to a common style of all prophetic writings.

However, if it is the case, as the article that you linked proposes, that portions of Book 3 show similarities with Isaiah, then is it not possible that the same person who wrote Isaiah also wrote Book 3? Book 3 contains what appears to be a mix of older "pagan" material mixed with newer Jewish material.

What of this scenario? A Jew possesses the original "pagan" version of what is now Book 3. They read it and want to produce a similarly styled Jewish work. They produce Deutero-Isaiah, styled on the the Sibylline verses. At the same time, they decide to produce a Judaized version of the Sibylline work, producing significant portions of what is now Book 3 (and potentially Book 1). In this way, Isaiah is influenced by the original content preserved in Book 3 and also Book 3 contains new content that is shared with Isaiah.

Of course this is highly speculative and may be a bit too neat.

[yakovzutolmai]

There are a lot of commonalities between the Sibylline Oracles and the books of the Prophets. I long assumed that the books of the Prophets were written log before the Sibylline Oracles, but if in fact many books of the Prophets were written in the 2nd century BCE, then this raises the possibility that the same people were producing the Sibylline Oracles and various works of the Prophets.

Some of this may just be coincidence or the fact that this prophets style was well established. But there is also the possibility that Jews who worked with Sibylline literature learned from it and emulated its style in the works of their own Prophets. In particular, I am struck by some similarities in style between the book of Isaiah and Book 3 of the Sibylline Oracles.

I've got to go, but I'll post some examples later.

My understanding is the Sibylline Oracle was one thing, and the Oracles are another. The former was the Roman oracle of choice. The latter were Christian era texts which consciously incorporated Christian and Jewish ideas and layered them on top of earlier pagan literature.

[Russell Gmirkin]

There are a lot of commonalities between the Sibylline Oracles and the books of the Prophets. I long assumed that the books of the Prophets were written long before the Sibylline Oracles, but if in fact many books of the Prophets were written in the 2nd century BCE, then this raises the possibility that the same people were producing the Sibylline Oracles and various works of the Prophets.

Some of this may just be coincidence or the fact that this prophets style was well established. But there is also the possibility that Jews who worked with Sibylline literature learned from it and emulated its style in the works of their own Prophets. In particular, I am struck by some similarities in style between the book of Isaiah and Book 3 of the Sibylline Oracles.

I've got to go, but I'll post some examples later.

From my article "Jeremiah, Plato and Socrates: Greek Antecedents to the Book of Jeremiah" in West and Lemche (eds.), Jeremiah in History and Tradition (London-New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 37-39:

Jeremiah and the Oracles Against the Nations

The well-known biblical genre conventionally called the Oracles Against the Nations (OAN) appear prominently in the later chapters of Jeremiah and are poorly integrated with narrative passages. The OAN of Jeremiah appeared in different order and were located in different chapters in the MT (Jer. 27, 46-51) and Septuagint (Jer. 25-32), showing the loose connection of the OAN with that prophetic text.

Oracles Against the Nations consisted of collections of prophecies directed against a variety of foreign nations, cities and peoples that included both Judah’s immediate neighbors and distant empires with whom Judah historically had interactions. The OAN, which appear in most of the Prophets, once circulated independently as a distinct genre of Jewish literature. Some OAN appear in more than one of the Prophets, often in altered form. Many of the OAN are substantially free from Pentateuchal content, including virtually the entirety of the minor prophets Nahum, Habakkuk and Obadiah, as well as substantial portions of Isa. 13-23; Jer. 46-51 and Ezek. 25-31. It is thus likely that the OAN as a genre, including some of those found in Jeremiah, pre-date the Pentateuch of ca. 270 BCE.

Greek books of prophecy containing loose collections of prophecies against foreign nations were written down in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE and attributed to Bakis or to the Sibyls, legendary figures of the distant past. Many scholars have noted the striking resemblance of the Sibylline Oracles to the OAN, but a direct influence between the OAN and the Sibylline Oracles—in either direction—has universally been ruled out due to the presumed antiquity of the OAN. The same is true for the oracles of Bakis. With Alexander’s conquests, it is certain that Sibylline oracles became known in the east. It is entirely possible that the Jews were also exposed to the genre of Sibylline literature in the period ca. 325–270 BCE and began to produce examples of the same type in the form of the earliest OAN directed against their immediate neighbors.

Nothing in any of the OAN indicates a date before the conquests of Alexander. This is consistent with an understanding of this genre as having originated in the period 325-270 BCE, prior to the composition of the Pentateuch. The broad character of the OAN directed against Moab, Ammon, Edom and other neighboring territories does not appear to indicate a specific date of composition. In one instance, namely the predictions against Tyre at Ezek. 26, the failure of the prophecy appears to positively indicate a date of 332 BCE, at the outset of the Hellenistic Era in the midst of the siege of Tyre. Other OAN in Jeremiah and Ezekiel appear to have been written—or perhaps reapplied—in such a way as to suggest literary dependence on Berossus’ Babyloniaca, indicating a date after 278 BCE and probably after ca. 270 BCE. Several OAN contained allusions taken from the Primary History that suggest authorship or revision after ca. 270 BCE. These include several OAN found in Jeremiah. In summary, the OAN of Jeremiah represents an authoritative older pre-Pentateuchal literary genre influenced by the Sibylline Oracles that the authors of Jeremiah drew upon and lightly reworked. Despite dating to the Hellenistic Era, they represent some of Jeremiah’s oldest source material.

[Leucius Charinus]

FWIW my notes from reading
On Pagans, Jews and Christians:
Arnaldo Momigliano, 1987

p.138

Jewish and Christian forgery of the Greek Sibylline oracles


"The Jews began writing Sibylline oracles in the 2nd century BCE".

"The Jews stopped writing history after 100 CE and the Christians
did not write political history before the fifth century. The
Sibylline oracles filled a historiographic gap."


p.139

"The collection of Sibylline Oracles which has reached us
contains both Jewish and Christian Sibylline oracles. The
collection as it now stands was put together and transmitted
by Christians. Here we find Christian forgers using Jewish
forgeries and adding their own more or less for the same
purposes: anti-Roman feeling, apocalyptic expectations, and
general reflection on past history presented as future.
Fathers of the Church (notably Lactantius) hurried to quote
these texts, and of course the Christians went on composing
their Sibylline texts (now also in Latin) throughout the
Middle Ages.


Paul Alexander in his volume "The Oracles of Baalbek" (1967)
edited a text which Silvio Giuseppe Mercati had discovered
on Mount Athos, but which was not published. Alexander showed
this text to be an expanded version put together between
502-506 CE of an earlier Greek oracle composed about 378-390 CE.
The earlier Greek text is still recognisable under the Latin
guise of medieval Tiburtine oracles .... the Sibyl is made
to speak on the Roman Capital and to answer questions put by
a hundred Roman judges. The text is definitely Christian.
Yet Jewish priests intervene in the dialogue and respectfully
question the Sybil about rumors in the pagan world regarding
the birth of Christ. The Sybil, of course, gives a precise
confirmation, and the Jewish priests are not heard again,
What concerns us here is that Jews are here shown to question
a pagan Sybil as a matter of course.