• TOf inia-KOTTov vy.iav, almost in the sense of Wis l^ (=gcru- tatoT) or 1 P 2'^ (' overseer ').
t As below (p. 4S5) in bk. vi. Blass prefers to render, ' who set the sweet breath of life in everything, and made man director of all things.'
{ This ancient argument is applied in the Epistle of Barnabas (v. 9 f.) to the Incarnation specifically : ' He manifested Himself as God's Son. For, had He not come in the flesh, how could men ever have been saved by beholding Him, since they are unable to gaze directly at the rays of the sun, which is destined to perish and is the work of His hands?'
§ iv ^ai Koifw, a frequent phrase in the SibylUna.
Ii I.C., apparently, of recognizing Himself. But Kpirr^piov is difficult in this sense. To take it as meaning that God con- stantly judges men in the present, not simply in the future, is a possible, though less probable, alteniative.
^ If this alludes to Christ, the authorship is plain. To take it as a reference to the sun is possible, but less likely. The same difficulty emerges in the interpretation of iii. Oof.
** Literally, 'why detail each one by one V '^a common phrase of the Sibyl, in breaking off a list.
ft Suddenly apostrophizing the Jewish people.
%X The well-known anti-Semitic prejudice which echoes through Latin literature. See H. Strong's paragraphs in //./ xiii. (1915) 3(Hif. ; he points out how, e.q., the -Jewish objection to pork must have irritated Romans, as pork was their favourite animal food.
Since Ood inimortal thou would'st not obey, But from his holy law didst swerve and stray. Since wret<;hed idols were thy heart's desire. Careless in reverence for the immortal Sire Of gods and men, who worahip doth recpiire. Wherefore thy wondrous shrine, thy fruitful land For seventy years ' untouched by thee shall sUitid. Yet at the end shall bliss and glory great Be thine, as God has ordered : only wait . . .'
We have thus three strata in tlie medley of the extant S'thyUina : (1) the pagan (Greek or IJahy- lonian) orach's, whicli came into the hands of Jews and eventually of Ciiristians. It is one of the many services rendered to tlie criticism of the oracles by (iedcken, their latest editor, that he has distinguished more fully than any of his i>re- dcLcssors tiie presence of such outside .sources throughout the collection ; even altliough the evidence is occasionally unsatisfactory, there can be little doubt that the later Jewish and Christian Sibyllinists made more use of these surviving frag- ments than scholars formerly were disposed to admit ;t (2) the Jewish Sibyllines, rising in Alex- andria not long after the invasion of Kgypt by Antiochus Ejiiphanes in 171-169 H.C. The literary method was to imitate:!: tlie pagan oracles, for the purpose of persuading or threatening the Gentiles, but occasionally fragments of them were incor- porated as the nucleus of a fresh composition, and more or less edited for their new setting ; (3) t)ie Christian Sibyllines, wiiich followed the same path in dealing with their predecessors. Fresh oracles were composed, old ones were recast and Christian- ized. It was the Jewish composers who gave the lead to Christian in this literary method, as in the apocalyptic department of pseudepigrapha, and the production of occasional Jewish oracles went on side by side with the Christian activity, even after the Pharisaic reaction and reorganization of Judaism had eschewed tlie Sibyllines. But we must now turn to the third of the strata. It is the most important for our present purpose, not simply because it is Christian, but because the final editing of the oracles, as we have them, was the work of Christians. §
3. The Christian Sibyl.— In the early Christian literature we bear of the Sibyl before we hear of Sibylline oracles. The so-called allusions in Clement of Kome are dubious, but Hermas {Vis. IL iv.) mentions her. Justin {Apol. i. 20) quotes her, along with Hystaspes, to prove that the world would be destroyed by fire, and the author of pseudo- Justin's Cohortatio ad Groicos { 16), not earlier than the end of the 2nd or the beginning of the 3rd cent., not only quotes her as a primeval witness to monotlieism, but (37) describes her shrine at Cunife : ' You will also be able easily to learn the right religion, to some extent, from the ancient Sibyl, who, under a powerful inspiration, teaches you by her oracles what .seems closely akin to the doctrine of the prophets. She is said to have come from Babylon, her father being Berosus, who wrote the history of Chald;ea ; after cro.-^sing over, somehow, to Campania, she uttered lier oracles in a town calletl Cumoe, six miles from BaiEe, the site of the liot springs of Campania.
• From Jer 2512.
t See below, p. 486. In viii. SCI, 373, two lines are quoted from a l)elphic oracle which happens to be preserved by Hero- dotus (i. 47). Hermas (see below) hears terrible news from his Sibyl, followed by gentle, jrracious promises, ond Rende! Harris {The. Homeric Ccntoius. London, 1808, p. 15 f.) conjectures that the former were ' an intimation of the impendinp ruin of Koine, something like what we find in the eighth book of the SiOj/llinc Orai'/rfi.' But this would he Jewish. The couplet :n iv. 97-OS is indubitably pagan ; Strabo quotes it as sufh.