One God, who rules alone, almighty, uncreated . . ,
One God there is alone, high over all, who made
the heaven, the sun and stars and moon,
the fruitful earth, the swellings of the sea ;
he only is Creator God, all-strong,
he fixed our mould of being, and 'twas he
blended the nature of each human life." Which means either that when human beings come together, they become one flesh with the Father, or thai he fashioned man and the work! under heaven out of the four elements which are opposed to one another.'
There is a close afiinity between this prologue and a * theosopby ' of the 5th cent. (474-491), which originally contained seven books 'on the orthodox faith,' employing the Sibylline oracles amongst other pagan sources to illustrate Christian doctrine. In a fragment recently discovered by Karl Mras (' Eine neuentdeckte Sibyllen-Theosophie,' Wiener Studien, xxviii. [1906] 43-83), the author appears to have drawn his quotation from Lactantius in part, but he had not our extant Sibylline collection before him, and Mras conjectures that the author of our prologue borrowed from this 'theosophy.' There is nothing in the prologue to contradict this view ; it is a dishevelled piece of writing, and neither original nor reliable. However the com- piler made up his collection, its condition does not increaseourrespect for his literary capacities. What his ideas of connexion and order may have been, we have no means of telling. The arrangement of the following oracles is not chronological — possibly we have no right to expect that — but it is not even topical. The least unsatisfactoiy method of deal- ing with the materials will be to survey rapidly each book in the sequence of the collection.
Bks. i. and ii. form a unity, but they are not by any means the earliest part of the collection, and it is almost certain that they represent a Jewish basis overlaid by Christian additions at several points. They appear to have been unknown to early Christian writers ; the hrst echo occurs in the Oratio ad sanvt. coetum{\8 = Sib. i. 283f.), which is attributed to Constantine. This does not militate against H, Dechent's view§ that the Jewish piece
historical knowledge may be inferred from his remark that Lactantius had been a pagan priest of the CapitoUne temple !
* The loose quotation from Lactantius {DiiK Inst. i. 6) does not begin till after the passage in brackets, which our author seems to have reproduced freely by an error of memory from the Cokortalio ad Greecos.
t This is the Christian's attempt to answer the educated Roman's objection to the obscurity and irregularity of the Christian -S'/ii,y//(»rt. So far from being a mark of weakness, this really proves their authenticity and inspired origin !
X See above, p. 480. Both passages expound the validity of rapture as a means of divination and insight, but the Sibyl is only mentioned in the Phccdrus, where Socrates contends that ' the greatest blessings come to us by way of madness {fjuii-ia^)if only it is bestowed by hea\en. Why, the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses atDodona have done many a noble service to Hellas, both to individuals and to the public, by their madness, whereas they have done little or nothing in their sober senses. And furtlier, we should only be elaborating what is known to everybody, if we were to speak of the Sibyl and all the rest, vvho by the exercise of inspired divination have set many people right for what lay before them, by disclosing to them much of the future.'
§ In his monograph, (feber das erste, ziveite und elfte Buck der sibylliniscken Weisnagungen^ Frankfort, 1873.
SIBYLLINE ORACLES
SIBYLLINE ORACLES
483
which hedisentan-rles from i. 1-323, ii. 6-33, 154- 178, ISo-KSi), Ii)3 241, 253-311, 314-325 (327) was coinposoil before tlie fall of Jerusalem, but it does tell a<'ainst anj' early date* for the Christian edit- injj. In bli. i. tlie Sibyl describes the Creation and the Flood, and then, in ;,'enuinely prophetic style, carries tht^ story down to tlic rebellion of the Titans (1-323), when snildenly tlie birth, niinislry, death, and resurrection of Christ, and the imMislinient of the disobedient Hebrews, are descrifjed : the book ends with a prediction of the capture of the 'I'eniple at .lerusaleni and the dispersion of the Jews under tlie wrath of God for having maltreated His Son. Several jiassau'es in this Christian section are almost verbally i<lentical with lines of the eij;lith book, and it is still a vexed question which book borrowed from the other.
In the Jewish oracle, wliich, like nearly all the Sihi/llina, is a mine of odd lore about contemporary traditions and lefieiids, the most interesting feature is the det.ailed description of Noah as a ' preacher of righteousness' (2 1*2'') to his scornful generation (14711.). He preaches a short, good sermon. God reveals to him the impending fate of mankind, if they jiersist in their evil wa3's, and bids him ai>peal to them for the last time. Noah does so, but is scolied at. He renews his warning, and, instead of being couched in any threatening tones, f it is charged with a singular pathos. He tells them, c.fj., how he will lament and weep in the ark, if things come to tlie worst and (!od has to destroy them and the world. As is usual in the Sibi/llina, the biljlical thread is strung with variegated chips of legend and romantic mj'thology, but it is not so thickly strung as to become invisible. There is a sim|ilicity and directness in this popular poetry on the biblical narrative which is superior to the pro- saic paraphrase of Josephus. The Christian section is of less merit, either from a religious or from a literary point of view. It is a florid cento from the NT, with a vehement animus against the Jews. A fair specimen of the author's outlook may be found in the description of Christ, ' the son of the immortal God,' in 332 f. :