II. Even greater, though a different interest, attaches to the
Sibylline Oracles
, written inGreek hexameters.
1
In their present form they consist of twelve books, together withseveral fragments. Passing over two large fragments, which seem to have originallyformed the chief part of the introduction to Book III., we have (1) the two first Books.These contain part of an older and Hellenist Jewish Sibyl, as well as of a poem by theJewish Pseudo-Phocylides, in which heathen myths concerning the first ages of man arecuriously welded with Old Testament views. The rest of these two books was composed,and the whole put together, not earlier than the close of the second century, perhaps by aJewish Christian. (2) The third Book is by far the most interesting. Besides the fragmentsalready referred to, vv. 97-807 are the work of a Hellenist Jew, deeply imbued with theMessianic hope. This part dates from about 160 before our era, while vv. 49-96 seem tobelong to the year 31 b.c. The rest (vv. 1-45, 818-828) dates from a later period. We musthere confine our attention to the most ancient portion of the work. For our presentpurpose, we may arrange it into three parts. In the first, the ancient heathen theogony isrecast in a Jewish mould - Uranus becomes Noah; Shem, Ham, and Japheth are Saturn,Titan, and Japetus, while the building of the Tower of Babylon is the rebellion of theTitans. Then the history of the world is told, the Kingdom of Israel and of David formingthe centre of all. What we have called the second is the most curious part of the work. Itembodies ancient heathen oracles, so to speak, in a Jewish recension, and interwovenwith Jewish elements. The third part may be generally described as anti-heathen,polemical, and Apocalyptic. The Sibyl is thoroughly Hellenistic in spirit. She is loud andearnest in her appeals, bold and defiant in the tone of her Jewish pride, self-conscious andtriumphant in her anticipations. But the most remarkable circumstance is, that thisJudaising and Jewish Sibyl seems to have passed - though possibly only in parts - as theoracles of the ancient Erythræan Sibyl, which had predicted to the Greeks the fall of Troy, and those of the Sibyl of Cumæ, which, in the infancy of Rome, TarquiniusSuperbus had deposited in the Capitol, and that as such it is quoted from by Virgil (in his4th Eclogue) in his description of the Golden Age.
1. We have in the main accepted the learned criticism of Professor
Friedlieb
(OraculaSibyllina, 1852.)
Of the other Sibylline Books little need be said. The 4th, 5th, 9th, and 12th Books werewritten by Egyptian Jews at dates varying from the year 80 to the third century of our era.Book VI. is of Christian origin, the work of a Judaising Christian, about the second half of the second century. Book VIII., which embodies Jewish portions, is also of Christianauthorship, and so are Books X. and XI.III. The collection of eighteen hymns, which in their Greek version bear the name of
thePsalter of Solomon
, must originally have been written in Hebrew, and dates from morethan half a century before our era. They are the outcome of a soul intensely earnest,although we not unfrequently meet expressions of Pharisiac self-religiousness.<sup2 It isa time of national sorrow in which the poet sings, and it almost seems as if these 'Psalms'had been intended to take up one or another of the leading thoughts in the correspondingDavidic Psalms, and to make, as it were, application of them to the existingcircumstances.
3
Though somewhat Hellenistic in its cast, the collection breathes ardent
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