In the pre-Christmas mail came Oxford University Press’s remarkable new The Sibylline Oracles: With Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on the First and Second Books. It’s a stunning work of scholarship and translation. The Oracles are a compilation. Some are Jewish, some Christian, some Jewish-Christian. Some are pagan and were cited by both Jews and Christians as confirming various prophecies. The Oracles were cited by many of late antiquity’s leading lights — Josephus, Justin Marytr, Augustine.
BMCR was right to call this new volume “monumental.”
Here’s a seasonal Oracle, from the new translation by J.L. Lightfoot:
When the … manless maid the Logos give a name,
Then from the east a star in fullest day
That brightly shines shall from the heavens beam
Announcing a great sign fo rmortal men.
Then great God’s son will come to humankind,Clothed in flesh, in human form on earth…
He will fulfil, and not throw down, God’s law,
Wearing a matching likeness, and will teach.
To him will holy men bring gifts of gold,
And myrrh and incense, for all this he will do.