Traditional attribution

The Sibyl

2nd c. BC – early Christian era · 2nd c. BC · 1 work

The Sibyl was the inspired prophetess of Greek and Roman tradition, and under her name a body of Greek hexameter oracles was composed and expanded by Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian writers who set the worship of the one God and the coming judgement in the Sibyl's prophetic voice.

Quoted by Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, and Augustine as a Gentile witness to the true God and to Christ, the Sibylline Oracles were prized by the early Church; the collection survives in fourteen books (Books I–VIII and XI–XIV) with fragments. (Modern scholars regard the books as a composite of the 2nd century B.C. through the early Christian centuries.)