St. Pachomius Library

The Sybills

In the Etruscan, early Roman, and certain other cultures, the Sybills were holy women who could supposedly read the future. Perhaps unexpectedly, many of the Fathers accept them as genuine prophetesses of God, sent to the Gentiles as the Hebrew prophets were sent to the Jews (whereas most other pagan oracles they condemned as demonic). The presence of clearly Judæo-Christian content in many of the surviving Sybilline prophecies has led modern skeptics to instead argue that these texts were altered or forged outright by Christian scribes.

WORKS:
- The Sybilline Oracles. Terry translation, 1899. --- Sacred Texts
ABOUT:
- Sozomen: Ecclesiastical History, 1, i: A brief but typical reference to the Sybilline writings as the Gentile equivalent of the Hebrew prophetic books. (Scroll to fourth paragraph.) ---SPL

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