Sibylline Oracles

(Second Century B.C. to Seventh Century A.D.)

The Sibylline Oracles are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. Fourteen books and eight fragments of Sibylline Oracles survive. These are a collection of utterances that were composed or edited under various circumstances, are not to be confused with the original Sibylline Books of ancient Roman religion which are now lost.

The Sibylline Oracles are a valuable source for information about Classical mythology and early first millennium Gnostic, Jewish and Christian beliefs. Some apocalyptic passages scattered throughout seem to adumbrate themes of John's Book of Revelation and other Apocalyptic literature. In places the oracles have also undergone extensive editing, re-writing, and redaction, as they came to be exploited in wider circles.

One passage has an acrostic, spelling out a Christian code-phrase with the first letters of successive lines.