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âListen to the Sibylâ
The History, Poetics, and Reception of the Sibylline Oracles
Series: - Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, Volume: 223
Volume Editors:
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âListen to the Sibylâ revitalises reflection on the Sibylline Oracles with updated scholarship from diverse academic disciplines and reassesses their place within ancient Mediterranean literature. Chapters examine the Sibylline Oracles in overlapping contextsâJewish, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Christian. Overall, the volume demonstrates that the Sibylline Oracles are as integral to the history of ancient Judaism as they are to the study of Greek literature, that they deserve a central place within the study of ancient Rome and Ptolemaic Egypt, and that their influence extends through the history of Christianity, illuminating the commitments and contestations of early modern humanist scholars.
Olivia Stewart Lester, PhD (2017), Yale University, is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Loyola University Chicago, working on prophecy in the ancient Mediterranean. She has published book chapters, articles, and a monograph on the Sibylline Oracles, entitled Prophetic Rivalry, Gender, and Economics: A Study in Revelation and Sibylline Oracles 4â5 (Mohr Siebeck, 2018).
Max Leventhal is Lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests range across Post-Classical Greek literature, with a particular focus on technical texts and Hellenistic Jewish texts. He is the author of Poetry and Number in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (Cambridge, 2022) and he is currently completing a second monograph on the Letter of Aristeas.
Hindy Najman, PhD (1998), Harvard University, is the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture and a fellow at Oriel College, University of Oxford. She is the director and founder of the Centre for the Study of the Bible in Oriel College. Her major publications include Scriptural Vitality: Rethinking Hermeneutics and Philology (Oxford, 2025) and Losing the Temple and Recovering the Future: An Analysis of 4 Ezra (Cambridge, 2014).
Joshua Scott, PhD (2022), University of Michigan, is the Director of Events and Technology for the Catholic Biblical Association of America. Recent publications include articles titled âThe Power of Apocalypse: The Social Dynamics of Judgment in the Parables of Enoch and the Animal Apocalypseâ in Understanding Power in the Ancient Near East (Brill, 2024) and âEschatologyâ in the Online Encyclopaedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Elizabeth Stell, DPhil (2024), has published on prophecy and other aspects of ancient Jewish literature. She is currently preparing her doctoral dissertation, Hermeneutical Philology for Dream and the Fragments of the Exagoge of Ezekiel, completed at Oxford University, for publication.
Max Leventhal is Lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests range across Post-Classical Greek literature, with a particular focus on technical texts and Hellenistic Jewish texts. He is the author of Poetry and Number in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (Cambridge, 2022) and he is currently completing a second monograph on the Letter of Aristeas.
Hindy Najman, PhD (1998), Harvard University, is the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture and a fellow at Oriel College, University of Oxford. She is the director and founder of the Centre for the Study of the Bible in Oriel College. Her major publications include Scriptural Vitality: Rethinking Hermeneutics and Philology (Oxford, 2025) and Losing the Temple and Recovering the Future: An Analysis of 4 Ezra (Cambridge, 2014).
Joshua Scott, PhD (2022), University of Michigan, is the Director of Events and Technology for the Catholic Biblical Association of America. Recent publications include articles titled âThe Power of Apocalypse: The Social Dynamics of Judgment in the Parables of Enoch and the Animal Apocalypseâ in Understanding Power in the Ancient Near East (Brill, 2024) and âEschatologyâ in the Online Encyclopaedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Elizabeth Stell, DPhil (2024), has published on prophecy and other aspects of ancient Jewish literature. She is currently preparing her doctoral dissertation, Hermeneutical Philology for Dream and the Fragments of the Exagoge of Ezekiel, completed at Oxford University, for publication.
Introduction: âListen to the Sibylâ: the History, Poetics, and Reception of the Sibylline Oracles
âOlivia Stewart Lester and Max Leventhal, with Hindy Najman, Joshua Scott, and Elizabeth Stell
Part 1 The Sibyl in History/The Image of the Sibyl
1 Why Did Jews Write in the Name of the Sibyl?
âJohn J. Collins
2 The Sibyl, Cassandra, and Rome
âErich S. Gruen
3 Sibylline Personalities and the Sibylline Audience
âDavid S. Potter
4 The Sibylline Library from Myth to History
âFrancis Borchardt
5 Weaving An Ever More Intricate Tapestry: Recentering the Sibyl from the Margins
âAshley L. Bacchi
Part 2 The Sibyl between Cultures
6 The Third Sibylline Oracle 604â623 and Coeval Egyptian Predictions Surrounding the Sixth Syrian War
âLuke Neubert
7 Libri fatales: the Sibylline Books in the Late Republic and Early Principate
âStefan Krauter
8 Some Shall Say in Hellas That I Am of Foreign Land: Exotic Prophecy in Sibylline Discourse
âDaniel Charles Smith
9 Process, Not Parting: Sibylline Oracles and the âParting of the Waysâ
âOlivia Stewart Lester
Part 3.1 The Poetics of Sibylline Verse
10 What Is Truth?
âJane L. Lightfoot
11 Listening to Divine Speech: Does Sibylline Oracles 5 Invite Revelatory Inquiry?
âRobert G. Hall
12 The Aesthetics and Politics of the Counter-Factual: the Religious Syntax of the Sibylline Oracles
âSimon Goldhill
Part 3.2 The Poetics of the Sibylline Universe
13 Mapping Eschatology: Jerusalem in Time and Space in the Sibylline Oracles
âOliver Parkes
14 Cosmic Discourses in Disorder: Astral Turns in Sibylline Oracles 5
âHelen Van Noorden
â15âLanguage and Letters in Sibylline Oracles 11
âMax Leventhal
Part 4 Sibylline Afterlives
16 Sibylline Metamorphoses: Books and Oracles to Describe the History of the World
âMariangela Monaca
17 The Sibyl Versus Apollo: the New Christian Prophets in the Patristic Authors
âJesús M. Nieto Ibáñez
18 The Post-Classical Sibylline Literature, Forms and Functions: a Preliminary Overview
âLorenzo DiTommaso
19 The Sibylline Collection in Byzantium: a Many-Faced Sibyl?
âXavier Lafontaine
20 The Defense of the Sibyls and the Sibylline Oracles in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England
âJean-Michel Roessli
Index of Ancient Texts
Index of Modern Authors
Index of Subjects
âOlivia Stewart Lester and Max Leventhal, with Hindy Najman, Joshua Scott, and Elizabeth Stell
Part 1 The Sibyl in History/The Image of the Sibyl
1 Why Did Jews Write in the Name of the Sibyl?
âJohn J. Collins
2 The Sibyl, Cassandra, and Rome
âErich S. Gruen
3 Sibylline Personalities and the Sibylline Audience
âDavid S. Potter
4 The Sibylline Library from Myth to History
âFrancis Borchardt
5 Weaving An Ever More Intricate Tapestry: Recentering the Sibyl from the Margins
âAshley L. Bacchi
Part 2 The Sibyl between Cultures
6 The Third Sibylline Oracle 604â623 and Coeval Egyptian Predictions Surrounding the Sixth Syrian War
âLuke Neubert
7 Libri fatales: the Sibylline Books in the Late Republic and Early Principate
âStefan Krauter
8 Some Shall Say in Hellas That I Am of Foreign Land: Exotic Prophecy in Sibylline Discourse
âDaniel Charles Smith
9 Process, Not Parting: Sibylline Oracles and the âParting of the Waysâ
âOlivia Stewart Lester
Part 3.1 The Poetics of Sibylline Verse
10 What Is Truth?
âJane L. Lightfoot
11 Listening to Divine Speech: Does Sibylline Oracles 5 Invite Revelatory Inquiry?
âRobert G. Hall
12 The Aesthetics and Politics of the Counter-Factual: the Religious Syntax of the Sibylline Oracles
âSimon Goldhill
Part 3.2 The Poetics of the Sibylline Universe
13 Mapping Eschatology: Jerusalem in Time and Space in the Sibylline Oracles
âOliver Parkes
14 Cosmic Discourses in Disorder: Astral Turns in Sibylline Oracles 5
âHelen Van Noorden
â15âLanguage and Letters in Sibylline Oracles 11
âMax Leventhal
Part 4 Sibylline Afterlives
16 Sibylline Metamorphoses: Books and Oracles to Describe the History of the World
âMariangela Monaca
17 The Sibyl Versus Apollo: the New Christian Prophets in the Patristic Authors
âJesús M. Nieto Ibáñez
18 The Post-Classical Sibylline Literature, Forms and Functions: a Preliminary Overview
âLorenzo DiTommaso
19 The Sibylline Collection in Byzantium: a Many-Faced Sibyl?
âXavier Lafontaine
20 The Defense of the Sibyls and the Sibylline Oracles in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England
âJean-Michel Roessli
Index of Ancient Texts
Index of Modern Authors
Index of Subjects
Academic institutes, libraries, specialists, and post-graduate students; Subject areas: Classical Studies, Biblical Studies, Ancient History, Ancient Judaism, Ancient Christianity, Egyptology, Book History