Sibylline Oracles

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, in an edition of the 6th or 7th century AD. They are not to be confused with the original Sibylline Books of the ancient Etruscans and Romans which were burned by order of Roman general Flavius Stilicho in the 4th century AD.

There was once among men a shining light of the sun.

Quotes

• The wicked ... worship stones and brute beasts instead of God,
  revering very many things, one here another there, which have no reason,
  or mind or hearing.
  • 5:75-78, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth, pp. 394-395

• From their own labors and wicked notions
  men have accepted gods of wood and stone.
  They have made them of bronze and gold and silver, vain
  lifeless, dumb, and smelted in fire, vainly putting their trust in such as these.
  • 5:81-85, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth, p. 395

• There was once among men a shining light of the sun
  when the harmonious ray of the prophets was being spread abroad,
  a tongue dripping a beautiful drink for all mortals with honeyed sweetness;
  it made manifest, offered and effected gentle things for all.
  • 5:238-241, "Praise and exaltation of the Jews" in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth, p. 399

• The imperishable God who dwells in the sky in anger
  will case a lightning bolt from heaven against the power of the impious.
  • 5:298 in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth, p. 400

• O MEN, why do ye vainly think on things
  Too lofty, as if ye immortal were?
  • Warning against excessive hunger for power, The Sibylline Oracles, Book XIV