Speaker: Helen Van Noorden, AIAS-COFUND Fellow, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies

Local host: Centre for the Study of Antiquity and Christianity, Aarhus University.

Poster invitation

Abstract

This paper considers different authorizing strategies in the foundational sections (books 3-5) of the Sibylline Oracles, a collection of Greek hexameters composed and updated over several centuries from the second century BCE onwards by Jewish and then Christian editors. Rewriting scriptural material into styles inherited from the Greek poets Homer and Hesiod, the Sibylline voice reviews world history (as prophecy) and pictures the end of days, while urging ethical behavior in the present. These utterances combine the prophetic authority they claim from divine inspiration and the age of the Sibyl-figure, with ‘narrative authority’ from the Classical cultural forms they appropriate. As this branch of Sibylline prophecy develops, cultural as well as historical and theological reference points are updated. This paper concludes by discussing one such understudied example preserved in our collection – the replacement of Homer by Virgil as the Sibyl’s first student.

Participation

The talk is streamed via Zoom November 11 2020, 14:15-16:00.

Join URL: https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/61727887881?pwd=K2d1d29oTlc3RjhGMjBIa0Y1ZVV0UT09 

Organised by Centre for the Study of Antiquity and Christianity, Aarhus University. All are welcome to attend.

Contact: Jakob Engberg, je@cas.au.dk