2/22/2007

On Syriac and Arabic Sibylline Oracles

In a comment on my 10.2.07 post, bulbul raises the question of "the transmission of SibOr in Syriac and Arabic Christian milieux". I must confess that this intriguing subject lies outside both my (current) linguistic competence and my present line of inquiry into the Greek SibOr tradition, but here are a couple of leads I've come across in that direction, for anyone who might be interested. And if anyone has anything to add, please do!

  • S. Brock, "A Syriac Collection of Prophecies of the Pagan Philosophers", Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 14 (1983) 203-46.
  • idem, "Some Syriac Excerpts from Greek Collections of Pagan Prophecies", Vigiliae Christianae 38 (1984) 77-90.
Buitenwerf, Book III (in my "Essential Reading" list, see right) p. 5 n. 1 provides some more references to other non-Greek SibOr, including:
  • M. J. L. Young/R. Y. Ebied, "An Unrecorded Arabic Version of a Sibylline Prophecy", Orientalia Christiana Periodica 43 (1977) 279-307.
For still more such references, see DiTomasso, Bibliography (also in "Essential Reading") pp. 843-4.

2 comments:

bulbul said...

Excellent, thank you very much.
The reason I asked was that I vaguely remember reading about Sybilline prophecies in one the works of classical Arabic literature. Unfortunately, I can no longer recall which one (possibly one of the travelogues or maybe al-Kisa'i), I only remember a list of prophecies and a specific reference to a Syriac tradition.

GLW said...

Perhaps, then, a look at A. Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, I, Studi e Testi 118 (Citta del Vaticano, 1944) 292-295 -- on MSS and editions -- might help jog your memory? Or, at any rate, be another place to start from. (Cited from DiTomasso, Bibliography 843.)