Greek hexameters.1 In their present form they consist of twelve books, together with

several fragments. Passing over two large fragments, which seem to have originally

formed the chief part of the introduction to Book III., we have (1) the two first Books.

These contain part of an older and Hellenist Jewish Sibyl, as well as of a poem by the

Jewish Pseudo-Phocylides, in which heathen myths concerning the first ages of man are

curiously welded with O ld Testament views. The rest of these two books was composed,

and the whole put together, not earlier than the close of the second century, perhaps by a

Jewish Christian. (2) The third Book is by far the most interesting. Besides the fragments

already referred to, vv. 97-807 are the work of a Hellenist Jew, deeply imbued with the

Messianic hope. This part dates from about 160 before our era, while vv. 49-96 seem to

belong to the year 31 b.c. The rest (vv. 1-45, 818-828) dates from a later period. We must

here confine our attention to the most ancient portion of the work. For our present

purpose, we may arrange it into three parts. In the first, the ancient heathen theogony is

recast in a Jewish mould - Uranus becomes Noah; Shem, Ham, and Japheth are Saturn,

Titan, and Japetus, while the building of the Tower of Babylon is the rebellion of the

Titans. Then the history of the world is told, the Kingdom of Israel and of David forming

the centre of all. What we have called the second is the most curious part of t he work. It

embodies ancient heathen oracles, so to speak, in a Jewish recension, and interwoven

with Jewish elements. The third part may be generally described as anti- heathen,

polemical, and Apocalyptic. The Sibyl is thoroughly Hellenistic in spirit. She is loud and

earnest in her appeals, bold and defiant in the tone of her Jewish pride, self-conscious and

triumphant in her anticipations. But the most remarkable circumstance is, that this

Judaising and Jewish Sibyl seems to have passed - though possibly only in parts - as the

oracles of the ancient Erythræan Sibyl, which had predicted to the Greeks the fall of

Troy, and those of the Sibyl of Cumæ, which, in the infancy of Rome, Tarquinius

Superbus had deposited in the Capitol, and that as such it is quoted from by Virgil (in his

4th Eclogue) in his description of the Golden Age.

Of the other Sibylline Books little need be said. The 4th, 5th, 9th, and 12th Books were

written by Egyptian Jews at dates varying from the year 80 to the third century of our era.

Book VI. is of Christian origin, the work of a Judaising Christian, about the second half

of the second century. Book VIII., which embodies Jewish portions, is also of Christian

authorship, and so are Books X. and XI.

III. The collection of eighteen hymns, which in their Greek version bear the name of the

Psalter of Solomon, must originally have been written in Hebrew, and dates from more

than half a century before our era. They are the outcome of a soul intensely earnest,

although we not unfrequently meet expressions of Pharisiac self- religiousness.<sup2 It is

a time of national sorrow in which the poet sings, and it almost seems as if these 'Psalms'

had been intended to take up one or another of the leading thoughts in the corresponding

Davidic Psalms, and to make, as it were, application of them to the existing

circumstances.3 Though somewhat Hellenistic in its cast, the collection breathes ardent