And this:In any case, the knowledge that the educated portion of the heathen world, so far as it was religious at all, was permeated with a philosphical theology not unlike that which could be stated as the essence of their own religion, furnished the cosmopolitan Jews with an excellent opening for proselytising. The claim could be made to instruct the multitude authoritatively in a wisdom long recognised by the few in their own lands. Besides, the Jews came from the East, to which the peoples of the West were accustomed to look as the home of esoteric mysteries. One form which proselitism took was accordingly the writing of those Greek compositions in verse known as the Sibylline Oracles, The Cumaean, or some other Sibyl was represented as proclaiming the superiority of the Jewish religion to all others, the falsity of ''idols'' and the identity of the God of the Jews with the God of the universe. Beyond their pure teism, the Sibylline books contained Messianic elements.
Hence they came to be much appealed to on behalf of Christianity; for which reason Celsus, in his True Word addressed to the Christians, gave them the name of ''Sybillists''.
(Thomas Whittaker, The Origins of Christianity, p. 17-18)
(p.27-28, my corsive)...it is interestig to compare a Messianic prophecy from the Sibylline Oracles, translated by the Rev. W. J. Deane as follows: ''Now a certain excellent man shall come again from heaven, who spread forth his hands upon the very fruitful tree, the best of the Hebrews, who once made the sun stand still, speaking with beauteous words and pure lips''. Here, as Mr. Robertson would say, we observe the conception passing into that of the Teaching God. The ''very fruitful tree'' (or ''tree of fair fruit'') has reference, of course, to that sacrificial idea of which the implications have been brought out by Mr. Frazer in The Golden Bough.
How is possible that this prophecy from Sibylline Oracles, if indeed that is the correct translation, is gone so unnoticed by mythicists?
Here we have in nuce all the elements of later myth:
1) the tree could be the same tree on which Jesus was hanged according to the Talmud.
2) the ''his hands'' outstretched on the tree remind partially the similar theme of stretched arms present in the Odes of Solomon (that prof Davies considers pre-christian). Needless to say that the figure on the tree resembles too closely the crucified.
3) ''...the best of the Hebrews, who once made the sun stand still,'' , a implicit reference to Joshua (=Jesus) ?
4) the idea that a mythological deity teaches.
Questions:
What you think about that prophecy of Sibylline Oracles?
When and where do you date that text?
Can be that prophecy the first embrional ''Christian'' myth, older than any sacred drama about Jesus?
And if was it written in Diaspora, would it be the ''missing link'' who some Greeks take for the reversal of the messianic concept of Joshua ( from ''national salvation'' to ''individual salvation'' by a god who dies and rises again)?
Thanks for any reply
