The oldest of the surviving Sibylline oracles seem to be books 3–5, which were composed partly by
Jews in Alexandria. The third oracle seems to have been composed in the reign of
Ptolemy VI Philometor. Books 1–2 may have been written by Christians, though again there may have been a Jewish original that was adapted to Christian purposes. All the oracles seem to have undergone later revision, enrichment, and adaptation by editors and authors of different religions, who added similar texts, all in the interests of their respective religions. The Sibylline oracles are therefore a
pastiche of Greek and Roman
pagan mythology, employing motifs of
Homer and
Hesiod; Judeo-Christian legends such as the
Garden of Eden,
Noah and the
Tower of Babel;
Gnostic and early Christian
homilies and
eschatological writings; thinly veiled references to historical figures such as
Alexander the Great and
Cleopatra, as well as many allusions to the events of the later Roman Empire, often portraying Rome in a negative light. Some have suggested that the surviving texts may include some fragments or remnants of the
Sibylline Books with a legendary provenance from the
Cumaean Sibyl, which had been kept in temples in Rome. The original oracular books, kept in Rome, were accidentally destroyed in a fire in 83 BC, which resulted in an attempt in 76 BC to recollect them when the Roman senate sent envoys throughout the world to discover copies. This official copy existed until at least AD 405, but little is known of their contents. That the use of the Sibylline Oracles was not always exclusive to Christians is shown by an extract from Book III concerning the
Tower of Babel as quoted by the Jewish historian
Flavius Josephus, in the late 1st century AD. The Christian apologist
Athenagoras of Athens, writing
A Plea for the Christians to
Marcus Aurelius in , quoted the same section of the extant Oracles verbatim, in the midst of a lengthy series of classical and pagan references including
Homer and
Hesiod, and stated several times that all these works should already be familiar to the Roman Emperor.
Varro enumerated ten Sibyls:
Persian,
Libyan,
Delphic,
Cimmerian, Erythrean,
Samian,
Cumean, Hellospontian,
Phrygian, and Tiburtine. The list omits the
Hebrew,
Chaldean, and
Egyptian Sibyls. The
Suda repeats this list but identifies the Persian Sibyl with the Hebrew. The
Sibyls themselves, and the so-called Sibylline oracles, were often referred to by other early Church fathers;
Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch (),
Clement of Alexandria (),
Lactantius (), and
Augustine (), all knew various versions of the pseudo-Sibylline collections, quoted them or referred to them in paraphrase, and were willing to Christianize them, by as simple means as inserting "Son of God" into a passage, as Lactantius: Some fragmentary verses that do not appear in the collections that survive are only known because they were quoted by a Church Father.
Justin Martyr (), if he is truly the author of the
Exhortation to the Greeks, gives such a circumstantial account of the Cumaean Sibyl that the
Address is quoted here at the
Cumaean Sibyl's entry. The
Catholic Encyclopedia states, "Through the decline and disappearance of paganism, however, interest in them gradually diminished and they ceased to be widely read or circulated, though they were known and used during the
Middle Ages in both the East and the West." [Need edition] Thus, a student may find echoes of their imagery and style in much early medieval literature. These books, in spite of their pagan content, have sometimes been described as part of the
Pseudepigrapha. They do not appear in the canonical lists of any Church. ==Manuscripts and editions==