on the origin and value of the several portions of the books is exceedingly interesting.  The oldest book is undoubtedly the third, part of which is preserved in the writings of Theophilus of Antioch, and originally consisted of one thousand verses, most of which we possess.  It was probably composed at the beginning of the Maccabean period, about 146 B.C., when Ptolemy VII. (Physcon) had become king of Egypt, and the bitter enemy of the Jews in Alexandria, and when the Jewish nation in Palestine had been rejoicing in their independence, through the overthrow of the empire of the Seleucidae by the usurper Tryphon.  The fourth book was written soon after the eruption of Vesuvius in the year of our era 79, and is a most interesting record of Jewish Essenism.  It contains the first anticipation of the return of Nero, but in a Jewish form, without Nero’s death and resuscitation.  The last of the Sibylline books seems to have been written about the beginning of the seventh century, and was directed against the new creed of Islam, which had suddenly sprung up, and in its fierce fanaticism was carrying everything before it.  In this apocalyptic literature—­the last growth of Judaism—­the voice of paganism itself was employed to witness for the supremacy of the Jewish religion.  It embraces all history in one great theocratic view, and completes the picture of the Jewish triumph by the prophecy of a great Deliverer, who shall establish the Jewish law as the rule of the whole earth, and shall destroy with a fiery flood all that is corrupt and perishable.  In these respects the Jewish Sibylline oracles have an interesting connection with other apocryphal Jewish writings, such as the Fourth Book of Esdras, the Apocalypse of Henoch, and the Book of Jubilees; and they may all be regarded as attempts to carry down the spirit of prophecy beyond the canonical Scriptures, and to furnish a supplement to them.

So highly prized was this group of apocryphal Jewish oracles by the primitive Christians, that several new ones were added to them by Christian hands which have not come down to us in their original state.  They were regarded as genuine productions, possessing an independent authority which, if not divine, was certainly supernatural; and some did not hesitate even to place them by the side of the Old Testament prophecies.  In the very earliest controversies between Christians and the advocates of paganism, they were appealed to frequently as authorities which both recognised.  Christian apologists of the second century, such as Tatian, Athenagoras, and very specially Justin Martyr, implicitly relied upon them as indisputable.  Even the oracles of the pagan Sibyl were regarded by Christian writers with an awe and reverence little short of that which they inspired in the minds of the heathen themselves.  Clement of Alexandria does not scruple to call the Cumaean Sibyl a true prophetess, and her oracles saving canticles.  And St. Augustine includes her among the number of