The Cumaean Sibyl as the Revelation-bearer in the Shepherd of Hermas

And it was revealed to me, brothers, while I was sleeping, by a most beautiful young man speaking to me, "The old lady, from whom you have received the book, who do you think she is?" I replied, "The Sibyl." "You are wrong," he said, "she is not." "Then, who is she?" I asked. He replied, "She is the Church."

Shepherd of Hermas, Vis II.iv.1

The above dialogue includes the first explicit reference to the pagan Sibyl figure in any extant Christian work (circaC.E. 148). She is mentioned only once in the whole of the Shepherd and even then, as we see here, is seemingly dealt short shrift. Yet, it was the beginning of a trend. Many Apologists in succeeding generations made extensive use of the pagan Sibyl as the authoress of Christian prophecies.¹ Typically, the Christianized Sibyl in these later works is a voice rather than a figure. It is the content of her "prophecies" which the Church Fathers stress more than her character.²

The exception to the idea that the Sibyl is a voice rather than a figure in Christian literature is the Shepherd of Hermas. It is generally conceded that even though the appellation "Sibyl" is used only once, there are several allusions to the Cumaean Sibyl in the preceding passages.³ Thus, Martin Dibelius, expressing the consensus of many scholars, does not grant that the Shepherd makes use of any of her prophecies, rather,

Hermas has employed the Sibyl-figure (Sibyllengestalt) only as a model; what she conveyed has nothing to do with the Sibylline verses; only her exterior is Sibyl-demeanored (sibyllenartig)—and Hermas himself indicates this clearly enough in Vis. II.iv.1.⁴

Naturally, with such a position being assumed by many scholars, there has been no genuine attempt as yet to explore Hermas' theological agenda for using the Sibyl figure and whether indeed she plays a more significant role than hitherto considered.

This article is an attempt to investigate the role of the Cumaean Sibyl as the revelation-bearer in the Shepherd. In so doing, I will attempt to refute Dibelius' position stated above and demonstrate that the intention of the Shepherd is to authenticate, through the use of the figure and the voice of the pagan Sibyl, the then novel, theological conception of creation, creatio ex nihilo, the idea that God created matter from absolutely nothing. We shall see that the Shepherd's adoption of creatio ex nihilo implies a discrete a quo and a discrete ad quem of that which is created, namely, the world and all that is in it. The transitoriness of the age then provides the foil for the Shepherd's depiction of the Church as pre-existent which, again by implication, will transcend the coming destruction of the world. In this way, the Shepherd provides ecclesiological remedia for the general lack of expectancy for the Parousia, for the attendant, ever-approaching tribulation, and for the pressing problem of his congregation's openness to the teaching of the Gnostic false prophets.

I. Creation in the Shepherd

The question of whether the author of the Shepherd actually intended to depict the creation view ex nihilo is a debated issue. Several scholars deny this possibility and suggest that it was the later apologists, Tatian, Theophilus or Irenaeus, who were to become the first Christian endorsers of the creatio ex nihilo concept.⁵ Other scholars seem quite convinced of the Shepherd's deliberate intention, yet are emphatic that Hermas merely depends upon earlier Jewish and Christian literature as possible allusions.⁶ Both camps, however, have given scarcely anything more than a cursory explanation for the Shepherd's respective use of creatio ex nihilo type of language and certainly no modern-day scholar credits the author of the Shepherd with any theological development in the area of cosmological thought.⁷ Yet, it is my position that this creatio ex nihilo concept forms the hypothetical basis for the modus ponens of Hermas' proof that the world is destructible. It is also the presupposition for...