Listen to the Sibyl : The History, Poetics and Reception of the Sibylline Oracles

‘Listen to the Sibyl’ revitalises reflection on the Sibylline Oracles with updated scholarship from diverse academic disciplines and reassesses their place within ancient Mediterranean literature. Chapters examine the Sibylline Oracles in overlapping contexts―Jewish, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Christian. Overall, the volume demonstrates that the Sibylline Oracles are as integral to the history of ancient Judaism as they are to the study of Greek literature, that they deserve a central place within the study of ancient Rome and Ptolemaic Egypt, and that their influence extends through the history of Christianity, illuminating the commitments and contestations of early modern humanist scholars.

Olivia Stewart Lester, PhD (2017), Yale University, is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Loyola University Chicago, working on prophecy in the ancient Mediterranean. She has published book chapters, articles, and a monograph on the Sibylline Oracles, entitled Prophetic Rivalry, Gender, and Economics: A Study in Revelation and Sibylline Oracles 4–5 (Mohr Siebeck, 2018).

Max Leventhal is Lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests range across Post-Classical Greek literature, with a particular focus on technical texts and Hellenistic Jewish texts. He is the author of Poetry and Number in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (Cambridge, 2022) and he is currently completing a second monograph on the Letter of Aristeas.

Hindy Najman, PhD (1998), Harvard University, is the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture and a fellow at Oriel College, University of Oxford. She is the director and founder of the Centre for the Study of the Bible in Oriel College. Her major publications include Scriptural Vitality: Rethinking Hermeneutics and Philology (Oxford, 2025) and Losing the Temple and Recovering the Future: An Analysis of 4 Ezra (Cambridge, 2014).

Joshua Scott, PhD (2022), University of Michigan, is the Director of Events and Technology for the Catholic Biblical Association of America. Recent publications include articles titled “The Power of Apocalypse: The Social Dynamics of Judgment in the Parables of Enoch and the Animal Apocalypse” in Understanding Power in the Ancient Near East (Brill, 2024) and “Eschatology” in the Online Encyclopaedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Elizabeth Stell, DPhil (2024), has published on prophecy and other aspects of ancient Jewish literature. She is currently preparing her doctoral dissertation, Hermeneutical Philology for Dream and the Fragments of the Exagoge of Ezekiel, completed at Oxford University, for publication.