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Miriam, Sibyl of God

Miriam, Sibyl of God

Last updated on: August 8, 2017 at 3:59 pm by Henry Karlson

Miriam, Sibyl of God 2017-08-08T15:59:58-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Sibyl of Cumae. Filippino Lippi [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

In the ancient world, there were many women oracles, prophetesses for the gods, who would speak and utter mysterious predictions to those who came to them asking for their help and guidance. In this fashion, many women not only found a place in society, but an elevated place in the religious consciousness of mankind. They were designated with the title, Sibyl, which according to St. Isidore of Seville, could be used for any female seer: “And just as every man who prophecies is called either a seer (vates) or a prophet (propheta), so every woman who prophesies is called a Sibyl, because it is the name of a function, not a proper noun.”[1] And yet, it was also used as a proper name, for specific holy women who presided at particular shines of the gods, with ten particular ones being considered the ten great Sibyls of the ancient world. These ten great Sibyls were mentioned by Lactantius in his Divine Institutes:

But he says that the Sibyls were ten in number, and he enumerated them all under the writers, who wrote an account of each: that the first was from the Persians, and of her Nicanor made mention, who wrote the exploits of Alexander of Macedon;— the second of Libya, and of her Euripides makes mention in the prologue of the Lamia;— the third of Delphi, concerning whom Chrysippus speaks in that book which he composed concerning divination—the fourth a Cimmerian in Italy, whom Nævius mentions in his books of the Punic war, and Piso in his annals—the fifth of Erythræa, whom Apollodorus of Erythræa affirms to have been his own countrywoman, and that she foretold to the Greeks when they were setting out for Ilium, both that Troy was doomed to destruction, and that Homer would write falsehoods;— the sixth of Samos, respecting whom Eratosthenes writes that he had found a written notice in the ancient annals of the Samians. The seventh was of Cumæ;, by name Amalthæa, who is termed by some Herophile, or Demophile, and they say that she brought nine books to the king Tarquinius Priscus, and asked for them three hundred philippics, and that the king refused so great a price, and derided the madness of the woman; that she, in the sight of the king, burnt three of the books, and demanded the same price for those which were left; that Tarquinias much more considered the woman to be mad; and that when she again, having burnt three other books, persisted in asking the same price, the king was moved, and bought the remaining books for the three hundred pieces of gold: and the number of these books was afterwards increased, after the rebuilding of the Capitol; because they were collected from all cities of Italy and Greece, and especially from those of Erythræa, and were brought to Rome, under the name of whatever Sibyl they were. Further, that the eighth was from the Hellespont, born in the Trojan territory, in the village of Marpessus, about the town of Gergithus; and Heraclides of Pontus writes that she lived in the times of Solon and Cyrus—the ninth of Phrygia, who gave oracles at Ancyra;— the tenth of Tibur, by name Albunea, who is worshipped at Tibur as a goddess, near the banks of the river Anio, in the depths of which her statue is said to have been found, holding in her hand a book. The senate transferred her oracles into the Capitol.[2]

Despite coming from pagan lands and representative of gentile religious traditions, the Christian tradition took up the Sibyls, respected them, and indeed, the work of God being established in and through them. Holy women from the past were recognized and honored for their holiness, explaining why their words often were recognized as being properly prophetic, that is, they truly were prophetesses of God, putting to shame those men who failed to heed their cryptic declarations. Indeed, Christians believed they gave authentic prophecies, not only of the coming of Christ, but also of the end of the world. The Sibyls were not false prophetesses. Their words, or at least words believed to come from them, were often quoted by Christian apologists as they defended the Christian faith, such as can be seen in the way St. Clement of Alexandria used their words in his Exhortation to the Heathen:

Let the Sibyl prophetess, then, be the first to sing to us the song of salvation:—

“So He is all sure and unerring:

Come, follow no longer darkness and gloom;

See, the sun’s sweet-glancing light shines gloriously.

Know, and lay up wisdom in your hearts:

There is one God, who sends rains, and winds, and earthquakes,

Thunderbolts, famines, plagues, and dismal sorrows,

And snows and ice. But why detail particulars?

He reigns over heaven, He rules earth,

He truly is;”—

where, in remarkable accordance with inspiration she compares delusion to darkness, and the knowledge of God to the sun and light, and subjecting both to comparison, shows the choice we ought to make. For falsehood is not dissipated by the bare presentation of the truth, but by the practical improvement of the truth it is ejected and put to flight.[3]

Like many oracles, the Sibyls seemed to be possessed by a divine frenzy. When they spoke, they often seemed to be out of their mind or mad. To the ancients, this was not an indication of a fault; rather, it was an indication that they had indeed touched the divine world. Their mind, their way of thinking and understanding the world was transcendent and they found it difficult to relate what they experienced in words, as Plato has Socrates indicate in his Phaedrus:

It was when they were mad that the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona achieved so much for which both states and individuals in Greece are thankful; then sane they did little or nothing. As for the Sibyl and others who by the power of inspired prophecy have so often foretold the future to so many, and guided them alright. I need not dwell on what is obvious to everyone. Yet in its place to appeal to the fact that madness was accustomed no shame nor disgrace by the men of old who gave things their names; otherwise they would not have connected the greatest of arts, whereby the future is discerned, with the very word ‘madness,’ and named it accordingly.[4]

The madness was normally reserved for those times when they made contact with the divine world, though it could have left its mark on them and how they lived. They lived a life which separated them from the ordinary world, found themselves touched by the holy, and so through them, God was able to reach out and speak to the gentile nations, directing them to him. Their prophecies about the end of the world have even been preserved in holy tradition, as they are remembered in the Dies Irae:

Dies iræ, dies illa

Solvet sæclum in favilla,

Teste David cum Sibylla.

Women, then, have been known for their great holiness, for being touched by God, for transcending the ordinary world, leading and directing ungodly men away from their ill-formed thoughts and plans. The Spirit which blows as it wills often finds itself speaking throughout the world, uniting humanity together through holy women who challenge the assumptions and conventions of the powers that be, providing mystical truths which help shape what humanity as a whole knows of the divine realm.

Miriam the Prophetess by Anselm Feuerbach [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

It is therefore, with much credibility, that we can find what the Sibyls represented for the gentiles as being found within the Jewish tradition as well. More than any other, Miriam, the sister of Moses, could be designated as a spirit-born holy woman who would easily be classified as a Sibyl if she resided in gentile lands. While not much of what she said was written down, Scripture and tradition certainly designates her as being a great prophetess, bringing forth the glory of God to the people of Israel:

Then Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and dancing. And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea” (Ex. 15:20-21 RSV).

Miriam, according to Jewish tradition, was a prophetess of God from her youth. She helped guide and direct her parents, making sure they remained together, helping them realize that their son, Moses, would be the one who saved the people of Israel. When Scripture indicated that she stood by and watched Moses being taken by the daughter of the Pharaoh, Jewish lore suggested she was following him and his exploits because prophecy had revealed to her what was to come:

And his sister stood at a distance, to know what would be done to him. Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, and her maidens walked beside the river; she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to fetch it (Ex. 2:4-5 RSV).

We also find, in the later prophets, Mariam being indicated as being one of the great prophets sent to the people of Israel as a witness of God’s great love and desire for Israel as a whole: “For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of bondage; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam” (Mic. 6:4 RSV). Scripture might not have revealed all that she did, but Jewish oral tradition remembered many aspects of her life, helping us, if we explore them, realize that she was just as much an instrument for the salvation of Israel as was Moses. While Israel was in its long Exodus from Egypt into the land they would eventually possess, not only Moses, but also Mariam, was believed to miraculously help provide the people of Israel with the water they needed so that they would not die of thirst; this is why in the book of Numbers, when shed died, it is said that the people of Israel suffered:

And the people of Israel, the whole congregation, came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month, and the people stayed in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there. 2 Now there was no water for the congregation; and they assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron (Numbers 20: 1-2 RSV)

There was also something of the frenzy of the Sibyls associated with her; she was touched by God and she knew it, and it often made it tough for her to follow normal social conventions, even if and when they were about her brother, Moses. When she criticized Moses for his relationship with a Cushite woman, we see that her frenzy led her to speak out of turn. Like a Sibyl, she had been touched by God, and that caused, as it were, a “leprosy” which turned her white as snow, so that she would be set apart for a time in order to return from her spiritual high and allow her to return to the frame of mind needed to be with the community as a whole:

And Moses cried to the LORD, “Heal her, O God, I beseech thee.” But the LORD said to Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be shamed seven days? Let her be shut up outside the camp seven days, and after that she may be brought in again.” So Miriam was shut up outside the camp seven days; and the people did not set out on the march till Miriam was brought in again. After that the people set out from Hazeroth, and encamped in the wilderness of Paran. (Numbers 1:1-16 RSV).

Being touched by God, being touched by divine frenzy, is at once a glorious and yet dangerous thing; those touched by it might be set apart as special, but they still need to remember that it is all a gift of God and so they need to stay humble; failure to do so is not indication that their prophetic nature has been lost, but rather, the need for a time of cooling off, a time in which they would suffer the consequences of their pride before being returning to their proper mission in life. This can be seen in and how Moses himself would suffer as a result of his own pride: he still was the great Moses, touched by God, but even he had to remember his proper place in the world. Miriam’s “leprosy” served as a fitting reminder that she had been set apart, purified by the touch of God, but yet she should not take her holiness for granted. Even though she had been touched by God, she still had to let God remain God, and leave things out of her control to God alone. She would have to learn to leave the judgment of those things around her to God alone. She would then be open to the Spirit once again, and be a well to the world, not only giving the people of Israel the physical water they needed while in the desert, but also the spiritual presence which water serves to symbolize in Scripture, that is, the Holy Spirit.

Thus, we can and should come to terms with the fact that the Holy Spirit has long gone to women, holy women who often were ignored or forgotten as they were put into seclusion, revealing through them the greatness of God. They were secluded and treated as mad, and yet they were truly the sane ones, for the sanity of holiness transcends the madness of human custom. Often pushed aside, with their holiness affirmed in highly sanitized versions of their greatness, the Sibyls, the women prophets of the world, stand together, a long line of visionaries who reveal the sanity of man must give way to the vessels of the Spirit which cannot be silenced. Miriam stood side by side with Moses and Aaron – she worked for the people of Israel just as much as Moses did, for by her prophecy, Moses was saved, Moses was remembered by his family, and Moses could lead the people of Israel out of Egypt.[5]

[1] St. Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies. Trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 201), 181.

[2] Lactantius Divine Institutes in ANF(7):16.

[3] St. Clement of Alexandria, “Exhortation to the Heathen” in ANF(2):194.

[4] Plato, Phaedrus in Plato: the Collected Dialogues. ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 491[244b].

[5] Likewise, the new Miriam, the new Sibyl set apart for the glory of God, Mary the Theotokos, truly worked for our salvation as she said yes to God. Through her Christ our savior was born, and through her, the people of God are consistently given the water of life, the gifts of the Spirit, thanks to her intercession.

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