Iron & Myth 46: The Sybylline Oracles - A View From The Bunker - Fringe Radio Network

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
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(00:27):
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Speaker 2 (00:45):
This is a View from the Bunker. Now here's Derek Gilbert.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Christian oracles Jewish oracles? Are they even a thing? We
will discuss that this month on Iron and Myth. Welcome,
I'm Derek Gilbert, joining me for our monthly roundtable. Here
on a View from the Bunker are esteemed panel first,
the pastor of the Foreign Baptist Church of Northern Colorado
and an esteemed author and lately a lightning rod for

(01:14):
theological dispute. Doug van Dorn, the award winning screenwriter, best
selling novelist who's written probably the most anti woke novel
in recent memory and thus himself a lightning rod for controversy.
Brian Goadowa and the one about whom it has said
he is my cow bell, Please more cow bell. The

(01:35):
founder and director of the Institute of Biblical Anthropology, doctor
Jed Burton, gentlemen, welcome The Sibiling Oracles, a collection of
texts that we've been reading over the last month or so,
and boy, it's a real interesting stew of ideas and

(01:59):
view points. But before we get into it, you know,
the Sibiling Oracles, I guess the first question we need
to address is, you know, what what are these oracles?
Why are they called sibiling? What are the sibyls? Jud
we turned to you first. What are the sibils? Who
were they and why are they relevant?

Speaker 4 (02:17):
Well, the sibils were these ancient prophetesses, these seers, and
they were generally attached to a temenos or a shrine.
If we're to believe now by the ancient world, I

(02:39):
mean the the Greek and the later Greek or Roman world,
if we're to believe Pausanias, who was a.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
Kind of.

Speaker 4 (02:52):
Kind of a polymath really, but most of most of
his writing is on geography and history and kind of
ancient travel, that sort of thing, And so I guess
you could lump anthropology in there too. The second century
eighty writer, who's who traces the tradition of the sybyl

(03:17):
this prophetess back to the really what would be the
late myson ay In period or the beginning of the
Greek Dark Age around the late twelfth eleventh century. So
we're still basically talking about myson ay and culture, and

(03:38):
if people are interested in diving into that, that's a
whole other rabbit trill to go down. But there's some
interesting origins for a lot of a lot of Greek
ritual and Greek Greek magic in particular the day back
to the Mycenean period. So shouldn't surprises a lot that,

(04:00):
at least for in Pausanias's mind and a lot of
the other ancient writers, these origins were deep. Now from
a comparative context, the the sort of wild woman uh
serious archetype that those are functionaries that you find not

(04:21):
only in the the ancient Greek and the ancient ary
Eastern world, but really the world over. Just to sort
of put it in an anthropological context in in some
ways it's a kind of shamanistic role. In more formalized,
structured societies, it's more it can be more part of

(04:44):
a structured priesthood. But these are the traditions that Pausanias,
not only as contemporaries, but people in the ancient world
in general, are are referring to with with the sybols. Now,
of course, in the sibyls, that's the that's the Greco
Roman literary tradition. Did we find that coming coming to rest,

(05:06):
But there were sibyls that came from They were recognized
from different parts of of the Mediterranean basin, not just
in in say Greece or Italy, but also in other
places like North Africa and across the Levant. And as
I say, they're they're generally associated with a temenus, a

(05:29):
shrine of some kind. There was a sibyl. A lot
of people will be familiar with the oracle at Delphi,
but before again, if we're to believe some of these
ancient sources, before that, before the the Pythia, the the

(05:50):
seer who who was basically in charge of of rendering
these sort of mystical revelations, that at Delpha there was
a sybyl Before that, that was attached to the shrine
at Delphi. So it's kind of a it's it's a

(06:12):
very strange story and one that would seem on the
surface irrelevant or at least at least peripheral until you
start to dig into the the these collections of sybil
and oracles that we have that are actually that finally

(06:34):
come into the form that that we sort of read
in extreme late antiquity, like the five hundreds and the
six hundreds a d so long standing tradition of these
uh and they they along with with other sources like Augustine,
like a City of God, are actually some of our

(06:57):
more comprehensive sources of classical mythology. But they these writings
and revelations all begin with the tradition of this this
prophet is that came to be known as the Sibyl
in the ancient ancient world.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
So the collection that we've got, which is introduced by
a prologue, which as you said, is probably dated no
earlier than the sixth century a d. So in the
five hundreds, at some point pulled together a collection of
these writings into the form that we have now. And

(07:40):
there are gosh, how many books where they're all together.

Speaker 5 (07:45):
I found four fourteen and then some extra fragments.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, and what I what I found, I guess a
little frustrating from a modern reader's perspective is that they
don't go from most ancient to the most modern. It's
it's really a kind of a hash at some time,
and in fact, in some of the books themselves they
kind of skip forward and backward and in time, so

(08:11):
you really have to read the commentaries to kind of
understand what was being what was being written there. Doug,
what was your takeaway from from the Oracles?

Speaker 6 (08:23):
You know, I didn't know what a sibyl was even
when I was first reading them many years ago, and
it wasn't until I saw the movie three hundred that
I actually feel that's what a sibyl is.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
You know.

Speaker 6 (08:38):
Uh, these books have been fascinating to me for I
guess eighteen or so years since I kind of first
figured out what the Sudipigrifa stuff was. I think one
of the most interesting collections that we have of of
Old Testament Sudipigrifa.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Part of it's because they.

Speaker 6 (08:59):
You know, you've got you've got both Jewish strains and
you've got Christian strains. In these in this collection of
what we call Sibiline oracles, and they're they're opposed to
these Greek Roman sibyls that are out there and they're
really doing uh, they're doing politics against those. Like the

(09:20):
very first book, it's probably one of the more Jewish
ones that we have, and it's a it's kind of
a retelling of the Golden Age. I think what is
of Homer in that he has almost line for line
and may and it's it's telling that it's the five

(09:43):
different Golden Age stories, but it's totally totally twisting it
so that where you've got in the Greeks, these are
gods and these are supernatural entities, and then they kind
of come down here over the course of time. It
starts with a gold in Age, well, they actually move
it all post flood to the Sons of Noah, and

(10:08):
they completely in this in this particular one, the first one,
they totally desupernaturalize anything and they turn it all into men.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
I think that's especially with some of the work that.

Speaker 6 (10:18):
I've been doing with with what the rabbis were doing
with the Sons of God texts in the second century AD,
I have a feeling that this is kind of following
in that trajectory. But there's some older strands that still
that still seem to tell some of the.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
The older Watcher story. But you kind of can't.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
You can't.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
You can't like say, is it is it anti supernatural?
Is it supernatural?

Speaker 6 (10:41):
Because it's this weird conglomerate thing that we have handed
down to us, you know now in the twenty first century.
And I just think it's a from a historical point
of view, what the Jews were thinking, what the Christians
were thinking, how they were using sybils, Like why would
they even use sybils in the first place? That's why
to me, we would never think of doing something like that, Yeah,

(11:03):
or why what wouldn't make an early Christian or a
Jew for that matter, say, you know, I think we're
gonna kind of do some They wouldn't call them forgeries,
but they would call them pseudopigrapha. We're gonna say a
Sibyl came along, and this is the true Sibyl who
g is the true words of the true God as
opposed to all the rest of you. And and then
like this actually becomes a thing that the church fathers

(11:25):
would use to say you know, this is this is
really important stuff, that they were predicting the prophecies of
Christ and all this kind of stuff like that. I
find it endlessly fascinating on just numerous levels.

Speaker 5 (11:38):
But don't forget, Church fathers were very intent upon, they
were very learned and very intent upon sort of using
paganism and Greeks, Greece religion, in particular Greek literature, right Homer,
not just the religious stuff, but the famous Greeks, including

(12:00):
Aristotle and Plato. They were very, very focused on trying
to argue that these Greeks, even if they didn't know
the Living God, they actually were in tune and they
pointed towards Christ in some way. That was a very
big fad in that time period. So it wouldn't surprise
me that they would also sort of and Helenism. You know,

(12:22):
Hellenism lasted from you know, from three hundred BC until
five hundred AD, so Helenism was always influencing people and
trying to say, hey, yeah, the Greeks were saying what
we're saying too, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that,
but I'm just saying the context of it, it makes
it makes sense to me why they would then choose, well,

(12:43):
even the Greek sybyls, because they're prophetesses, right, and they're
female prophetesses, I think, almost exclusively, aren't they.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah, means of prophet Yeah, you're right.

Speaker 5 (12:55):
So you've got these fourteen books, and I was like
reading through the and yeah, I think you're right there.
It's kind of a mish mash. In fact, you it's
very interesting to I got a couple of books where
I'm reading the history of their providence and the discovery
and the editing of them. It's very fascinating. Actually, it's

(13:16):
a lot of the things that you actually they try
to apply against the Bible.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
You know.

Speaker 5 (13:20):
So you've got all these books, but they don't you know,
they go back from about third century BC to about
the fourth or fifth century eighty. So that's it. That's
a lot of that's several hundred years where they are edited,
or they are added to, or they are you know,
brought together. So's it's not like they just found these

(13:42):
all in one And the history of them is such
that the Roman sybols that were the famous ones, you know,
they were destroyed I think in like PREBC or something
like that, right, and so they had to be replaced,
and so there's that there's that factor, and these also
have gone through that that tribulation. Well, what they are

(14:03):
is basically if you read them, you get the sense
of it it's all prophecies, you know, and they kind
of reads similar to Dan it's put.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
It's put as prophecy, right but.

Speaker 5 (14:13):
Right, well, yeah, that's that's what I mean, that's what's interesting.

Speaker 6 (14:16):
Yeah, they tell they'll tell the Christian story of Jesus
in all this detail, clearly after the fact, but written
as prophecy and then and then told as if it
was it was, you know, they said it three hundred
years ago.

Speaker 5 (14:31):
Yeah, And that's that's called the scholar league turf for
that is vaticinium ex event to. It means prophecy after
the event, and it is a common thing. But that's
how you're so that's how you're reading. It's like you're
reading history as if it was prophesied. Now, it has
a long history of argument, even within the Christian scholarly world,

(14:51):
but you know, going back to the eighteenth nineteenth century
and such, but it was. It's really quite fascinating because
there were many Christians who believe they were genuine and
many that don't and uh, you know, but but this,
this ex eventu is actually a technique that's used against
the Bible as well. And I've been, you know, doing

(15:12):
a lot of study on Daniel lately, and that's very
much applied to Daniel, arguing that Daniel was written in
the second century Hellenistic context. It's got the multiple, it's
got the uh sequential kingdoms. That sounds like that's Hellenist
and all that. So you know, it's it's a it's
a very nuanced argument. I do think it applies to

(15:32):
these as you read through them. But uh yeah, so
so it is fast and in a way you're seeing
you know, if you if you read like I would
recommend getting the book. There's a couple of good translations
of them out there. One's called the Old Testament Suit
of piger for Volume one, which is James Charles Worth.

(15:54):
That's the more recent one. The older one you could
get free probably anywhere on the internet, is by Charles
and that's called Suit of Pigre for of the Old
Testament Volume two that has the Sibyls in there. But
so and each of these go through are written. You know,
it's a mess. It's basically a mess. You know, each
of this, Like you said, Derek, they're not in chronological

(16:16):
order and such, so it's just a mess. But that's
the one the one paradigm is they're they're mostly telling
history through prophecy, and they tend to try to they
go anywhere from the flood all the way up to
you know, the destruction of the temple and and shortly
after up to I think Hadrian and such. So that's
that's sort of the the big picture of the literature

(16:38):
as as you're reading it, and it will be really
hard to understand it unless you if you read, if
you get one of these books like by Charles Worth,
he'll have footnotes that will tell you, you know, this
is talking about Hadrian, right, or this is talking about whoever,
and that helps you place it when you're reading. Otherwise
it would just be a bunch of gobbledygook. At least
that's what it was for me.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Yeah. First, the introduction or the prologue rather, who was
some unknown author in the probably sixth century A d
Writing explains that there are ten of these sibyls, and
I think it's interesting that the first one that he
names they called thean Sibyl or the Persian is called
by the proper name sem Bete sa m b E

(17:21):
t h, who is of the family of the most
blessed Noah. They portray her in the Sibyls as the
daughter in law of Noah. So one of the women
married to one of the sons. Don't identify which one,
but in one of the prophecies said, you know, I
made it through the deluge and the flood, but then

(17:43):
I transgressed, and woe is me? What will happen? You know,
that kind of thing. And in fact, they they mentioned
in some of the notes here the Charlesworth edition, that
there have been some coins that were found in the
fourth century a d. Connecting this this alleged seer or

(18:03):
prophetess to Noahs. So apparently this is a story that
was known at the time. And again that's one of
the things that's really interesting about works like this. The
pseudepica for works is not that this, you know, gives
a secret information that was kept out of the Bible.
It's a window into what people in that time and
place believed. And it's the other thing I found interesting

(18:29):
of the repeated references to the prophecy of Nero coming
back as the Antichrist, as the future evil ruler of
the world. So this idea of the Nero red evevs. Yes,
thank you, Brian. The Nero red Avivas legend or Nero

(18:50):
reborn or revived or resurrected was pretty common in the
first century a d. And there are several different prophecies
in a couple of different books, book two and in
book five four where he's referenced as the fugitive from
Rome who will also come brandishing a great spear. And
you know, I find that really interesting that there were

(19:12):
people in the first century who thought that Nero was
going to come back from the Parthians. You know, it's
I don't know, with with Elvis or something. I'm not sure,
but there was a strong belief people who didn't believe
that Nero had actually died when he did, and that
he was going to be this prophesie anti Christ who

(19:35):
would who would return. So some strange ideas, but again
it helps us to get a better idea the the
the I don't know, the the milieu in which early
Christian Church was was developing and growing.

Speaker 5 (19:53):
Ancient Christian conspiracy theory.

Speaker 6 (19:58):
You know, there's a very interesting passage in Acts sixteen
where Paul casts this Pithian spirit out of this girl.
And I don't think it's a coincidence that it's a
girl and that's the same spirit I think that jud
was talking about a little bit ago, the kind of

(20:20):
I guess, possessed or whatever, the Sybil and yeah, the
Defico oracle. And you have these, uh, I guess by
the end of the first century and then on you know,
into the next probably one hundred years or so, you
have these Christians and Greeks and Romans that are all

(20:44):
kind of recognizing that something has happened to the sibyls.
I want to read a quote from Athanasius because I
find this really interesting in light of the fact that
Christians continued using the sibils even though they knew that
this was happening. I think it's something that there's something
going on here with why the Christians decided to use

(21:05):
the sybils for their Christian purposes.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
So the quote is this.

Speaker 6 (21:11):
When did men begin to forsake the worship of idols
except from the time that God, the true word of
God has come among men? Or when has soothsaying among
the Greeks and everywhere ceased and become vain, except when
the Savior has manifested himself on earth. Or when were
the deceit and madness of demons despised, except when the Word,

(21:33):
the power of God, who is the master also of
these condescended because of men's weakness, and appeared on earth.
And formerly everywhere was filled with the deceit of the
oracles and the utterances of those in Delphi and Dodona
and Boetia and Leika, in Libya and Egypt, and Kabiri

(21:54):
and the Pythonists were admired in the imaginations of human beings.
But now since Christ is an ounce everywhere, their madness
has also ceased, and no longer is there anyone among
them giving oracles. Formerly demons deceived human fancy, but now
after the divine manifestation of the Word has taken place,

(22:14):
their illusion has ceased. And the reason I think that
this is so interesting is because these oracles, these especially
the Christian side of them, are basically claiming that the
oracles of the Pagans were false. We're giving you the

(22:35):
true history through the true Sybil who I think you know.
Going back to what you said, Derek, from the line
of Noah or whatever. Right, we have the pure line,
the puercibl and she's going to tell the truth. And
I wanted to highlight this sibiling oracle in chapter in
Oracle eight.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Because it, like.

Speaker 6 (22:56):
After all, a whole bunch of stuff talking about pagan
history and all all this for two hundred lines, all
of a sudden you get this acrostic poem of Jesus.
And the acrostic poem is in Greek that Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, Savior cross, and so every line
of the poem begins with the next letter of Jesus

(23:20):
or Christ or Son of God, Savior and cross, and
it just gives this beautiful poem of who Jesus is.
And immediately after that poem and we can talk about
that poem if you guys want to, I think I
sent you an actual acrostic version of it that I
found in some scholar. But right after that, just listen
to some of the language of the sibyl. And there's

(23:44):
obviously a Christian sibyl here. Moses prefigured him stretching out
his holy arms, conquering Amelik by faith, so that the
people might know that he is elect and precious with God,
his father, the staff of David in the stone. He
promised the one who has believed in him will have
eternal life. For he will come to creation not in glory,

(24:05):
but as a man pitiable, without honor or form, so
that he might give hope to the pitiable. He will
give form to perishable flesh and heavenly faith of the faithless,
and he will fashion the original man formed by the
holy hands of God, whom the snake craftily caused the
error to go to the fate of death and receive
knowledge of good and evil. So it's to abandon God
and serve mortal customs, for the universal Ruler took him

(24:27):
into council. And then it goes on and it just
starts talking about how this man will heal every disease,
will he will take five loaves and a fish from
the scene, and will satisfy five thousand men in the desert,
And it just goes on and on with this amazing
from the context of a sibyl prophecy of what Jesus

(24:47):
is going to do, and putting that in the contrast
of how the Sibyls like they stopped they just stop
giving oracles. According to the early Christians and the Greeks.
So here you have these sibiling oracles that we're reading
that are like coming into that context and saying I

(25:08):
think basically they're saying, this is the reason why because
the final announcement of the Son of God has come.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yeah, Sharia very polemical, very.

Speaker 6 (25:17):
Subversive, like you like to talk about Brian of what
the Greeks were doing.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
Sharon and I wrote about this in our book Giants,
Gods and Dragons. The oracles of Apollo, which are the
ones that were consulted by even the Roman emperors, began
to fall silent. The Pythia at Delphi went quiet after
the second century a d. And in the third century
AD major oracles at Didema and Claris in Western Asia

(25:43):
minor ceased to prophesy. In fact, it was this development
among the oracles that led to the most intense persecution
of Christians, because it was in the year two ninety
nine that the junior caesar of the Eastern Road from
an empire, Galerius, who was not the Eastern but the
Roman Empire. He was the junior caesar to the emperor

(26:07):
who was Diocletian, heard from an oracle at Daphne, which
is near Antioch. That quote the righteous men, the righteous
men on earth were a bar to speaking the truth
end quote. So that prompted Diocletian to purge all Christians
out of the army, and then Christians throughout the Empire

(26:29):
began to be driven from their homes. Their property was confiscated,
thrown in prison, and things like this. This was worse
than the persecution under Nero in the first century, and
was prompted by the fact that the oracles were falling
silent and interestingly. And of course that lasted until just

(26:51):
before Glarius died. He had a really horrible disease, and finally,
in desperation he called in some Christians and said, pray
to your God for me. It didn't help. Glarius died
in great agony. But one of the last known messages
from Apollo was written on the wall of an ancient
Greek city in southwestern Turkey, Onawanda. I'm probably mispronouncing that,

(27:15):
but this is supposed to be from the oracle at Claris.
Quote self produced, untaught, without a mother, unshaken a name,
not even to be comprised in word, dwelling in fire.
This is God and we his messengers or angels are
a slight portion of God. Now, Lactantius, who was Constantine's

(27:40):
religious advisor, said that this couldn't refer to you to Jupiter,
because we knew who Jupiter, mother and father were. But
only Yahweh, the god of the Bible, could claim to
be self created, self produced. And the oracle speaking for
Apollo had been compelled to admit that we his angels

(28:01):
are just a slight portion of God. And then after
that the oracle at Claris also fell silent. So, yeah,
it's documented in history, and it blows my mind.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
And that isn't it really It's a super wild thing.

Speaker 6 (28:15):
And you know, thinking that that the that the I
didn't really I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
That that persecution was started because of the topic that
we're talking about tonight.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
Yeah, exactly. It was. It was intense, and it was
I think why when Christians finally then were legalized and
were able to become friends of the emperor under Constantine
and then later in the fourth century I think three
seventy six a d. It was Theodosius who made it
the official religion of the empire. Not necessarily a good

(28:50):
thing for theology, because then you had, you know, really
ambitious men who went into the clergy because they saw
it as a way to you know, become rich and powerful.
But still this is the sort of the backdrop against
which these oracles were compiled and put out there. And
it is as I think, that's a really good point, Doug.

(29:11):
It's strange, you know, what would motivate a Christian in
the sixth century AD to compile this and put this
together and say say no, no, no, no, this is not how
God has revealed his word. Is he revealed it through
the prophets, the last of which were among the apostles
in the first century.

Speaker 6 (29:31):
It makes you wonder if maybe Jedda has a comment
about that.

Speaker 4 (29:35):
Go ahead, I was just going to point out that
I think it also speaks to the I mean, the
events that unfold at the behest of Galerius and then Diocletian.
It gives us a kind of intelligence report on what
is going on in the demonic realm because of the
severity of the persecutions under Diocletian, because most of the

(30:00):
historians estimate that it was around ten thousand people Christians
empire wide that were killed.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
In it.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
And here amidst all that you have the crashing down
of the the speaking of these oracles, and so it
marks a kind of of in Star Wars terminology, a
tremor and the force. But there's there's definitely a shakeup
in the unseen realm, you know, during this time because

(30:30):
of that, which just adds to the you know, as
Doug has pointed out and illustrated here, adds to the
very interesting nature of all of this material and the
conditions and context that it takes place in.

Speaker 6 (30:47):
I mean, you have Jews that are that are using
these things before Christians are. They're they're they're writing these
sibiling oracles, some for some reason against Rome, and so
they thought that that was good idea. Then the Christians
come along with they probably are the ones that preserve
the text for us in the first place, and so
then they'll just insert these every once in a while,

(31:10):
a little Christian line just kind of sneak it in there,
and then sometimes entire you know, long long sections or
even entire oracles themselves become Christian. And yeah, I just
think that's wild. I'm curious, Brian from a writer point
of view, and from that polemical and subversive point of view,

(31:32):
what you think about this whole idea of like, if
you're putting yourself back in the early Church under this
context of sibyls and oracles going out, not not being
able to speak anymore, what do you what do you
think might be happening there? Like why are they using

(31:52):
why are they using sibiling oracles as a as a
way to further the Christian cause? Because, like I said,
I don't think we would ever do that today.

Speaker 5 (32:03):
Yeah, well, I don't know. I mean, I think it's
I think it's a it's an impulse in all of
us where we want to show that or we want
the truth that we believe we wanted to be to

(32:23):
have been there before us, you know what I mean.
And I do think that I mentioned it earlier, but
because of the influence of Hellenism. Look, and I mean
even even the people, the non Christians who hated Rome,
they they it was a it was a mentality in
Hellenism that Greece was really the It was the Golden age.

(32:47):
Rome was in control and Rome was in power, and
you know, Rome had everything, but everyone kind of knew. Yeah,
but the real art, the real beauty, the real wisdom
was Greece that kind of maintained throughout all of Hellenism.
And that's why I think that's what that's what's going
on in general, and not just with Christians, but with Jews,
where it's like, yeah, see, even the Greek symbols the

(33:11):
Drew prophetesses were actually foretelling you know, our Messiah or
our Savior or you know, our living God. And I
you know, I think this goes back to as well,
you know where we have had discussions on.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
This show.

Speaker 5 (33:27):
About your book, Doug, you know about and the notion
of astro theology and how you know, we've even come
to sort of think, you know what this whole thing
about astrology, if you look into its origins, you see
that it's a distortion of something that actually may have
been put The signs and the stars may have been

(33:47):
put there by God, but it was distorted by man
and become a worshipful act.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Right.

Speaker 5 (33:52):
But that there's actually, you know, there's a whole and
I would call it movement, but a whole way of
thinking by reputable scholars and Christians. I mean, not kooky
people necessarily who argue that you know, the constellations and
the zodiac actually their origins reflect the Gospel in the stars,

(34:16):
and you know, is that just reducible to we want
to find our Gospel truth in ancient paganism. Well it
maybe it Maybe the impulse doesn't mean it's not true, right,
but certainly that's that's what I That's kind of how
I've seen the whole thing, is that that impulse to

(34:38):
you want to place your truth in the mouths of
your opponents, or maybe not the opponents, but the Pagans
of the past, because those pagan Greeks were considered so
elevated that if you could find that that Christian intimation
in their words, then you know, people would more people
would believe, you know, or maybe just it's just the

(35:04):
inherent truth that and we believe this that there is
some truth in all belief systems, in all pagan belief systems.
It's not all lies. And so we go about even
on this show, seeking to find what's the truth in
the Greek mythology and the you know, et cetera. And
and I do think that that's a that's the truthful

(35:24):
side of it, you know, But of course you can
take it to extreme. You start lying and start writing
fake you know, fake prophecies, and then you're in trouble.

Speaker 6 (35:31):
You know, it's been going to be something along the
lines of how how you you know you've made it
your living to rewrite history in the form of fiction,
but it's historical fiction. Do you think that there could
be an overlap going on with what the Christians are
trying to do with the Sibyls?

Speaker 5 (35:53):
Sure, sure makes sense, makes sense to me.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
You see it even with the the Jews. And again,
because of the different times at which these different books
of Oracles are written, I found the third book really
interesting because as I'm working on the book I'm writing
now and hoping to get turned in by the end
of this month, going through the history of the Maccabean

(36:24):
period and all of the political stuff that was going
on between the Greek kingdoms in Syria and in Egypt,
and then the influence of the Romans coming in from
the west, the Armenians for a brief period in the
seventies AD that got as far as occur in what

(36:45):
is now northern Israel, and the Parthians coming from the east.
You had all of these different political things going on.
But the Third Sibiling Oracle is probably according to the
scholars coming out of God of a Jewish community that
was looking at one of the Greek kings of Egypt

(37:07):
as a potential savior, seventh of his line. So somewhere
in the period after Alexander the Great, they were looking
at a Greek king who would rise up and throw
off the Romans, who are now a problem for the Jews.

(37:28):
And that is the main difference again between the expectation
of the Jewish Messiah and as coming from the Sibiling
Oracle and the Jewish expectations. Say of the Asines those
who wrote the Book of First y Knack, is that
the jew whoever it was who wrote the Third Sibiling Oracle,

(37:52):
was looking for a king, a geopolitical savior, which is
kind of what the Jews of Jesus day were looking for,
which is why they reject him. But the scenes, we're
looking for a divine savior, an agent of God's judgment,
who was in fact God himself. There's at least one

(38:13):
verse in First Enoch in the Book of Parables chapters
thirty seven to seventy one, where it's pretty clear that
this character they call the anointed one or the chosen
one or the son of man is actually God himself,
which is fundamentally different from the expectation that the Jewish

(38:34):
of Jewish eschatology, at least coming from, say a phariseical background.
And again it's kind of amusing seeing that the eschatology
here in the Third Sibiling Oracle is looking for a
geopolitical savior who restore the kingdom, which is what the
apostles were asking Jesus an Act chapter one. You're going

(38:54):
to restore the kingdom to Israel, now, so you know,
And they were trying to figure it out there on
the fly. As we with two thousand years of twenty
twenty hindsight can look back and say, okay, well that
is almost kind of laughable now from our perspective. But
back in the day, when here something written in the

(39:16):
first century BC. According to scholars, the Third Sibiling Oracle
written before the Battle of Actium, which was the big
climactic battle between Caesar Augustus and Antony and Cleopatra. And
apparently Cleopatra had designs on Judea herself, which Herod was

(39:38):
not too fond of, especially because Herod had backed Antony
in the war against Caesar Augustus. It's Yeah, it's kind
of mind bogging when we start, you know, plugging this
into the historical context of what was going on in
the first century BC. So the Parthians invade, Herod comes
back with a romanari, backed with Anthony. He throws off

(40:00):
the Parthians. For a while. Even the Asscenes thought that
Herod was the Messiah until he got kind of murdery
with his family. It's well, okay, so he's not the Messiah.
But you know, it's all of that is the historical
background for this stuff here, which helps us to understand, Okay,

(40:22):
what were the Jews of Jesus day thinking? Why do
they have all these crazy ideas? Why were they so
resistant to him? It's because you had various strains of
Jewish theology, of which the Ascenes were one, the Pharisees
of another, the Sadducees with another, uh, and the Zelots
with another idea. And again here you've got this this

(40:43):
group of Jews in Egypt who somehow thought that the
Greek king or the predecessor to Cleopatra was going to
be their savior. Which is.

Speaker 6 (40:58):
It makes you want it makes you understand why why
the Christians took why we basically preserved almost all of
the Jewish pseudopigrapha, and then at just key points they
would insert a little thing that would be a Christian
kind of a interpolation. Why, because they were seeing that
these Jewish writings like lended themselves to exactly what the

(41:22):
New Testament was teaching, and so let's preserve them, let's
use them, and let's expand upon them, and that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 5 (41:30):
Interesting too, Derek, because you know, Josephus actually writes that
he thought Vespasian might be the Messiah in sense because
he fulfilled those some of those factors, you know. So, yeah,
it's interesting who various characters who the Jews considered might be.
And I think the Egyptian fair at the time of

(41:54):
the Third Sybyl was Bilometer. I think, yes, told me
the sixth, tell me the sixth Bilometer.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yeah. But interestingly there were some verses later in verses
three fifty three eighty and the third Sibiling Oracle, where
they the oracle prophesies Asia's vengeance on Rome and that
it would be a lady in other words, Cleopatra was interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (42:24):
So, but you know, in the spirit of Christmas, even
though I know this is coming out after Christmas, but
we're recording it in Christmas.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
I read another weeks before Christmas.

Speaker 5 (42:35):
Oh oh, okay, great, fantastic. I wanted to read another
little passage out of Sibling Oracles eight that Goddess going
on and it's a little bit later from the passage
he wrote, and it's on the incarnation. And it's just
it's cool, it's beautiful. It's also one of the reasons
why the early Christian scholars who were arguing saying, no,

(42:56):
this is not these are not, you know, prophecies from
Hagen's was that the prophecies in the Old Testament were
not as hyper specific. They're a lot more vague, like
the Virgin shall bear a child, and here it's like
a virgin named Mary will bear Jesus in the town

(43:17):
of Bethlet you know, like all in one verse, you know.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
But here's one of.

Speaker 5 (43:21):
Those passages where where it talks about the incarnation in
the last times he changed the earth and coming late
as a new light, he rose from the womb of
the Virgin Mary, coming from heaven. He put on a
mortal form. First, then Gabriel was revealed in his strong

(43:41):
and holy person. Second, the archangel also addressed the maiden
in speech, receive God virgin in your immaculate bosom. Thus speaking,
he breathed in the grace of God, even to one
who was always a maiden, interesting, even to one who
is always a maiden. Fear, and at the same time
one seized her. As she listened, stood trembling, her mind fluttered,

(44:05):
while her heart was shaken by the unfamiliar things she heard.
But again she rejoiced, and her heart was healed by
the voice. The maiden laughed and reddened her cheek, rejoicing
with joy and enchanting in heart with awe. Courage also
came over her. A word flew to her womb. In time,
it was made flesh and came to life in the womb,

(44:25):
and was fashioned in mortal form, and became a boy
by virgin birth. Where this is a great wonder to men,
but nothing is a great wonder for God the Father,
and God the Sun. The joyful earth fluttered to the
child at its birth. The heavenly thrown laughed, and the
world rejoiced. And here's this last interesting couple verses, which

(44:46):
also points back to this notion of under the Babylonian
astro theology. It says a wondrous new shining star was
venerated by Magi. The newborn child was revealed in a
mang to those who obey God cowards Goatherd's sheep Shepherds
of Sheep, and Bethlehem was said to be the divinely

(45:06):
named homeland of a beautiful poem.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
Actually, according to scholars, probably written towards the end of
the second century AD. Yep. But yeah, again, an interesting,
interesting way of putting this out there. We're going to
put this out there as a as an oracle from

(45:30):
a female seers prophetests. Prophetests did not play a major
role in the Bible.

Speaker 5 (45:43):
Well, interestingly, there was one named Holda during the time
of Jeremy, before Jeremiah, and some people refer to Deborah.
But you know, that's why, that's why the Jews and
Christians jumped on it, you know, because okay, they can
you know, you can have women prophetesss, so let's go
for it. Know, definitely could see that.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
Yeah, interesting stuff again, just a just a real mishmash
of things. And if you don't have a text that
has commentary or footnotes explaining what some of these references
are unless you're a scholar of history yourself and you
can place the references. Without the footnotes, you can really

(46:27):
get lost in this stuff. You don't.

Speaker 5 (46:30):
It would almost be more advantageous to read an article
about about it or a book about it than reading it.
It's that that that nuanced or that insider information.

Speaker 6 (46:45):
I mean, do you think it's like scandalous that we
have here a woman in all in every one of
these articles, a woman, like we said, like you just
brought up Derek because you were kind of reading my mind,
that is, becomes the main speaker of all of these
prophecies of Christ because like there is none of that

(47:06):
in the older New Testament. They're all men, and here
you have these Christians using the woman Sybil to tell
these things. I think that's just adds another layer of
just high strangeness to what was happening with these orders.

Speaker 5 (47:22):
But don't but they did have prophetesses, and.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
They did they had prophetesses.

Speaker 6 (47:26):
But but there, I mean even Withholda, you know, it's minor.
It's a minor thing. It's not like sure like this
is entire exception. It's just fourteen books of a woman. Yeah,
you know, and some of them are just like what
you just read, long, lengthy treaties on who Jesus is.
And it's coming from the mouth of a woman. That's

(47:46):
pretty pretty mind blowing. Whether you're a Jew or a Christian,
you know, either one of them. I think that's pretty
It's not what we normally think of.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
No, and what's even stranger, and this is something that
really caught my attention. We had the opportunity to go
to Rome back in twenty eighteen. We were part of
the Steve Quayle and Tim Albarino had a True Legends
expedition and Sharon and I were invited to go along.
We went to the Vatican and we saw the Cistine Chapel,

(48:16):
and up there on the Sistine Chapel Michaelangelo painted along
with the Old Testament prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel,
you had the Kumean Sibyl and a number of other
sibyls who were on the inside the Vatican because they
were considered purveyors of Christian prophecy. And I think it's

(48:38):
drawn from these texts that we're discussing now what's really weird.
And I shared the picture of the Kumean Sibyl with
you last month or last time we spoke, was you know,
Michael Angelo was kind of weird, dude. Yeah, she looked
like a professional wrestler. I mean, you see, you've got
this old woman's face. You know, this crone where a

(49:00):
cap but man, I mean Hulk Hogan type arms. It's
really weird. It's like, dude, Michelangelo, what.

Speaker 5 (49:09):
He had more of a masculine understanding of religion, you
know what I mean, he masculine eyes because he didn't
as an artist, you know, he could be he did
not have as much respect for women in that sense.
And then that time period, you know, and I know
michelangel himself actually, but that's why some people say he
was gay. I don't think he was.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
And it could be that he is just just understanding
of the physical form. He just in more steady on
men than women. I don't I don't know, but yeah,
it is. It is a little weird when you look
at those I mean, once you get past the facts,
like why do they have these symbols up there as
represented as equals you know on the Testament? Profits for me.

Speaker 5 (49:52):
As so from my perspective, I think this is a
weakness for it. And I think that we even today
we have a propense a weakness for its authenticity, if
you want to say, that is because and I think
we still have this problem today. We uh, we have
all these you know, and and and and and there's
every denomination is the problem in different ways. But we

(50:15):
look for the exceptions and we make them our rules.
And I think that that's the problem. You know, Yeah,
like Doug, you're like you're saying, you know, yeah, you know,
a female prophet is is very much of a rare exception.
But we tend to like to find those exceptions and
then explode them and expand them, right, And that's I

(50:36):
think it's that part of our sinful nature, honestly, trying
to trying to justify, justify exploring beyond what the truth is,
you know, or expanding on our own personal you know,
emphasies or biases right for the same reason why, you know,
that's why like feminist theology, that's what they'll do. They'll
find every little except every little exception of the woman

(50:57):
in the Bible, and it becomes the and then they
can interpret the entire Bible through that. I think that's
a weakness of a literary weakness, which is why I
don't think we should be that on the saale.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
Just a flaw.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
That process should be called just afly.

Speaker 5 (51:16):
That's good, I didn't catch that. Thanks for that, Elf,
I mean, cow Bell.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
You're welcome.

Speaker 6 (51:23):
Yeah, I mean I I I raised that issue not
to justify or not justify the Sibilanes.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
I just raise it because I find it strange.

Speaker 6 (51:33):
It's just it's really weird to me that the Christians
were doing a whole bunch of stuff. They're using oracles,
they're using women, they're you know, they're using things that
the Pagans were doing, and it becomes this mishmash that
at least some group, you know, decided, I think that
we need to preserve all of these oracles into some

(51:53):
sort of a like a codex form for later generations.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
That's just weird.

Speaker 6 (51:58):
It's something that you know, I think people should at
least just think about.

Speaker 4 (52:04):
Doug, don't you think too that? And and all of you.
Really the the sort of missiological stance of the early
Church just is is really still being formulated, you know,
during the during the first three centuries, and so that
when you get to the end of it, you know,

(52:25):
I know, that that Mike Heiser and you know, any
number of people have talked about this before, but the
Church used parallels in those cultures. The the people that
these mission early missionaries were evangelizing, the ethnophrinies is what

(52:49):
they were called. They're basically unbaptized or they were going
through the whatever catechism. Uh, you know, the the early
missionaries had they were trying to that was also another
way while they were trying to meet people where they
were at, you know. The last in our last discussion,
we talked a little bit about hagiography and how some

(53:14):
of those hagiographies reveal that that sort of parallel parallelism
or early Christian missionaries would would you know, if if
people were used to congregating at a sacred grove or something,
you know the standing orders, well, don't cut the trees down,

(53:35):
build the church there, because they're already used to congregating
in that place. At certain times they use that. And
I think I think at least in part what looking
at the sibiling Oracles and sort of the Christian and
the Jewish and particularly the Christian early Christian stance, is

(53:58):
that we're looking at a maybe not a chapter, but
a few pages in the The Evolution of the Church's
missiological sort of strategym during that time.

Speaker 6 (54:14):
I think there's probably the multiple things going on there.
Maybe that's probably one of them. My mind wonders about
something somebody like Turtellian when he goes into the homontanous
you know, thing with all his all his women and
they go into these frenzies and stuff like that, and
I wonder if something like that might also be contributing

(54:35):
to what's happening with the Sybils, to put a little
bit more of I guess a negative spend like what
you were talking about, Brian. I'm not not trying to
justify what they were doing, right, It's probably ironic because
you know, it's probably a bunch of men that are
writing these oracles in the name of a woman, right
most likely unless there is and some actual woman sybyl

(54:56):
going into ecstatic frenzies or something, and I guess as
possible at least in some cases. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
It's just the whole thing is bizarre.

Speaker 6 (55:04):
That's why I find the sibiling oracles almost endlessly fascinating,
because it doesn't fit hardly any paradigm that I have.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
But we see the same thing in terms of repurposing
a pagan work with the fourth Eclogue by Virgil Yeah,
which is attributed to the Kumean Sibyl, one of the
sibyls who was very important in a Roman origin story
where the last King of Rome, who was an Etruscan

(55:37):
by the name of Tarquin the Proud or Tarquinius Superbase,
he was approached by the Kumaan sibyl. The story goes
with nine books of oracles, and she offered him for
some ridiculously high price, and he laughed at her. So
she went through three of them on the fire, came
back the next day with six books and said, I'll
offer you the six, but for the same price as

(55:59):
the original nine, and he laughed at her again. She
threw three more on the fire, and then came back
the next day and said, okay, there are three left.
I'll offer them to you for the same price as
the original nine. And then the king's soothsayers, you know,
King Tarquin, maybe we should listen to her. She might
have something here. So he read what was in the

(56:19):
books and decided to give her the price that she asked.
That's part of the Roman origin story and Brian as
you mentioned, those were so important they were kept in
the Temple of Jupiter. But the temple burned during a
period of civil war around the year EIGHTYBC, and so
they sent agents out throughout the Roman Empire to collect
up all the sibiling oracles again and bring them back

(56:42):
to Rome. But the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, which was
attributed to this Kumean sibyl, and now the last age
of by Kume's sibyl sung has come and gone, and
the majestic role of circling centuries begins. Anew justice returns,
returns old Saturn's reign with a new breed of men
sent down from heaven, and it goes on from there

(57:03):
to prophesy the coming of a boy who would then
usher in a golden age. Now this was Virgil trying
to suck up to the consul of Rome, which is
the highest elected officials, sort of like the President of
Rome around the year forty BC. But this was taken
by like Tantius and under his advice by Constantine, as

(57:27):
a prophecy of the coming of Jesus, except that when
you get to through lines like he shall receive the
life of gods and see heroes with God's commingling. It's
like that's new breed of men. Send down right, now,
that's Genesis six. That's not a prophecy of Jesus. But

(57:48):
because of this, the work of Virgil became accepted as
sort of an oracle in and of itself. There was
something called the Virgilian lots, where people would take copies
of his best known book, The Enead and just sort
of flop it open, put a finger down and say, okay,
there's my oracle for today, sort of the way some
people use the Bible quite frankly.

Speaker 4 (58:10):
Which is vertual. With a number of other pagan thinkers.
Was recognized as one of the noble pagans. And in
the Dark Ages, in the Middle Ages, yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Healing gets to go in the first ring of hell, right, And.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
I think you're right? Was it Dante? Yeah? In the
affernom so. But you know, as late as the seventeenth century,
King Charles the First who you know, lost his head
when under the to the rebellion it led by Oliver Cromwell.
One of his friends came to see King Charles in
prison and brought a copy of the Aeneid and they
you know, flopped it open and it was not a

(58:48):
good I forget what the verse was, but it was
not not a good oracle. And about a month later
he was executed. So but you know, laid in the
Christian era, we're talking seventeenth century, ostensibly a Christian king,
ostensibly head of the King of the Church of England,
was using the enead to try to figure out if
he was going to get out of prison. So I

(59:10):
guess this idea of using this this format perhaps or
of repurposing the writings of Pagans is continued a lot
later into the Christian era than most of us would think.
So maybe not a surprise that it was being done

(59:32):
early on in the in the Christian era. Jed Final thoughts,
I mean, what what value is there to us of
h for for us as Christians today and reading the
sibiling Oracles? I think that.

Speaker 4 (59:50):
Sort of going back to my last statement, I think
I think that it the value in studying these these
writings is is in better understanding the cultural context of
the time, and that that's something that we hit on
all the time on this program. And how important context is.

(01:00:11):
It's it's in terms of faith. It should it should
be a guiding principle and the development of our theology.
But I think overall it shows us something about what's
going on in the time. Specifically, I think it's got
really direct bearing on the history of the early Church

(01:00:33):
and the the sort of missiological stance, the use of
parallelisms and evangelism. But it also speaks to you the
the the legacy of these writings in our our own
broader Western Western tradition, and so there's there's value in

(01:00:56):
taking a look at them in terms of where they
intersect with the Jewish and Christian traditions. So I like
the idea that Brian had. It's probably a good idea
for readers to read an article at least initially about

(01:01:16):
the sibling the sibling oracles before you dive into it,
and if you do get one that's got some commentary
with it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Brian, your thoughts, what's the value as far as you're concerned.

Speaker 5 (01:01:32):
Yeah, Unfortunately, it's kind of hard because these sibling oracles
don't there's not a lot out there written on them. Actually,
I don't think there's but a couple of books that
I could find, and not many articles. So the Charlesworth
book is great because has great introductions to each of
the sibling articles and they have great footnotes that do
help you. I would recommend you know, getting that book anyway,

(01:01:53):
because all the material we've been talking about has great
translations in the Charles Worth. You know that's been Suiti Pigrifa.
So yeah, there, I agree, I agree, and I would
just I would just note a couple of those elements
in these In these oracles, we see a lot of

(01:02:13):
language about Jesus, So again you get to see and
understand the you know, early centuries of Christian expression of
the Gospel in the context of those pagan that pagan world.
There are components of prophecies such as the collapsing universe,
a lot about stars astro theology. But there are a

(01:02:35):
lot of the collapsing universe imagery that you see in
the Old Testament. You see it applied in here as well.
These are things that reflect these are in the Bible
as well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
There are you know, the the.

Speaker 5 (01:02:51):
Yeah, the the succession of kingdoms, which is Daniel. So
a lot of components of this material is reflecting in
the Bible. It helps you understand it in terms of
that context. But yeah, this will be a tough one
though a little bit more difficult. You know, you got
to you gotta hunker down and what you're thinking camp
on when you're when you're pursuing this these because it's

(01:03:14):
not there's not as much of the Bible, there's a
lot more secular history references in. I would definitely recommend
that if you have that kind of interest.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
How about you, Doug as a pastor, what did you
find useful in the sibling Oracles?

Speaker 6 (01:03:31):
Well, for me, it's the it's the way that the
Christians came along and used them, so they originally have
the Jewish source, you know, at least at least at
the root of them, and then Christians would write on
them later. But just the and I found this throughout
the Sudipigriphe, and it was twenty years ago or whatever
that I read through every this kind of echo what

(01:03:53):
both Brian and Judges said. I read through the whole
Charlesworth Corpus both volumes, every word not just of the
of the material, but of the opening essays that they
gave and of all the notes. For that precise reason
that you guys said, because you need to have some

(01:04:13):
sort of a framework in your head for what in
the world it is that you're reading here, and these
oracles are I mean, they're there, they come in the
apocalyptic I think they. Charles Worth has four different sections
in his two volumes. There's like Testaments, there's like history
or something like that. This one's in the apocalyptic section,

(01:04:35):
so it's where Enoch is found. And so that also
helps you understand a little bit more of what you're reading.
But you really do need to have that background. But
I just find it so neat really that the Christians
would take this material that that wasn't you know, obviously
the Greeks, they're not Christians at all. And then the
Jews are writing stuff that whether it's BC so it

(01:04:59):
lends self to the Christian Gospel or even after the
New Testament, and if they desupernaturalize the texts, which they
certainly did some of those kinds of things or not,
the Christians are still finding ways to kind of nudge
in the truth and they're using these they're using these
writings for the apologetic purposes. And I think that that

(01:05:22):
is a very important thing for people to understand that.
It's especially in today when you know a lot of
people have this kind of you're only allowed to read
the Bible thing. Yeah, that's not the way that the
early Christians ever thought. That's not the way classical thinking
ever was. And they're they're taking this material and using
it for the glory of Christ.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
And I will just add that the Yeah, Charles Worth
has done a really good job with and a service
I think to Christians who choose to dig in with
his research and his translations. Here you will find the
sibiling Oracles in the Old Testament Pseudepiger for volume one,
which as Doug said, also contains first, second and third Enoch.

(01:06:11):
We've discussed first Nock here, second and third Enoch because
they were well into the Christian era. Not quite as
useful for understanding Old Testament theology, but at least forgetting
an idea of what the early Church was thinking about scripture.
But the sibiling Oracles really interesting stuff. And if you've
got Logos Bible software, you can get it as part

(01:06:34):
of one of the packages. Otherwise you can get it
at Amazon, I'm sure, And I'll go ahead. I'll put
a link to it in the notes below this study.
And well, fellas as we are going to post this
on the fourteenth of December. We're just just a week
and a half out from Christmas, and so I will

(01:06:55):
take this opportunity to wish you all and merry Christmas
if we don't talk again before for the holiday, and
look forward to talking to you again in January.

Speaker 4 (01:07:03):
Merry Christmas.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
At Christmas, Merry.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Christmas, Doug van Dorn, Brian Goadawa, doctor Judd Burton. Links
in the show notes to their websites, and we will
see you as well in the new year. And until then,
may you have a blessed and merry Christmas and happy
holiday season from all of us here at Iron and Myth.
Check the notes below this program whether you're watching or
listening for the websites links to the websites for our

(01:07:28):
esteemed panel Brian Goadawa, Doug van Dorn and doctor jud Burton,
and join us again for Iron and Myth in the
new year, as we discuss the conspiracy to change the
Bible in the second century AD, Who was responsible and
what did they accomplish. That's next month on Iron and Myths.

(01:07:50):
Straight ahead, we've got a couple of stories to which
we say bless their pointy little heads. Christmas related, of course,
and some news conference to tell you about coming up
just after the first of the year, the Great UFO
Deception Summit. That and more as a View from the
Bunker continues.

Speaker 7 (01:08:21):
Chronicles of the Watchers is a series of biblical novels
like best selling.

Speaker 8 (01:08:24):
Author Brian Gazawa, charting the influence of spiritual war, family
History of amoral Gods and man, Isabelle Harlet, Queen of Israel,
Moses against the Gods of.

Speaker 7 (01:08:37):
Egypt, and other supernatural historical novels in the series Chronicles
of the Watchers a little enevil to people that can
go to look at Amazon dot com as Chronicles of
the Watchers by Bryan Gazawa at Amazon dot com.

Speaker 9 (01:08:51):
There were giants in the earth in those days, and
also after that it was a time of gods and dragons.

Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
This was supernatural war between Jesus, God and the old gods.

Speaker 9 (01:09:10):
We live in the final stage of a war that
began before God said let there be light. The gods
of ancient simmer.

Speaker 3 (01:09:19):
These giants are all through the Bible.

Speaker 5 (01:09:21):
The things that are going on in the world right now.
I'm sorry, but the riders there thereout.

Speaker 9 (01:09:26):
Now a fresh look at the end times that reveals
the prophecy of the giants at Armageddon names the four
horsemen of the Apocalypse already loose in the world today.

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):
These entities are real entities and not just metaphors or symbols,
and they're all Nate unmasks.

Speaker 9 (01:09:47):
The ancient dragons who walk the earth during the Great Tribulation.

Speaker 4 (01:09:51):
A primordial entity such as Coroners were Chaos, Leviath, and Tiama.

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):
His breath kindles coals, and a flame comes forth from
his mouth. What is he describing here if not a
dragon and.

Speaker 9 (01:10:02):
Unveils hidden prophecies of their ultimate destruction. Giants, Gods and
Dragons by Sharon K. Gilbert and Derek P. Gilbert from
Defender Publishing. Driving the Internet do you think every Sunday night?

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
This is a view from the Bunker. I'm Derek Gilbert.
You'll find a sun the Internet at VFTB dot net.
That is our web hub where you've got the archives
going all the wa way back to two thousand and nine.
Of course, you can subscribe to us very well a
variety of a plethora of places on x at View
from Bunker my personal ex account at Derek Gilbert. You

(01:10:58):
can also follow Sharon and me together at Gilbert House,
Underscore TV. We're on Facebook of course, Truth Social and
gab at Derek P. Gilbert and please subscribe to O
a YouTube channel. If you would subscribe, share, click that
bell for notifications and hit the like button. And then
once you've done that, please download our free mobile app

(01:11:18):
to your smartphone or tablet that bypasses the gatekeepers of
big tech. It's available for iOS, Android and Amazon Kindle
Fire devices. And of course we've also got versions for
your smart TV or set top box, whether it's Roku,
Amazon fireTV, Apple TV, Google TV, Android TV. Go to
the app store foot for your device or a smart TV,

(01:11:42):
find the Gilbert House Ministries app and download that. Add
that to your device and we'll be there on your
big screen. Of course, the mobile app has some additional
features like a Bible with multiple translations, and of course
the community area the areas you link it at the
top of your your mobile device. It looks like a
couple of talkbubbles and join in the conversations there where

(01:12:04):
you can ask for prayer, give prayer for one another,
ask questions of Sharon and me, and of course comment
on these programs and you'll find links to the app
stores for the mobile devices anyway at Gilberthhouse dot org,
slash app, or you can find it in the topmenu
bar at VFTB dot net. Now, while you're subscribing to things,
please go to the substack account Gilberthhouse dot substack dot

(01:12:27):
com where we release free excerpts from our books. We've
been doing the three times a week and we will
continue doing that as long as we've got content to
put out there. Again, that's Gilbertouse dot substack dot com.
We also link to all of our other content, our
weekly Bible study, these programs and more. Sharon will be

(01:12:47):
bringing back her Armored Sheep podcast in twenty twenty six,
and so you'll find that up there, and we hope
and pray that we will get back to doing the
Bible's Greatest Mysteries again in twenty twenty six. And our
teleg channel Telegram. If you've got the Telegram channel, just
do a search for View from the Bunker and subscribe there. Otherwise,
go to tt me slash View from the Bunker and

(01:13:10):
subscribe there. A couple of items have note this past
week which caught our attention because we are less than
two weeks now from Christmas and One of the articles
I'll be posting to our subject account is why the
holiday in its earliest form The original intent of those
who began celebrating December twenty fifth as the Birth of

(01:13:34):
Jesus was not pagan. It was anything. But most of
these people had come out of pagan religions and were
very sensitive to that. Anyway, I'll post links to original research,
deep historical research, so that if you're celebrating Christmas, you
can do so guilt free. Yes, there are pagan things
that have attached to it over the centuries. We won't

(01:13:54):
go into that now. Don't do those things. Just don't
do those things. Just know that December twenty fifth was
not settled on as a date by the early Church
because it had any connection to whatsoever to Saturday Aliea
or Solnvictus or Bail or Nimrod or any of that.
That was not in their minds. That was farthest thing

(01:14:14):
from it. Anyway. However, there are those of the pagan
persuasion perhaps that would like us to forget about Christmas.
Joy Read, the fired MSNBC host, this past week, shared
a shared a link to a video. This is by
a content influencer who goes around the country sharing little

(01:14:39):
bits of history that you know, some of it is legit,
and you know things that we should remember, because there
are plenty of things in American history of which we
should not be proud, nor should we shy away from.
We should say, yeah, we did that, our ancestors did that,
and that was wrong, and so we need to learn

(01:15:01):
from that and move on. There are others, however, that
are just a little bit questionable, like this one that
claimed that the popular Christmas song jingle Bells is racist.
It was written by a name, a man by the
name of John James Pierpont. His nephew, James Pierpont Morgan

(01:15:22):
went on to become JP Morgan, the famous banker, but
his uncle in eighteen fifty, A Little Heart Up for
Cash wrote a tune Clever Little Diddy that caught on
very quickly, and we've all sung it a million times
because it comes out every year. It's when little kids
can learn, and it seems harmless. I mean, the lyrics

(01:15:44):
seem harmless. A young man trying to impress a lady
named Fanny Bright, takes the sleigh out for a ride
to get overturned, and oh, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle
all the way. Well, apparently because that was written in
a time in a place possibly Medford, Massachusetts, although there
is a city in Georgia that claims it as the

(01:16:07):
city of origin. And honestly, Pierrepont later, even though he's
from Massachusetts, seperated from the rest of the family during
the Civil War and went on to support the Confederacy.
But the song itself fairly harmless. But an academic a
few years ago wrote an academic paper claiming that the

(01:16:29):
song was racist because it was written at a time
and in a place where minstrel shows were popular entertainment,
and of course those involved entertainers, white entertainers using what
charcoal bert cork to blacken up their faces and mock

(01:16:53):
black people. But I can tell you as a law
long time, you know, often on member of the Barbershop
Harmony Society. You know, I joined back in the day
when it was still being called the Society for the
Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America or
s PBSQSA. The society was founded in the nineteen thirties,

(01:17:18):
and many of the songs that were popular through even
into the nineties because of contest rules about the type
of music they were trying to observe. A musical style
forced a lot of compos arrangers to draw on music
from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through about
the nineteen thirties. That has changed some since then, but

(01:17:42):
I can tell you that when I joined I found
some songbooks from the fifties and sixties for the Barbershop
Harmony Society that had songs with lyrics that were overtly racist,
and some of those songs they had to have the
lyrics changed in order to keep them in the catalog
of songs that were acceptable for barbershop quartets. Some of

(01:18:05):
them just had to be abandoned altogether because there was
no way to salvage the song because the lyrics were
just too racist. Jingle Bells is not one of those songs.
I skimmed through the paper by the academic and it
seemed to be guilt by association because they couldn't actually

(01:18:26):
point to the original performance of this being done by
somebody in blackface or anything like that, but because it
was written in eighteen fifty by a white guy who
you know, and it was probably first performed in a
music hall alongside with minstrel performers, that therefore it must
be racist, and of course that caught Joy Reid's attention,

(01:18:49):
because for Joy Reid everything is racist, so bless her
point a little head. The other story comes from Portsmouth, England,
which is a major port city on the South coast,
just across from the Isle of Wight, very near Southampton,
and the City Council there, which is run by the
Liberal Democrats or the Lib Dams. They are to the

(01:19:11):
left of the Labor Party, which is the majority party
for now in Parliament. Most recent polls show Reform UK,
led by Nigel Farage, as leading, so if elections were
held today, Labor would be out on its ear and
Nigel Forage would probably be the new Prime Minister. But anyway,

(01:19:32):
the Lib Dams, again more liberal than Labor. They actually
send notes out to residents in council flats. These are
housing units like apartment blocks that are provided by the
local community, and they told people in the council flats, look,
you cannot put Christmas wreaths or other unapproved decorations on

(01:19:58):
your doors or or near your doors. In other words,
unapproved housing numbers and there was a picture in one
of the news stories somebody had sent into one of
the news channels there in the UK showing the notice
that they'd gotten from the city council condemning them for
the beautiful Christmas wreath on the door and what looked

(01:20:21):
like a little custom made door number decorated up with
holiday decorations. Apparently, according to the news accounts, the citizens
of Portsmouth were told that these were somehow a safety violation,
a safety hazard, presumably some kind of a fire hazard,

(01:20:43):
even though the doors would, presumably if they were up
to building codes, be fireproof or fire resistant steel doors.
But good news, folks there were told that they could
hang those decorations inside. Now they think about that they're

(01:21:03):
a safety hazard hanging on the door outside because they
might what spontaneously combust I don't know. But if they're
inside it's okay. Uh. Sometimes you just have to laugh
because the only other reaction is, you know, self destructive,

(01:21:27):
like banging your head against the wall.

Speaker 4 (01:21:32):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:21:33):
Well, to the city council in Portsmouth, we say Merry
Christmas and bless your pointy little heads. The Great UFO
Deception Summit coming up in just a month this is
coming up quick and I am honored to be a
part of this. La Marzouli is hosting this. This is
in response to the recent documentary about disclosure, The Age

(01:21:55):
of Disclosure, so to present a Christian response, La Marzouli
hosting the Great UFO Deception Summit. This will be January
sixteenth and seventeenth of twenty twenty six a virtual conference,
so you don't need to try to get out or
worry about traveling in the middle of winter, and a
single person ticket is just nineteen dollars ninety nine cents,

(01:22:18):
so just twenty bucks to hear from La Marzouli, Gary Steerman,
Timothy Alberino, Mondo Gonzalez, Josh Peck, Vicky joy Anderson, Karen Wilkinson,
Alan DiDio, Larry Ragland, and yours truly and I will

(01:22:42):
be speaking on the the occult origins of ancient Aliens.
That's sort of a given amongst UFO true believers that
the gods of the ancient world were simply space travelers
from Neberu. Turns out that's not the case. It really
originates with Madame Blavotsky and Alistair Crowley, filtered through the

(01:23:08):
horror fiction author HP Lovecraft. That's what inspired Eric Vondanakin
truth secular researchers connecting all these dots. So that is
what I'll be talking about. And again you can sign
up for yourself if you want to get a group
together and watch this, because these will be streamed in sequence.

(01:23:31):
So this is going to be essentially a live event,
but we will be pre recording our presentations so that
they can all be streamed and not have any interruptions
with somebody having trouble connecting and the stream buffering or
anything like that. If you want to get a group
together and screen this for a group, there are volume
or group discounts. Let's put it that way. Group discounts

(01:23:53):
available and you can find out more at Lamarzouli dot net.
That's Lamarzouli dot net. Next, Sharon and I will be
at the Go Therefore Conference July twenty fourth and twenty fifth.
That's the Harvest Revival Center in Brookville, Ohio. By then,
the book that I'm working on, which is actually turning
out to be a two book set now War of

(01:24:14):
the Watchers Book one from Bail to Balfour, that will
likely be the topic of my presentation then book two
will be out later in twenty twenty six. I got
to about ninety thousand words and realized I'm only up
to World War One, and I got to get through
all of World War Two, Israel becoming a nation, and

(01:24:36):
lots of other stuff down to the present day. So Sharon,
who's the smart one in the family, said, why don't
you make it a two book set, okay, rather than
trying to figure out how to condense the last one
hundred years of really important history into ten thousand words. No,
we're going to give it it's due. So anyway, the

(01:24:57):
Go Therefore Conference July twenty fourth and twenty five. The
Remnant Rising Conference just two weeks after that, right here
in our backyard in Springfield, Missouri. That's August seventh through ninth.
Don't have information on the speakers at either the Go
there For Conference or the Remnant Rising Conference. I do
know that Mike and Jeanie Kerr are offering discounts early

(01:25:18):
word discounts for the Remnant Rising Conference. If you were
at the one this year or streamed it, you know
it was just an amazing gathering, some powerful preaching. Mondo
de la Vega, Donna howell. I mean, the only person
in that conference who could have followed Mondo was Donna.
So Saturday was just like pow powerful stuff. And then

(01:25:44):
of course hearing from Stuart Rhodes of Oathkeepers at one
of the speaker's luncheons, the keynote meals that was really
something else. And of course we are planning to go
back to Israel, god willing next October October twelfth, eleventh
through twenty third. Though so the date, it's October eleventh
through the twenty third, with an optional three day extension

(01:26:04):
to Jordan. Information there at gilbertouse dot org slash travel
brief health update. It appears based on the visit to
the neurologist just a couple of weeks ago, I had
a day a week with five five appointments in a week.
Two of them were CT scans, the CT scan of

(01:26:25):
the stent that was inserted in my leg to correct
the aneurysm that we wouldn't have even known about had
it not been for the neurological stuff. That looks as
good as can be, so I don't need to go
back for a year to follow up on that is
that is a blessing. The second was on my chest
to figure out why the diaphragm on my left side

(01:26:46):
is basically paralyzed. I'm working with one lung tied behind
my back, which if it sounds like I'm breathing more
heavily in these recent broadcasts than even a year ago,
two years ago, it's because I am only the diaphragm
on my right side is the only part of the
diaphragm that's actually going up and down. So why is that?

(01:27:08):
Don't know neurological, but the CT scan confirmed at least
it's not anything physical like a physical obstruction that shouldn't
be there, So that is also a blessing. I had
my first visit with the neurologist and he believes that
the issues I've been dealing with, the mobility issues and
now recent it's spreading my fingers. The reason I've been

(01:27:32):
wearing T shirts. If you watch five and ten on
SkyWatch TV or some of the more recent SkyWatch TV
broadcasts where you notice I'm wearing a T shirt underneath
the jacket, it's because there are no buttons on T shirts. Yeah,
my fingers are getting to the point where not only
my losing control muscle control, but nerve control as well, buttons,

(01:27:57):
zipper snaps, pens eating you. It is kind of funny
eating utensils. I have to hold spoons like a little
kid in my fist now when I eat, because holding
them the normal way, I can't hang on to them anymore.
But this is just a nuisance. It is not life threatening,
and I know that you may well yourself or know

(01:28:18):
somebody who's got something much much worse. Just explaining to
you why we are where we are, and sadly, this
is why you no longer see the rescue dogs, Grace
and Glory wrestling in the background of these videos. Sharon
and I, both physically and in terms of age, are

(01:28:38):
not able to give them the home they deserve any longer,
and so last week in a lovely family came and
picked them up, gave them a new home, and by
all accounts, they are doing extremely well. We had four
hours with them and we saw that Grace and Glory

(01:28:58):
bonded with them right away, so that was truly a blessing.
In the pictures we've seen since, it's pretty clear that
they are now, you know, running, running the family as
much as as two dogs can. Very sweet dogs, but
they are very active and very inquisitive, and we're just

(01:29:23):
at an age where if something were to happen, say
to Sharon, She's already doing all the physical things I
can't do anymore, like carrying groceries, taking out the trash,
changing light bulbs that require getting up on a ladder,
And if something were to happen to her, like she
were to take a fall or something, we might be

(01:29:44):
in a situation, might have been in a situation where
we'd have needed to find homes for them in an
emergency situation. And the last thing that those two girls
needed was for us to have to call a shelter. Anyway,
your prayers, if you've been following us on Facebook, for
a new home for grace and glory, have been answered

(01:30:08):
and answered fully, So thank you, thank you for that.
We are looking forward to the new year and what
it has to hold. It will be interesting. We are
adjusting to the new normal here, praying to the Lord
for healing, but also for grace to carry us through

(01:30:28):
each day, regardless of what each day brings. I note
that the apostle Paul, when he prayed for a thorn
in his flesh to be removed three times. Paul whose
prayers probably reached the throne room of God as fast
as anyone's in history, found that the Lord's will for
him was not to be healed. So if it is

(01:30:51):
the Lord's will, my strength will be restored, my mobility
will be restored, my dexterity will be restored. But if
it's not his, well, then there's something else in here
that he wants from me. And if it means I
just need to sit in that recliner in the next
room and write, well, so be it. If it means

(01:31:11):
setting up a tripod in there and broadcasting or recording
from the chair, so be it. As long as we
have strength, as long as we draw breath, we will
continue honor our Lord and Savior because he is good
all the time. Yes, darkness is rising in this world,

(01:31:34):
but it will not overcome the light. So you and
your family, I pray you have a blessed Christmas season. Yes,
we know this is not the time of year when
Jesus was born, but it is the one time of
year where most of us can openly proclaim the manifestation
of God made flesh. Emmanuel God with us. So let

(01:31:59):
us do that. Let's praise Him and may he bless
you and your family this Christmas season, and we will
see you in twenty twenty six. Good night, Oliver. I'm

(01:32:24):
Derek Gilbert and this is a view from the fun.

Speaker 1 (01:32:51):
Hi everybody, it's me Cinderelax. You are listening to the
Fringe Radio Network. No, I was gonna tell them, Hey,
do you have the app? It's the best way to
listen to the Fringe Radio Network. It's safe and you
don't have to logging to use it, and it doesn't
track you or trace you, and it sounds beautiful.

Speaker 3 (01:33:15):
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
I was gonna tell him, how do you get the app?
Just go to fringeradionetwork dot com right at the top
of the page. I know, slippers, we gotta keep

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):
Cleaning these chimneys.

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Iron & Myth 46: The Sybylline Oracles - A View From The Bunker

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Iron & Myth 46: The Sybylline Oracles - A View From The Bunker