# Video: The Sibyl: Reclaiming the Power of an Ancient Persona March 26, 2025 Ashley L. Bacchi is Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Jewish History at HDS for 2024-25. This event took place on March 26, 2025. \[MUSIC PLAYING\] SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School. SPEAKER 2: The Sibyl, Reclaiming the Power of an Ancient Persona. March 26, 2025. ANN BRAUDE: Good afternoon and welcome. It's great to hear all the chatter. I'm sorry to end these conversations, but I hope they'll just be the beginning of something that's ongoing. I'm Ann Braude, the Director of the Women's Studies and Religion Program, and very happy to welcome you today for Ashley Bacchi's lecture. Before she is introduced, I just want to invite you to our next WSRP lecture, which will be the final lecture for this year. And that will be presented by Aysha Hidayatullah, who is visiting Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Islam and the Colorado Scholar in the WSRP. And her talk will be based on her WSRP project, this body called Islam. And that will take place in this room with another wonderful lunch on Tuesday, April 8 at noon. And if you are interested in being on our mailing list, I think somewhere near a net, there's a clipboard. If you can pass that around. If anybody would like to get announcements of future women's studies and religion lectures, please add your email there. Today, it is really a delight to have the chance to introduce my colleague Annette Yoshiko Reed, the Krister Stendahl Professor of New Testament and early Christianity, who is a colleague of Bocchi's and is going to introduce her today. Annette. ANNETTE YOKISHO REED: Thank you so much. Thank you, Ann. I usually can't make it for this time because I'm usually traveling. So I'm also very delighted to be able to come and participate in what's been a really important program for HDS in general that I feel really infuses both our intellectual life all the time and also our teaching. So I'm honored to be here in multiple senses. Who counts as someone who frames knowledge, can serve as a vehicle for prophecy, can serve as body and flesh for transmission of divine revelation? These are the types of questions that we tend to think of as modern questions. And part of why I'm so excited to have Dr. Ashley Bacchi here with us this year, and speaking to us today is that she really shows us their significance in and from antiquity. Including what we today might be able to learn from traditionally neglected sources about female prophecy in Jewish antiquity in particular. She's trained across classics and Jewish Studies at GTU and is presently Assistant Professor of Jewish History and Ancient Mediterranean Religion at the Starr King School of Ministry. She's an interdisciplinary scholar who also combines classics, art history, archeology. And her scholarship focuses on issues of women and power in a broad sense, both across literary and material culture of the Hellenistic world and across the study of religious traditions and historical traditions across the ancient Mediterranean. Her work has contributed thus to historical discourses associated with women's ordination, reproductive rights, gender diversity, and prophetic authority, and prophetic leadership. And she takes this interdisciplinary approach both across classics and Jewish Studies and religious studies, and across material culture, literary practice, and politics. She brought this to bear in a number of works that she presented in the United States, Europe, and Oceania. And especially, I will say, in her award winning book, Uncovering Jewish Creativity in book three of the sibylline oracles. This book was published in 2020. I had the pleasure of presenting on it for one of the prizes that it won. And one of the things about it that I noted there that I'll note here again, is it's a type of book that is based in a dissertation but does what dissertation books rarely do. It literally reoriented a field. Many books, including those books and articles on sibylline materials from that point forward, 2020, are all reoriented in the way that we have to deal with this and have to deal with new questions, most foremost of which is the invitation to take seriously issues of gender. In previous work on the civil lines, the adoption of a non-Jewish female prophetic voice was focused only on the non-Jewish part. The problem of pagan prophetess. And many past scholarly works, probably to the surprise of some of you, hopefully-- unfortunately not to the surprise of all of you, were dealt with as if questions of gender. Were not even just ignored, sometimes actively denigrated as a topic of concern. This makes her really-- Bacchi really perfect to speak to us today. And also in this setting, in as much as she's been someone who's not just written about this but written about it in a way that has entailed defending it. Defending a way that one can be a serious historian, textualist, and so forth, and talk about gender which in our field is still, unfortunately, an uphill battle. And also that one can be a serious historian and care about the present. And her work really quite powerfully intersects and models what we should be doing in this regard, models of courage of speaking to that consistently. In addition to this, one of the things that-- I teach courses on ancient Judaism and Christianity, and among what has been delightful for me to see, is both in my classes last semester and my classes this semester. The course that she taught last semester on the sibylline oracles, a female voice of prophetic justice in the ancient Mediterranean world, has resounded throughout. I'm happy to see some of the students who are coming here today, but also means that there are themes and concerns that she has sources, as well as questions that she has taught our students that inform their work throughout other coursework. So really kind of exemplary of I think that what this program can do in terms of improving our academic life, and also the real pleasure it is to have her here with us. So, I'm especially delighted to introduce her today. Also to be here to be able to hear about her present project and hear about her working out further ideas from that project. So please join me in introducing and welcoming Professor Bacchi. Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] ASHLEY BACCHI: Thank you all for being here. I'm so happy to see your faces. And I'd like to thank Ann and Annette for wonderful introductions for my brilliant cohort that I'm here this year with that have made my work so much better and brought so much depth to. And also like to thank my friend Jennifer LaFleur, who gave me comments on this talk. And to all past, present, and future sibyls of the Women's Studies carriage house, so this is for you. So I am here to work on a book that will survey the ancient prophetic persona of the sibyl in her many iterations over time. And ask, what about the sibyl captured the public imagination in different contexts? And how she might be reclaimed as an intersectional, interdisciplinary, interfaith, multi-ethnic, feminist icon today? I know. The book will track how the figure of the sibyl first emerges as a prophetess from Archaic Greek tradition. How this persona inspired other branches of sibylline tradition, a Roman branch associated with the liberty sibillini, a Jewish and Christian branches associated with the text that are compiled within what's referred to as the sibylline oracles. It will trace how the conception of the sibyl moved from one persona to a number of individual personas associated with different locations for 9, 10, and later 12. And by the first century BCE, according to Varo, sibyl was considered a title applied to all women who prophesy. In later reception from the Middle Ages through to the 20th century, sibyl becomes a title either self-declared or appointed for talented female writers and religious leaders with writing a consistent feature associated with the sibyl throughout. In the 21st century, the sibyl is most often evoked in literary allusions to specific ancient sibyls as a prophetess archetype or as a metaphorical muse for the writing process. But she no longer readily appears in the public imagination as a title or adjective as she once did, which is something I wish to reclaim. In the book, I envision the sibyl as being a conduit through which I introduced different methodologies, current scholarly debates, a model of interdisciplinary work that offers students an entry point into the complex, and often messy process of investigating how ancient contexts impact the present. A way of doing so that acknowledges, rather than smooths over, the tensions and contradictions inherent in real life, ancient as well as modern. The book will be organized thematically, with each theme addressed by and large chronologically. This allows me to tease out differences in traditions that often get elided to have more nuanced conversations on the ebbs and flows of representations of women in power. Exploring how examples of the sibyl prevalent at one time get recast and even lost over time. For example, one chapter will center on how in certain contexts, the sibyl is presented as an empowered female persona. And then in the following chapter, we'll explore how in other contexts, the power of the sibyl's persona was co-opted to subvert and demean the value or even existence of women with power and agency. Those chapters don't contradict each other. Rather, they show how feminist icons as well as feminist, postcolonial, and queer methodologies can and have been repurposed to challenge and dismiss the more inclusive reframing they were created to provide. This adaptation attests to the power of these symbols and methods hold. The kyriarchy structures that are being challenged recognize that they cannot ignore these icons and methods, and thus they put in the effort to nullify them. Today, I will focus on the persona of the sibyl in different traditions to pull out some of her characteristics that I wish to highlight as the foundation for reclaiming sibyl as title and sibylline as adjective, which is the focus of the last content chapter of my book. For the sake of time, and for anyone that may not be familiar with the sibyl, I have decided to tell you stories of traditions as they come to be in their final form, while pointing to examples of scholarly double standards and issues of bias along the way. If you have any questions about specific traditions, then I can answer those during the Q&A. So why do we need the term sibyl and sibylline? The need for a positive descriptor, terms and framings for women that do not infer assumed gender stereotypes is well documented. For instance, in a recent statistical analysis of 81,000 US military evaluations, the top positive descriptor for men was analytical, while for women it was compassionate. As you can see, the negative descriptors-- it's a little difficult to see there. But this is where-- the negative descriptors significantly outweigh the positive and frequency with inept as most often used for women in comparison to arrogant for men. And another study of 3.5 million books published in English from 1900 to 2008 that were analyzed, found that adjectives related to women predominantly refer to physical appearance, whereas men are described in terms of their behavior. We should not be surprised, then that this linguistic bias also appears reflected in our scholarship. I will offer some examples of how this bias has impacted the framing of sibyls, consequently obscuring the power and agency of sibyls in a variety of traditions. Words have power and can have an impact on people. As science fiction and fantasy Author Ursula K. Le Guin said in sibylline style, we live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by a human being. Resistance and change often begin in art, and in often in our art, the art of words. I want to reclaim sibyl as title and sibylline as an adjective to honor the empowering behavior through word and deed of women writers, leaders, and activists who are boldly confident, who speak truth to power, who are visionary, and who model fearless action. So our first characteristic. A sibyl is boldly confident. Confident enough that according to legend, the command sibyl offered to sell nine books of her prophecies to a Roman king who refused because the price was too high. She burned three in front of him and asked for the same price again for the remaining six. When he laughed at her, she burned another three at which point the male augurs or advisors to the King Tarquinius said buy the remaining three for the price of the nine. Thus begins the Roman liberty sibillini tradition. Some modern interpreters have framed this sibyl as an unreliable writer or prophet, pointing to us, to our first gender-based double standard and linking us back to the impact of descriptive word choice. After all, does the prophet Jonah get called unreliable for trying to run away from God's prophetic call? No, he's called reluctant. The sibyl of this Roman tradition is not running away from the power and responsibility of her prophecy, or burning her books out of fear. Her actions demonstrate that she knows the truth of her words, and burning them is not her loss. It's a loss for Rome. The only unreliable character is the king, who had the whole future of Rome in his hands and failed to recognize it. Shortsightedly prioritizing financial capital over prophetic wisdom. This story actually gets retold in an 1879 magazine ad in which readers are informed that the king deeply regretted that he neglected the now lost opportunity to buy all the books. And that the moral of the story was quote, "make the best of what opportunities are left. The sibyl may not come to you. But with the nearest life insurance agent of the great company, you will find the books you need to purchase." Rome looked to the libri sibillini in times of crisis for centuries, with the earliest consultation referred to as happening in 496 BCE and the last in 363 CE. They were regarded as powerful resources, clearly. The libri sibillini had male priests as interpreters, first two, then 10 and later 15. The fact that the libri sibillini were interpreted by a priesthood of men has been cited in modern scholarship as a muting of the sibyl's voice, a negation of her authority. I see it instead as a testament to the power of the persona of the sibyl. Her words were deemed dangerous. Cicero noted there was a call to keep the liberty sibillini under lock and key. Because the Senate recognized that just as her prophecies could be used to calm the masses, so too could they be used to stir them to action. The drive to regulate and interpret these books attributed to the sibyl is thus evidence of her authority, not against it. Sibyls and sibylline prophecy are thus intricately woven into the legendary fabric of Roman history, as it was received across the centuries, witnesses to beginnings and endings and present when all major decisions were made. The influence that a boldly confident sibyl had on some women is well articulated by Christine de Pizan, a French writer in the early 1400s. So take note, my sweet friend, and consider how God bestowed such a great favor on a single woman, allowing her to counsel, not only one emperor in her lifetime, but also all future Roman emperors, and to predict all of the empire's major events. Tell me if you can, was there ever a man who did anything as exceptional as this? And you, like a fool, considered yourself unlucky to belong to the same sex as these remarkable beings, thinking that God held your sex in contempt. I argued in my first book that this bold confidence is also the foundation for the Jewish branch of the sibylline tradition. We call ancient Jewish and Christian authors who wrote using the sibyl as their prophetic persona from the second century BCE to the seventh century CE, sibyllists. And the second century BCE Jewish sibyllists who created creatively sprouted a new branch of sibylline tradition, chose the sibyl as their prophetic persona because she provided an authoritative and boldly confident voice in a wider Hellenistic context that bore witness to women with power and agency at a variety of levels. They were not hiding their Jewish identity behind a pagan persona. They incorporated the sibyl into a Jewish axis of history by making her the daughter-in-law of Noah. They rooted her prophetic authority and a transmission of knowledge of the beginnings through Noah and the future through her direct connection to the one true God. The sibyl becomes a prophetess from before the divide between cultures. One that could speak to Jew and Gentile of the past, present, and future. These Jewish sibyllists were participating in a wider Hellenistic culture of poetic competition, and they did not shy away from a challenge. Their sibyl confidently denounced Homer as nothing more than her imitator. It was she who created epic dactylic hexameter verse, and she who was there at the end witnessed to the Trojan War. Homer merely copied her verse, and added a false focus on heroes and gods that led people astray. This Jewish vision of the sibyl embodies the same bold confidence as the sibyl burning books in front of a Roman king. However, modern scholarship predominantly advocates a victim-based framing of this tradition by centering on how the sibyl in the Jewish and Christian sibylline oracles mentions the draining effects of prophecy. That discomfort and pain has been interpreted as indicating that the sibyl's persona should be viewed as a victim with no prophetic agency. This brings us to our second gender-based double standard. The Prophet Jeremiah complains about suffering from the act of prophecy more vividly, and with more frequency than what can be found in the whole corpus of the sibylline oracles. And the Prophet Elisha felt that the emotional toll of being a prophet was so great that he asked God to let him die. Yet is Jeremiah or any other male prophet that refers to the draining impact of prophecy interpreted as having no prophetic agency and framed as a victim of god? No. They are praised for the strength that they exhibit. Their struggle is valorized. Their pain validates their status as a prophet of God. Yet prevailing scholarly opinion has indicated that for the sibyl, it does the opposite. Why? Because she is a woman. But this opinion can be challenged not only by how the ancient sources frame sibyls, but also how sibyls were later perceived. For example, in a letter from the 12th century French Philosopher and Theologian Peter Abelard to Philosopher, Writer, and Abbess Héloise. Peter celebrated the sibyls gift of prophecy. If we compare all the male prophets, even Isaiah himself with her, we shall see that in this case, a woman far surpasses men. I am not arguing that the ancient Mediterranean was a utopia for women, but it did not conform to the gender expectations that have been traditionally thrust upon it. People have been trained in their own cultures and institutions to accept as default that the feminine is weak, that women are naturally victims without power and agency. But lived experience, no matter the period, is not so clear cut. The ancient Mediterranean was not a monolith across territories and across time. But it is not an accident that the perceived gender norms of classical Athens and imperial Rome have been lifted up as the standard. The written sources they represent reflect the most conservative, repressive views about women. Setting aside that even the perception of these two centers is challenged when we include material culture into the picture. It has been long enough since we acknowledged that our written records are both incomplete and subjective. We should be alert to the spaces in which face value readings continue to linger in certain sectors of our various fields. As Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has stated, ideas of men about women do not reflect women's historical reality. Since it can be shown that ideological polemics about women's place, role, and/or nature increase whenever women's actual emancipation and active participation in history become stronger. To illustrate this phenomenon with a recent example, let's look to the sibylline sermon delivered at the National Interfaith Prayer Service by the Episcopal Bishop, the Right Reverend Mariann Budde, who also embodies the next characteristic of the sibyl I want to highlight today. A sibyl speaks truth to power. Right Reverend Mariann Budde spoke from the pulpit for the inaugural prayer service in January to offer a sermon that spoke truth to power. Although the ending of the sermon went viral, the bulk of the sermon, which didn't get as much attention, is just as powerful. And calls for a unity that, quote, "fosters community across diversity and division. A unity that is not conformity. It is not victory of one over another. It is not weary, politeness, nor passivity born of exhaustion." And while she acknowledges that such unity may be aspirational, she offers a reminder that quote, "there isn't so much to be gained by our prayers if we act in ways that further deepen and exploit the divisions among us. Our scriptures are quite clear that God is never impressed with prayers when actions are not informed by them. Nor does God spare us from the consequences of our deeds, which in the end matter more than the words we pray." She named three foundations for unity, honoring the inherent dignity of every human being, honesty, and humility. After the service, Trump said that he deserved an apology for the sermon. And he referred to her as a so-called bishop, not smart, and described the sermon itself as nasty, boring and uninspiring. One Congressman said Bishop Budde should be added to deportation lists. Imagine if history were to lose her sermon and only the reactions from elected officials were preserved. If their words were accepted at face value, as has too often been the case for references to ancient women, the resulting history would miss both the substance of her words and the critical fact that their responses reflect an anxiety about the potential power of those words. There could be questions about whether she really was a bishop or just a so-called bishop. In all actuality, at a time when so many men with power were bending the knee, Right Reverend Budde's sermon was inspiring and powerful. Bishop Budde's call for humility evokes the sixth century aracoeli legend. The most popular form of which comes to us from a Pilgrim's guide to Rome from 1,143 entitled Mirabilia Urbis Romanae, which was in turn included in the legenda Centrum, or Readings of the Saints in the mid 1200s, and became so popular with the laity. It became known as the Golden Legend and it inspired countless artistic depictions. The legend states that the Roman Senate wanted to deify the Emperor Augustus, so he asked the tiburtine sibyl if there would be a man greater than himself. She revealed a vision of the Madonna and child in the sky and stated, this woman is the Altar of Heaven. And so Augustus refused to be deified. The sibyl was envisioned as speaking truth to power, humbling an emperor by reminding him of his place as a mortal. This tradition can be seen as a reflection on Augustus' relationship with the Libri sibillini. According to Suetonius and Tacitus, when Augustus became pontifex maximus around 12 or 13 BCE, he had the existing Libri sibillini reassessed and a significant portion of them burned. Those which he deemed inauthentic. This action demonstrates an anxiety that certain prophecies could be used against him and his shift to imperial rule. A likely critique might even be hinted at in the metamorphoses, when Ovid's cumaean sibyl, in refusing aeneas's offer to have a temple built in her honor warns Aeneas that it is not good to honor mortals like gods. This can be viewed as a criticism towards the apotheosis of rulers. The Araceli legend weaves previous subtexts related to the Augustus and the sibyl into a later Christian context that was invested in seaming together the Roman, Jewish, and Christian sibylline traditions into one. In addition to this legend, there was another tradition of the tiburtine sibyl, preserved in a sixth century Greek text. It's an expansion of an earlier fourth century text to which 100 judges have a dream and go to the sibyl and treating her quote. "Your majesty, your wisdom and knowledge are immense. Now, please interpret the vision we have seen today, since we are not able to interpret it or find out its meaning." The sibyl answered them, "let us go to the capital of the great city of Rome and let a hearing take place." And they did as she commanded them. She goes on to interpret their dream about nine suns as concerning nine generations of people, with Jesus being born in the fourth generation. Augustus is mentioned as reigning in Rome during that fourth generation. In these stories, the characteristics needed to bridge the traditions are rooted in acknowledging the leadership and authority of sibyls as prophetic personas who speak truth to power and are recognized as such. This confidence allows sibyls to function as a conduit through which Christianity supersedes the power of empire. The Cumaean and Tiburtine sibyls did not bend the knee to king or emperor, nor did they waver in their prophetic authority. Rather, they humbled those powerful men with an even greater confidence they held in their own prophecies, just like the Right Reverend Budde who spoke truth to power. We now turn to visionary, by which I mean someone who inspires others to envision new possibilities for a more equitable future, while also being able to capture and communicate the exploitative truths of injustice. It is in the bouncing of a sincere encounter with the harsh and mundane realities of the past and present that allows for an aspirational future to be envisioned, which does not come across to the exploited as naive, but rather provides a foundation for hope. For example, a Jewish sibylist from the second century CE wrote about Rome's excessive greed and how it was the root of all crisis. Their commentary on wealth disparity could be written by an activist today. As if wishing to have the much nurturing Earth forever, they will destroy the poor so that they themselves may acquire more land and enslave them by deception. If the huge Earth did not have its throne far from starry heaven, men would not have equal light. But it would be marketed for gold and would belong to the rich, and God would be prepared another world for beggars. This cry is timeless. As we continue to face the impact of a chasm like economic gap between the 1% and everyone else, the cognitive dissonance displayed by corporations that continue to exploit human labor and strain our natural resources as global warming accelerates at a cataclysmic rate. As billionaires have turned their attention to the stars competing in a private sector space race, this charge rings as true today, maybe even more so than it did when it was written. So you may be wondering, what is the fate for a greedy Rome? For the glory of the eagle bearing legions will also fall. Where then is your strength? What sort of land will be an ally which has been lawlessly enslaved by your vain thoughts? Here we see the price of exploitation, a reminder that allies require a two-way relationship. If all you do is take, no one will be there to support you when the tables turn. The sibylist has a clear position on might versus right forms of allyship. What follows is a contrast between earthly rulers and the divine ruler. The section ends with the equality that nature bestows. Night is equal to all at once, to those who have wealth, and to beggars. Coming naked from the Earth, going naked again to the Earth, they ceasefire from life, having completed their time. A reminder that the night is equal to exploiters as well as the exploited. Death is the great equalizer, implicitly asking, what legacy do you wish to leave behind? Will you live a life so people mourn the loss of you or rejoice because with your end they are released from torment? How will you choose to live this short existence because you will be judged for it? The equality of all in the impending eschatological time is elaborated on as an age with no slaves, tyrants, or kings. With no strife or anger, but the age will be common to all. The sibyl offers a voice from Jewish tradition, albeit a largely forgotten one, that echoes wider Jewish prophetic calls to welcome the stranger and protect the most vulnerable in a way that resonates succinctly with the challenges of empire, both ancient and modern. For the second century CE sibylist, Rome was seen as having reached the pinnacle of earthly power. But their exploitation of other lands created a weakness, a lack of true allies. The sibylist of book eight offers a warning and a reminder that there is a cost to succumbing to greed. There can be no peace without moderation. War, tyranny and slavery are unsustainable. No matter how much a tyrant or a tyrannical kingdom may think, they are above justice, no matter-- divine justice will eventually be meted out. It may be difficult now, but there will be an age common to all. AND that belief is not rooted from their perspective in a naive turning away from the realities of injustice that they face and the exploitation that they have seen, but rather it is fueled by it. This belief evokes for me the sick prayer for America, made in November 2016 by Valerie Core, who asked, what if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? When I hear this prayer, I describe it as sibylline. The prayer does not shy away from the injustices of American history, rather it breathed them in as a call for us to have faith that change is possible. The Jewish sibylline tradition attempts to strike the delicate balance between expressing the realities of hopelessness, while envisioning a future that inspires hope. It is that sibylline tension that I encountered so strikingly expressed at the start of my journey here at the historic convocation ceremony of the first woman to lead Harvard Divinity as dean. Dr. Marla Frederick Sibylline convocation speech entitled, and yet we hope. It did not shy away from the moment. Dean Frederick confronted the hopelessness that tragedies from the personal to the global level can bring, and the double edged sword that religion and faith can play in creating hopelessness as well as hope in its aftermath. Religion with its hierarchies, its chosenness, its sacred geographies, its blessed and cursed peoples can inspire the worst of human compulsions towards war and exclusion. At the same time, religion can inspire the best of humanity, compelling us toward hope in the midst of great despair. And so in the midst of great tragedy, when people work to build back the ruins of history, they are often compelled to move forward because of the very faith that brought contention. The challenge of doing that work, however, is often the open wounds of discord, the need to reach beyond existential pain to possibility. We are indeed asking grieving people to find solutions, and this indeed is possibly the greatest challenge. Dean Frederick offered hope by reminding scholars of religion that they have skills honed by intelligence plus character that can model to others how to honor the diversity of this multiracial, multi-religious democracy to mitigate violence. It was a call to put our scholarship into action, to not close ourselves off to the realities, but to face them and offer whatever piece of solace we have that can inspire new visions for future realities that are informed by the stories of what has been but not limited by that pain. This moves us to fearless action. Fearless action is another characteristic that permeates around the persona of the sibyl. As the traditions of Aeneas, as the ancestor of Rome developed, the sibyl was there. The connection being solidified by book six of the Virgil's Aeneid. Aeneas goes to the command sibyl. He needs her guidance and asks her to lead him through the underworld, where he follows her directions. She is the act of one that takes action by securing passage across the river. Of drugging Cerberus so they can pass by. Aeneas is the anxious follower, reliant on her calm leadership, her fearless action, and the dangerous territory of the underworld. Without the sibyl, Aeneas would not have been able to meet his deceased father Anchises, and learn of his role as the ancestor to Rome. A pivotal moment in the epic. Classicist Lori Wilson has recently demonstrated how the sibyl in the Aeneid is most often framed in scholarship as a victim of Apollo, which has led to an imbalanced reading of how the sibyl functions within the text as an authoritative voice and trusted leader. This double standard is rooted in implicit discomfort with the idea that a female persona like this could genuinely exist, a female persona that was depicted as so confident in her role as a prophetic voice and able to fearlessly lead that she leads the hero rather than being led. To further illustrate how representations of fearless action and leadership get obscured and lost in scholarship, I would like to turn to an example of artistic inspiration. The most poignant example of sibylline reception and loss in the history of the United States is an honor bestowed upon abolitionist Sojourner Truth, who was described in the 1860s as a modern manifestation of the Libyan Sibyl. And in April 1863 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about a conversation that she had with New England sculptor William Wetmore story in Rome. She told story about Sojourner Truth, and Truth's life inspired him to create a marble Libyan sibyl, which was featured at the World's Fair in 1862. It can now be viewed at The Met. The Met label reads, the Libyan sibyl, which story described as my anti-slavery sermon in stone, was inspired by events leading to the civil war. Oracle and hand the Libyan sibyl, eldest of the legendary prophetesses of antiquity, foresees the terrible fate of the African people. This premonition is suggested by the heroic figures state of brooding cogitation. Her costume includes an ammonite shell headdress, its crest decorated with the tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew consonants that denote the supreme being. The seal of Solomon, with its interlocking triangles indicating the interrelationship of the natural and spiritual worlds, hangs from her beaded necklace. This label is the initial and for the majority of viewers, the only introduction to this larger than life marble sculpture. And it makes no mention of the fearless woman that inspired the depiction Sojourner Truth. This is an example of the loss that occurs so often in Women's Studies. Devoid of context, the sculpture becomes a beautiful abstraction of the abolitionist cause, rather than a physical testament of the inspiration that one woman's life had on an artist that was moved by her actions to take action himself. When I envision resolute, fearless action, I think of state representative trans woman and modern Sibyl Zoe Zephyr speaking to the Montana house to stand up for LGBTQIA rights, and educating people about the very real threats of proposed legislation would have on the health and safety of trans youth. I see climate activists and modern Sibyl Greta Thunberg at 16, standing at the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019 saying how dare you? To World leaders who arrogantly lacked the urgency needed to combat the rapid impact of climate change? Her final words offer a sibylline call. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up and change is coming, whether you like it or not. I am not the first to discern these characteristics. Sibyls were once a part of the public imagination, so much so that Lady Anne Thackeray Ritchie wrote a book entitled A Book of Sibyls in 1883, and did not include an introduction or discussion about what she meant by sibyl. This is a picture of Harvard's copy of from the Mary Osgood legacy that was received just a few months after it came out. The preface of the book states it is a volume to describe, quote, "the works and manner of being of women writing in the early part of the century." Later, in 1914, Lady Ritchie wrote a piece entitled A discourse on modern sibyls for The Lippincott's Monthly magazine, offering an update to the book of sibyls. It is in this 11-page magazine article that we explicitly learn what being a sibyl meant to Lady Ritchie. She states the inspiration for her book title. Some time ago, borrowing a title from a well-known Elizabethan collection of histories, I wrote a little volume called a Book of Sibyls. It did not concern the classical beings with flying robes and tripods, uttering incoherent rhymes and oracles at Delphi and/or elsewhere. But it related to certain women leading notable lives in mob caps and hobble skirts. She states that the current piece, the 1914 piece, is to introduce another generation of sibyls closer to her own time. They were true sibyls because their voices were direct and outspoken. They went straight to the heart of things. Some other characteristics that can be gleaned in what follows are the ability to evoke the past and present, to capture sadness, love, and hope, to represent real people and places, to be direct, to navigate terrible trials with a hopeful temper, and to have the brave spirit that can see and appreciate the mundane as well as the myths of the unseen. For Ritchie, sibyls was a title she bestowed on women writers that she admired. She trusted that her readers would understand that reference. And in her follow up article, she highlighted the characteristics that made these writers exemplary. She pulls out the characteristics not by tying these writers to any specific sibylline tradition, but is rather inspired by the behaviors that those sibyls were associated with that they evoked in her imagination. She demonstrates how those traits, those behaviors, are embodied in the writers' works and lives that she is engaging with. Just as Ritchie chose writers that for her were sibyls, today I refer to a selection of women who, through thought, word, and deed, represent core sibylline characteristics. Women who are boldly confident, who speak truth to power, who are visionary, and who model fearless action. In adjusting to my work and life to deal with current realities and immersing myself in this project I came here to write, I have found solace and strength of the persona of the sibyl, and have felt an increasing urgency to make the case for why Sibyl as title and sibylline as adjective, is important today. Why it is needed now. I expand the parameters of what is envisioned by sibyl and sibylline in two directions. To include people of all marginalized gender identities, and to connote both word and deed so that activists may more clearly be included. Because leaders inspire to action while in the thick of justice movements, do not always have the time or predilection to write. But they may inspire others to do so by embodying those key sibylline characteristics. To close, I evoke a sibyl of Harvard, National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, with a section of her poem "The Hill We Climb," which you recited at President Biden's inauguration in 2021. We will build, reconcile, and recover in every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country. Our people, diverse, and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it. Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] ANN BRAUDE: Well, thank you so much for both explaining, arguing for and embodying the sibylline in this lecture. I think that Bacchi is ready to take questions. I know some people have to go to 1:00 o'clock classes. We understand and thank you for coming. But are there questions? Maybe I'll ask a question while other people are getting their thoughts together. I have a curiosity about the sibyl. They speak truth to power always and never step away from that. Do they ever justify or defend their own right to speak? ASHLEY BACCHI: Yes, that's a great question. So there are examples on-- it's one of those double edged sword pieces within sibling tradition. Because there are examples in which the persona, the writers behind the persona are aware that people have doubts about the authority of the sibyl. And so they react in a way that is defending that right and that power and authority. And there are other examples in which as I mentioned, I'll have a chapter within the book where that power and authority has been deemed problematic. And so other writers will use the persona and describe the sibyl in a manner which kind of pulls away that power and authority that's been established in other traditions. So what I've done today is pull out the examples of that are related to the characteristics I wish to be associated with reclaiming sibyl and sibylline today. And I know that they can be and there could be counterexamples for all of the examples that I've given, and I will address them. But my whole framing on those counterexamples is that it still comes from a context of having to grapple with the fact that the persona had always had authority and was powerful and bold. So I don't know if that answers. ANN BRAUDE: Yes, Bernadette. AUDIENCE: Well, first I have to-- Let's see if this is on. Yes, I'm Bernadette Brooten and over-- is it not on? ANN BRAUDE: Snuggle upto it. AUDIENCE: I'll just snuggle up to it. Is that better? Yes, now people can hear me. So my name is Bernadette Bruton. I was in this room over 50 years ago as we were planning this. And what I kept thinking throughout your whole presentation is this is what we wanted. This is what we worked for. We wanted solid, detailed, careful research with broad, bold, feminist implications and spelled out. So yeah, I don't say those things lightly. ASHLEY BACCHI: Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] AUDIENCE: And I have a few questions. ASHLEY BACCHI: Yes. AUDIENCE: Which comes from-- I have kind of a multi-part complex of questions, which is I'm wondering how-- I'm thinking here of the Christians, specifically of rabbis, although one could include other Jewish thinkers of antiquity and then of the especially of the heresiologists. But I'm thinking of the-- on the one hand, you have the rabbis recognizing multiple female prophets in the Torah. So that's there. There's no problem with that. I'm thinking also of the Book of Acts, where the spirit will come from Joel. The spirit will flow down on your sons and daughters, and so that was very important for many early Christian women and men who were justifying and supporting women's prophecy and speaking. I'm thinking of Paul, who speaks of prophet as one of the kinds of leaders, teachers, apostles, and prophets. And yet he has great hesitations about the way in which women might prophesy. They are allowed to but the ways are complex. I'm thinking about the heresiologists who are so opposed to the new prophecy in which Priscilla, of course, plays a major, is a leader, is a founder. And I'm wondering how these things fit together. Do they always think a sibyl is like another prophet? Or do they-- and do they polemicize or do they limit? Do they ever say, but no, she's not like the sibyl. That was then. How does the acceptance, toleration, conflict, polemic fit into all of this? ASHLEY BACCHI: Great question as expected. So a few pieces. By the time that New Testament writings are happening, there are references to the sibyl that are any female prophet would be framed within that discourse. So we could see it as even if a sibyl is not named, that the sibyl persona is being evoked. You could argue with all of the examples that you just mentioned. There within the corpus that we have of the sibylline oracles, there is a shift that happens from those that are attributed to Jewish sibyls, to Christian sibyls. Christian sibyls, there is a reduction in prophetic, direct prophetic engagement with the one true God. So we see within the Jewish stratums of the texts that we have, that it's very clear that the sibyl is in direct communication with the one true God. Once we move into the Christian text, we start seeing it triangulated. So the sibyl is pointing to Jesus. Jesus has the connection to the one true God, so this is something that gets triangulated through those texts. I will be arguing the book and in some other pieces have already started to do this. In some pieces that are coming out this year, that this is a slow process. This is a process that almost becomes a microcosm of the macrocosm of the discourse of between communities that are of the Jewish communities and those Jewish Jesus followers. Jewish Jesus followers. So they both want to use the sibyl as their persona. The way that they envision the sibyl being most useful for them and as a prophetic voice is viewed differently. So for the Jewish authors, they see that power comes from bringing her into a Jewish axis of history through Noah. What ultimately happens from the Christian perspective is that they see the most powerful for their objective, which is advocating Jesus as savior. Is to not have her as a Jewish, as within a Jewish axis of history, but to focus on those Roman traditions and that otherness. So that then she can be combined with the Hebrew prophets. And this gets further articulated later in the reception and gets solidified so that it becomes sibyls as the pagan prophetesses in comparison to the Hebrew prophets that you have. These two witnesses to the coming of Jesus. Now, that's something that is often acted as if it happens. Right from the get go, I argue that actually that is a slower process than we would-- than has been assumed before. And one in which you can really see the tensions of the communities that still want to lay claim to the sibyl as a persona. And ultimately, the Christian sibyls went out and claiming the sibyl as a persona. But she's not only paired with the prophets, so she also often gets paired with David very often. And then in later reception, there's a lot of-- there are depictions of her being depicted in secular spaces in the starting the 1400s, 1300, or 1400's where it's with political leaders. And that even keeps going through into the 1900s, where she's becomes that a symbol of pointing to this leadership has global kind of worldly world impacting residents, this leadership. So there's changes that happen. But I would say that for that earlier context that you can find examples on both sides of how the sibyl kind gets reinforced as supporting women's prophetic voice and their agency. And then others in which that's getting subverted and wants to be triangulated through Jesus as not a direct connector, and that ultimately leads to not having the same representation that you would see within the Jewish tradition. ANN BRAUDE: Yes. AUDIENCE: First of all, I'm Scotty Miller and I work for development. Now, I so appreciated-- ANN BRAUDE: \[INAUDIBLE\] AUDIENCE: Oh yeah. I usually don't need one, but-- ASHLEY BACCHI: We're recording it. AUDIENCE: Oh, right. So I really appreciated you listing Zoe Zephyr as a sibyl, and I would add Congresswoman McBride as a sibyl from Delaware. And the irony of sibyl's being discredited for being too feminine and then being discredited now for being not feminine enough. And the irony there can't win. But I was wondering, so does a sibyl have to be believed in order to be a sibyl? So, for example, I was thinking of in the Aeneid, particularly book two, Cassandra, The Figure of Cassandra, and how I think of her as a Sibyl. But, of course, she was doomed not to be believed. Or who proclaims a sibyl a sibyl? So, for instance, I know that Miriam, for instance, is not traditionally viewed as a Sibyl, but certainly I think she was God-derived prophetess. So I'd argue she is. ASHLEY BACCHI: So thank you for pointing out more examples. That was my hope in the generative of this talk, is that you would all leave and start looking for the sibyls that resonate with you where you go. That's part of my whole agenda of sibyl and sibylline. You see something, see someone doing or acting a certain way and you think, oh, that could be a sibyl. AUDIENCE: A sibyllized society. ASHLEY BACCHI: Yes, I love that. I love that. Sibyllized society. Yes. I'll have to take that for the book. So the issue of belief is such a good question, because this is the crux of debate that happens kind of throughout the reception of the sibyl. This becomes the basis in which even for modern scholarship, it's this disbelief that anyone could believe that the persona would be taken seriously because it was within a woman's body, that this was envisioned. So much so that it's the only-- could be taken seriously if we imagine it as a disembodied voice. That somehow a disembodied voice is more authoritative than imagining within a female embodied embodiment. So this becomes a space in the book where I can really explore these kind of debates and then introduce methods of how we can pull apart the kind of the messiness. Not that we're ever going to ever resolve it. And that's the other thing that I hope to do in the book is that there's no kind of teleological end, other than the hope that sibyl and sibylline become part of the public imagination. That was one. But the goal is routed than smoothing out and giving you one answer of whether they have to be believed, I would say that the fact that-- whether certain commenters, no matter the period, believed in the sibyl or not, the fact that she was a point of conversation is what matters. She couldn't be ignored. The persona couldn't be ignored. So whether that meant that people were putting in a lot of effort in order to feel like they were represented through that persona, or they put in a lot of effort in order to say, no, that persona is not valid. Ultimately, to me, just means that the persona had power, either way. Because if the persona and didn't resonate with people, they wouldn't bother talking about it on either and at any side of it. So belief is tricky. I will offer examples in which I think that communities, the reception within the community definitely frames itself as hinging an identity around belief. Around Jesus, especially because the developed traditions that happen later around the 12 sibyls associate-- which has been argued are to align with the apostles, the 12 Apostles, to have a counterpart. That each Sibyl gets associated with a different aspect of Jesus's life. So either predicting his birth, predicting life events like the miracle events depicted, or imagining, or prophesying the crucifixion and the resurrection. So each sibyl, even though those are not-- those are much later traditions. So there's ways in which really envisioning how Jesus was always going to be part of this world was done so through thinking about these sibyls. So I would say that, yes, there are some that are believed and there's some that don't. And ultimately, it doesn't matter. She was important. The persona was important regardless. AUDIENCE: That's true. I don't want to take your mic. So thank you so much. I will add, I mean, it is interesting, lots of prophets aren't believed. Yeah, so it's actually a feature of prophecy that people don't, so you end up having-- I mean it's almost like tautological. So someone who doesn't believe her, and then that shows she's a prophet because people don't believe her. So it's interesting in that way. One of the things I was interested in that I saw iconographically that I don't know whether or not it's also present in a literary fashion within the Christian sibylline tradition, or at least the tiburtine one is this way in which-- I was just interested to see one of the images that you showed really showed a kind of juxtaposition of the sibyl on the one hand and Mary on the other. And I was just actually curious to hear you speak a bit more about that. ASHLEY BACCHI: Yes. OK, so that is very rich. Has led to a really rich groundswell for in the book to engage with. Because the sibyl in discourse in starting in the 1500s really gets associated with Marian cult. And but then the way in which that ultimately leads to almost an erasure of the sibyl. So there is a close connection in leading up to that of associating, especially in predictions of the sibyl seeing the virgin and really kind of cementing in the importance of the virgin as someone to be also venerated alongside, you could say, alongside Jesus. So they're giving this equal weight and both in some literary sources as well as in the iconography. And then that fusing within the Marian cult. Once the Marian cult is kind of not as popular, we see that also adds to a loss of siblyn context. Because as that gets reclaimed in different communities, it's almost you could say almost too much reclaiming would have to happen. It's like they want to be focusing on reclaiming Mary. And so there becomes an erasure even, for instance, in that legend of the Altar of Heaven, of the sibyl becoming less and less associated with that. And becoming more of a direct relationship between Augustus and Mary and that vision, and the sibyl being taken out of that kind of left out. I realized I didn't mention about get-- refer to Cassandra as you brought up. There's a long history of talking about sibyl's in relation to Cassandra and debate around that. There's also, as many people bring up to me that their only exposure to the sibyl is through Harry Potter. And so I have to admit, I haven't read any of the books. But then I had to do some research on how the sibyl presented in that context. But it's very interesting because there's the two get associated even in that kind of imaginary. So I think that is something that in the book, I'm going to tease out of how early that actually starts with having a Trojan. There's a Trojan sibyl, and so-- seen as separate from Cassandra. And then how that later gets conflated, those identities get conflated. And then how they can get pulled apart and a more genealogical relationship gets pulled out. So it's very interesting, these kind of pushes and pulls that happen. There's an urge in some traditions to just kind of conflate all women with one persona. So it's like, oh, then we just want Cassandra's there, so then she's also the sibyl. She's also all of these things. So then we don't have multiple expressions of women with power and agency that are actually making very accurate foretellings, but are just not being listened to. And I think that's one of the interesting things about a lot of the sibyl traditions is that actually she does often get listened to, whereas in many other traditions of prophetesses they don't. But a lot of the lingering and the long lasting traditions around the sibyl, be that in songs, in plays, in artistic depictions, is the persona being taken seriously and being kind of deferentially responded to. AUDIENCE: Thank you so much for your presentation. It's got me thinking about teaching Octavia Butler about whether or not she fits with as a sibyl. ASHLEY BACCHI: Yeah. AUDIENCE: I mean-- ASHLEY BACCHI: Absolutely. AUDIENCE: Yeah, I mean, because she resists the prophet kind of identity. And I think she actually wouldn't-- id not boldly confident speak truth to power or does feel this action, but she definitely-- there's some siblying characteristics to her that I'm always trying to grab at. And it's a big debate about whether or not she is a prophet, but so it's really helpful to frame my own thinking about her for my class. I think one of the questions I have is, has there ever been an instance where there are more than one sibyl speaking truth to certain powers, but on opposite sides? And I'm thinking about that in terms of even contemporary, how people are trying to understand what truth is. Sorry. ASHLEY BACCHI: That's a great question. And I would say that for Octavia Butler, the visionary aspect. You don't have to-- when I point out the characteristics, some they may all be there and but they don't all have to be. And I think that this is one of the aspects where prophet is so laden with such masculine imagery and so just kind of has its own baggage and burden. And I think that sibyl and sibylline have a history of being more expansive and very much associated with writers. In fact, I've found obituaries from the late 1800s and early 1900s, where writers that were activists were described by the obituary writers as given the title of sibyl. So and that is just on the point of on-- that's not something that they identified as, but in creating that obituary that becomes the guiding image, right? That the work that was created by these women had much wider impact than they could have known. And whether or not they would think of themselves as prophets, they tapped into that wider imagery. So to get to the question of competing, I would say that it's that they're the pseudepigraphal works that we have preserved within the sibylline oracles. That we have examples samples there of Jewish siblings and Christian siblings that are trying to-- that are challenging each other. I think that there are a few texts that are dated to the same around the same time, roughly even within the same book, where we can see that these writers that have different perspectives want to lay claim to the sibyl, and their message ends up conflicting. And then for later reception, I can't think of an example where they're directly put into opposition. But the I have a lot of examples of how people are interpreting the sibyls and them being in direct opposition. So, even when it came to that book of sibyls in reviews of the book there the women that write reviews of that book are very positive. And they get right at understanding what Lady Thackeray was trying to-- what Lady Ritchie was trying to pull out. And then I have a series of book reviews that went into written by men and these kind of politics journals, and they're ripping the book apart because she doesn't know what a sibyl is and that there is she's-- even to the point of she only focuses on four writers, and we know that there are at least 10 sibyl's. And she didn't got the number wrong. They take it very literally of their interpretation. So how sibyl kind of functions as a persona or as eliciting a discourse, there can be very different reactions to that. AUDIENCE: So my question is about the sex of the sibylline authors, because I'm assuming they're anonymous. We don't know. So is there any knowledge about the sex of the Jewish and Christian sublime authors? And are there reasons why male authors might have chosen to write under the sibylline persona? ASHLEY BACCHI: Yes, so we cannot know for sure. In my book, I argue that most likely a significant portion of the-- were written by male authors. But we can't-- but it's possible they were also women writers. Just on the point being that often when it comes to ancient writing, how that has traditionally been assessed as what they expect a woman writer to be interested in writing, which is usually very sexist of just like oh, well, she's not talking about clothes and motherhood or something. So then that's going to be written by a man. So I was going to say that. Yeah. So the fact that we-- I think that they could have been written. We can't know. So I leave that open in the book. But what I do argue is that especially for that earliest articulation of the Jewish sibylline tradition, that that is a reactive to the Hellenistic context of a Ptolemaic. Of Jewish writers within Ptolemaic Egypt being inundated with women with power and agency at multiple levels, and that fact that in Hellenistic literature, we see a burgeoning of the woman's voice and women as protagonists at that time. So they're very active within the Hellenistic literary culture. And I think that they saw what I argue in the book through a lot of work is that they had an option. They could have chosen a male prophetic voice that ticks all the boxes that have traditionally said the only reason that they picked the sibyl is because there was no other option. And so what I do is I show that there was definitely another option that ticks all of these boxes off. They chose a female voice because they saw it as the most powerful voice that they could choose at the time. It would have the most authority and reach a wider audience, and that is why they chose it. So her. So the gender of the sibyl, I argue, is key to why the Jewish sibylists chose that persona to write out. And if they saw it as taboo or problematic, there was a male prophet that they could have chose that offered epic-- that offered hexameter verse that is often paired with the sibyl. Just would have been just as easily adaptable, but they chose the sibyl on purpose. Yeah. ANN BRAUDE: We have a couple more questions. ASHLEY BACCHI: Oh, OK. ANN BRAUDE: A couple more minutes, so I'm going to ask one last question. Thank you so much. What a wonderful talk. And thank you to Bernadette for one of the true founding mothers of the WSRP to have you affirm that we're there. I'm so proud and so pleased. I had the fabulous opportunity to see a few generations of sibyls coming through this program. And one thing that I would observe of the WSRP scholars, they certainly speak truth to power. They certainly are visionary. Almost all of them in some way are visionary. They are fearless. Some of the most fearless people I've ever met have been in this program. What I have not seen is boldly confident. \[LAUGHTER\] So I would like to I would like to hear more about what bold confidence is, what it looks like, what models you've seen for it, and what its impact is. ASHLEY BACCHI: This is why I'm not a sibyl as my-- \[LAUGHTER\] No, I think that is one of the hardest characteristics because we are-- it's very difficult to assert that level of confidence that kind of demands respect and establishes authority right off the bat. And I think that that's one of the things that I have found so inspiring by pursuing the sibyl, is that the enduring legacy of these traditions has been because of that confidence that it gets retained. Because if she wasn't she would fade. And that's why we do have these examples and these times in the traditions where the sibyl gets subsumed to mary or into somebody else, and it's because they start-- kind of that confidence, that boldness gets muted. So that does happen. And I think that it's one of the things that's the hardest for people to-- and students and even myself sometimes when I'm reading the traditions and I see how people have received sibyls as confident, have acknowledged their power and authority. That it's been trained within us to question that. That there's well, there's a distrust that we have to get over the hump for because we're more attuned where it's more comfortable. It's just more comfortable to assume that the woman's always going to be led, not the leader. That there's got to be a way in which this is really hurts this persona rather than lifts the persona. What's the gotcha space? And I think that while it's the hardest to grasp, once you put yourself in a mindset to take that spirit of no, this is an actual compliment. They are what if I-- even though I said don't take it at face value, what if in these instances I do? What if I say, oh, no, this tradition does present this woman as with 100 men at her feet saying, please tell us. Tell us the answer. With an emperor or a king begging her to stop burning her words, or to tell them what is the-- show me what the answer is in the sky. And I think that what I'm hoping to do in the book is through offering all of these examples and those that messiness is to have those that read it start building a confidence of their own. To stop going maybe for the immediate assumption that they don't. That people that look like them or think like them are automatically in an uphill battle. What if no, actually, there were times when we were at the top of the hill and everybody else was looking up? Maybe that will help us build a foundation for confidence ourselves. ANN BRAUDE: You heard it here. \[LAUGHTER\] You have your marching orders. So thank you for coming. Thank you for everything. \[APPLAUSE\] I'll see you at the next lecture. SPEAKER 2: Sponsor Women's Studies and Religion Program. SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2025. The president and fellows of Harvard College. 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