The Four Kingdoms Motif and Sibylline Temporality in Sibylline Oracles 4

This chapter examines the four kingdoms motif in Sib. Or. 4, which in its current form probably dates from the late first century CE. I consider the motif looking backwards, breaking the text of Sib. Or. 4 apart into recon-structed redactional layers, and forwards, analyzing the sibylline temporali-ty that emerges from the book’s current form, including its literary seams. Engaging Paul Kosmin’s recent proposal that the four kingdoms motif is primarily an anti-Seleucid response to imperial periodized time, this chapter revisits the redactional proposals of John Collins and David Flusser regard-ing the motif’s origin and transformation in Sib. Or. 4. While our knowledge of the earlier form of the four kingdoms motif in Sib. Or. 4 is too speculative to be conclusive, it is just as possible that the underlying motif was an-ti-Macedonian, rather than anti-Seleucid. Turning to sibylline temporality in book 4, I argue that the literary transformation of the four kingdoms motif proposed by Collins and Flusser constructs a temporality that is multiple, fragmented, and less linear, even as it employs periodized time. Such a sibylline temporality could have had the effect of reinforcing the chaos of a world under divine judgment for ancient audiences.