#sybils

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“Michelangelo depicts the sibyls of ancient Greece and Rome[On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel]. Though their vision was less acute, though they saw, as it were, very dimly in a dirty mirror (see 1 Corinthians 13: 12), these austere and mysterious pagan priestesses are hailed by the artist as authentic, if lesser, proclaimers of God’s promises. Without downplaying the central Christian belief that Jesus fulfilled the Law and Prophets of the Old Testament, Michelangelo presents Christ as having fulfilled as well the deepest yearnings of the pagan nations. That is not to say that the sibyls were divinely inspired in the same way that the Old Testament prophets were inspired, nor that they knew that what they were yearning for was Christ. I certainly do not mean, nor did Michelangelo mean, to suggest that the yearnings of the ancients were salvific nor that their wisdom could have redeemed them apart from Christ. Rather, I, along with Michelangelo, would suggest that the ancients, as people created in the image of God with an innate desire for their Creator, expressed that desire in a way that points, however faintly, to the One who was, and is, the true desire of all nations.” — The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes by Louis Markos

Ph. Bill Bernstein, Sybils (1979)

The sybils were like oracles for the ancient Greeks who were influenced by divine inspiration and made prophecies (always true ones) who -mostly- caused all trouble and fun in every great ancient Greek mythical story.