“The Similitudes” it is a spiritual body which rises to a spiritual kingdom; while in the latest section of the book it is taught that only the spirit rises, and only the righteous attain to the resurrection. Most of the New Testament writers have been influenced by the book in thought and diction. “It is quoted as a genuine production of Enoch by St. Jude (verses 14, 15), and as Scripture by St. Barnabas. The authors of the Book of Jubilees, the Apocalypse of Baruch, and 4 Ezra laid it under contribution. With the earlier Fathers and Apologists it had all the weight of a canonical book.”[289] (_b_) THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES [LITERATURE.—Schürer, II, iii. pp. 270-292, German ed., III, pp. 555-592; Blass, in Kautzsch, II, pp. 177-217; Lanchester, in Charles, II, pp. 368-406; M. S. Terry has published this book in blank verse (New York, undated). See also an article on this book in the _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1877, pp. 31-67.] This work consisted originally of fourteen books, twelve of which have survived; but we are here concerned only with the Proœmium and books iii.-v., the remainder belonging to later times. The Proœmium and books iii.-v. belong, like the rest of the work, to different dates, but the bulk of the Proœmium and book iii. belong to about the middle of the second century B.C., books iv. and v. to the latter half of the first century A.D. These portions are all Jewish in the main, though interspersed with Christian elements. Of authorship little can be said; the main portion of the Proœmium and book iii. were probably written by a Jew of Alexandria, parts of book iv. by a Palestinian Jew, and the bulk of book v. also by a Jew of Alexandria. The Oracles were, of course, all written in Greek, and they were put forth in the interests of Jewish _propaganda_, of which mention has already been made above. They were written in the form of the ancient heathen oracles, in Greek hexameters. The sibyl of heathen antiquity was a prophetess inspired by the gods who prophesied about the fate of cities and kingdoms, and gave counsel in times of stress and difficulty; she dwelt, like a nymph, beside streams or in grottoes. “Written records of supposed Sibylline oracles,” says Schürer, “were here and there in circulation; but such remains of them as have come down to us through occasional quotations in authors such as Plutarch, Pausanias and others are brief and scanty, and furnish no distinct notion of them. In Asia Minor and Greece these pieces circulated only in private possession, without being publicly supervised or officially used; but their credit and influence must not be on that account lightly estimated.”[290] Book iii., which is of most importance in the present connection, is full of apocalyptic elements; it tells of the fate of the successive kingdoms which are to bear rule over the Jews, and of the judgements of God upon both Jews and Gentiles; the coming of the Messianic king