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Cologne) June 9, 1590; d. at Deventer, Holland, Jan. 1, 1658. He was educated at Herborn, Siegen, and Leyden, and, after preaching to various congregations, was called, in 1609, to be minister of the churches of Randerath and Geilenkirchen in the principality of Jiilich, the oversight of the church at Linnich soon being added to his duties. Sibel met with extraordinary success at Randerath, where he labored exposed to considerable personal peril from the attempts of Roman Catholics to regain their position. He was a delegate to the Reformed convention at Diiren (Aug. 17, 1610) to organize the first general synod of the lower Rhine (see REFORMED [DUTCH] CHURCH); and later was deputized to attend the other synods. He accepted in 1611 a call to Jillich, where, in addition to his regular duties, he had to minister to the Protestants in the surrounding district, while during an outbreak of the plague he proved himself a true pastor in the face of death. In 1617, on his return from a journey to Holland, he accepted a call to Deventer, especially as he realized that the strife then raging in J(ilichCleve-Berg was but the prelude to the long civil war which was to devastate Germany. At Deventer he found himself in his element, and his influence quickly spread beyond the limits of the city. He took part in the preparations for the Synod of Dort, to which he was a deputy; and at his instance the estates of Overyssel approved the canons of Dort and rejected the five Arminian articles. Still more important was his activity as a member of the committee for the new Dutch translation of the Bible proposed by the Synod of Dort. As one of the revisers, he was chosen vice-secretary of the board of revision, which sat for eleven months in Leyden, and for three years he essentially furthered the work. He was active also in providing capable teachers for the school in Deventer, but at the same time maintained close relations with his native country, inducing the states general to threaten reprisals against any interference with Protestant services in Jiilich-Berg, and otherwise aiding his coreligionists.

In 1647 a stroke of apoplexy forced Sibel to retire from active life. As a preacher he enjoyed high reputation, being known as the Chrysostom of his locality, and his sermons up to 1644 were collected under the title of Caspari Sibelii opera theologica (5 parts, Amsterdam, 1644). In homiletics, while he paid due regard to form and arrangement, he was especially concerned with the subject matter. He was also much given to exposition of a passage in a sermon series. Among his other works, special mention may be made of his BTeditationes catechetico; (4 parts, Amsterdam, 1646-50) and of his autobiographical Historica narratio de curriculo totius vitro et peregrinationis mere, of which two manuscript volumes are preserved in the Deventer library (the part before 1609 ed. L. Scheibe, in Festschrift zur Feier des dreihundertjdhrigen Bestehens der . . . lateinischen Sehule zu Elberfeld, Elberfeld, 1893). (EDUARD SIMONS.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Besides the autobiographical Hiatorica narratio, ut sup., consult ADB, vol. xxxiv.: ZeUschrift des Berg. Geschichtsvereins, vol. xxviii (by W. Harless. on Elberfelder Kirchen) and also vol. iv (by Bouterwek, on Dye 'Reformation in Wupperthal).

Among the productions of late Jewish and early Christian literature the Sibylline Oracles have special interest because of their manifold relations with the Roman-Greek system of oracles. The sibyls of Greek and Roman antiquity were prophetesses

who, now here, now there, uttered their :. The denunciatory predictions, of which Greek what remains, however, is but the Sibyls. dying echoes of the former activity.

There were possibly in Greece in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Cassandra-like figures uttering from city to city their dread prophecies to the terror of men; the home of this art seems to have been Asia Minor, the earliest reports implying Erythrea and Samos as the centers. Later reports know of a Delphian sibyl, a sister of Apollo named Artemis. In Rome the sibyl came only at the end of the regal period from the Greek colonies of southern Italy. The oriental sibyls become known first after Alexander, mainly in Asia Minor, where East and West met and women's part in religion was prominent. But all knowledge of these characters is dim and vague; they appear as prophetesses, not as personalities, and gave their name to a large pseudonymous literature in the apocalyptic period of Jewish development.

The earliest writer to give the names of a series of sibyls is Heraclides Ponticus (cited by Clement of Alexandria, Strom., I., xxi., A NF, ii. 325), who speaks

of a Phrygian-Delphian sibyl Artemis

are known at Delphi, Erythrea, Sardis, and Cumae, while Clement of Alexandria (ut sup.) speaks of an Egyptian and a Roman sibyl; Suidas knows of nine; Varro notes ten: a Persian, a Libyan, a Delphian, a Cimmerian (in Italy), the Erythrean, the Samian, the Cumman (Amalthea), the Hellespontian, the Phrygian, and the Tiburtine named Albunea. To this Varronian catalogue there are a number of witnesses, e.g., Lactantius (Insti tutes, I., vi., ANF, vii. 15-16; worth consulting) and Isidore of Seville (in his Originum . . . libri, VIII., viii.), as well as a series of later authorities. Some of the lists contain variations, however, notably that by an anonymous writer who composed an introduction to the collection of the Jewish-Christian Sibylline Books (i.-viii.) and that in a series of excerpts of the fifth century known as the "Tubingen Theosophy." The report of Pausanias regarding the sibyls (X., xii.) has especial interest, representing an attempt to reduce the number of these prophetesses to four, viz., the Libyan, Herophile (to whom be refers all reports regarding the Greek sibyls), the Cumman whom be names Demo, and the Hebrew-Babylonian-Egyptian whom he names