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The Sibylline Oracles condenses the elaborate description in the Apocalypse of Peter, punishment for those who cause the death of their children, reducing the scene to a general judgment by fire.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sibylline Oracles 2:281
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
279 those who licentiously defiled the flesh; 280 and all who untied a young woman’s belt for secret intercourse, and all who caused 281 abortions, and all who cast their offspring 282 unlawfully away; and sorcerers 283 and sorceresses with them, and these anger 284 of the heavenly and immortal God will drive 285 against a pillar where will all around 286 in a circle flow a restless stream of fire;
Apocalypse of Peter 1:28
Revelation of Peter
Early Christian
28 Near this flame is a pit, great and very deep, and into it flows from above every kind of torment, foulness, and discharge. Women are swallowed up in it to their necks and tormented with great pain. These are those who have caused their children to be born prematurely, and have corrupted the work of God that created them. Across from them is another place where their children sit alive, and they cry out to God. Flashes of lightning go forth from those children and pierce the eyes of those who, for the sake of sexual immorality, caused their destruction. 29 Other men and women will stand above them, naked; and their children stand across from them in a place of delight, sighing and crying out to God because of their parents, saying: These are the ones who have despised and cursed and transgressed your commandments and delivered us to death. They cursed the angel that formed us, hung us up, and begrudged us the light which you have given to all creatures. The milk of their mothers flowing from their breasts will congeal, and from it will come flesh-devouring beasts, which will come forth and turn and torment them forever with their husbands, because they forsook the commandments of God and slew their children. As for their children, they will be delivered to the angel Temlakos. And those who slew them will be tormented eternally, for God wills it so.
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Notes and References
“... Book 2 contains a long eschatological section (154-338) in which resurrection and the judgment and destinies of the dead are prominent subjects. But most of this section (178-338) is a paraphrase of the Christian Apocalypse of Peter, supplemented by passages taken from Sibylline Oracle 8. All the material on resurrection and judgment of the dead is from the Apocalypse of Peter. This dependence on the Apocalypse of Peter was already demonstrated conclusively by M.R. James, 'A New Text of the Apocalypse of Peter,' JTS 12 (1911) 39-44, 51-52, but his work is not known to J. J. Collins, who therefore underestimates the extent of the Christian material in book 2 [...] Thus the only eschatological material from the original Jewish book 1-2 is in 2:154-177. ...”
Bauckham, Richard
The Jewish World around the New Testament: Collected Essays
(p. 321) Mohr Siebeck, 2008
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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