From Bart Ehrman’s textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press).
I now turn to the longest and apparently most widely read writing [of the Apostolic Fathers] in the collection, called The Shepherd, written by an otherwise virtually unknown Christian named Hermas. Like the book of Revelation in the New Testament, it is an apocalypse, but it is very different from Revelation.
[Below this entry are Claude.ai summaries of two of Bart’s posts.
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Like the book of Revelation, The Shepherd is unusual among apocalypses in not being pseudonymous. Hermas was a Christian living in the middle of the second century c.e. in Rome where his brother was the bishop. His book was well received by Christians throughout the world and was even included among the writings of the New Testament canon in one of our oldest manuscripts. Eventually, however, the judgment articulated by an anonymous author of the late second century was sustained; this author urged that The Shepherd not be read as Scripture because it was written “recently” (i.e., it wasn’t ancient enough) and because its author was someone who was known to the Roman church, not an apostle.
The book takes its name from the angelic mediator who appears to Hermas in the form of a shepherd. There are other angelic beings here as well, in particular, an old woman who identifies herself as a personification of the Christian church. These various figures communicate visions, commandments, and parables to Hermas, who asks for interpretations of what he sees and hears. His heavenly companions typically consent, sometimes grudgingly.
The book divides itself rather neatly into five visions, twelve sets of commandments (or “mandates”), and ten parables (or “similitudes”). The visions and similitudes are enigmatic and symbolic; they are normally explained to Hermas (and the reader) as having a spiritual significance for Christians living on earth. The mandates are somewhat easier to interpret, consisting of direct exhortations to speak the truth; to give alms; to do good to all; to avoid sexual immorality, drunkenness, gluttony, hypocrisy, and malice; and so on.
The entire book, not just the mandates, is driven by an ethical concern. The primary issue involves Christians who have lapsed into sin after being baptized. While a number of early Christians insisted that those who returned to a life of sin after their conversion and baptism had lost their salvation (cf. Heb 6:4–6), this book contends that a second repentance is possible. A person who reverts to sin after being baptized has only one second chance to repent, however. If the second opportunity is squandered, then no hope remains.
This promise of a second repentance may not seem like a particularly apocalyptic message, but it is because the second repentance will prevent a person from suffering the apocalyptic judgment of God. Moreover, the book contains a number of other features of apocalypses.
- First-Person Narrative. The author speaks of his own personal history and of events that have happened to him.
- Mediated Revelations. He experiences visions that convey the truth that he needs to communicate to his readers. These visions are given through angelic intermediaries and are generally interpreted by them as well.
- Transcendent Realities. The visions provide Hermas with the “heavenly” basis for his “earthly” doctrine. The church and its experiences are not the haphazard accidents of human history. They are rooted in divine reality and are directed by higher powers. In this narrative, God works behind the scenes to bring his plan for the church to fruition.
- Symbolic Visions. The visions and similitudes that Hermas portrays are manifestly symbolic and often relate to other visions found in other Jewish and Christian apocalypses. Two instances are the visions of the tower and the monster.
The Tower. In his third vision, Hermas sees a tower being built in the sea by six young men who are assisted by tens of thousands of others. They use a variety of stones for the tower’s construction. Some stones are tailor-made for the task, but some are rotten, others are cracked, and others simply do not fit. Those that can be used are joined together to build the tower while the others are cast aside. The angelic interpreter then explains what all of this means. The tower is the church. It is built in the sea because it comes into being through the waters of baptism. The workers are the holy angels who construct the tower, six of whom are more powerful than the others. The stones represent persons who make up the church. Those that fit perfectly are apostles, bishops, teachers, and deacons who are in perfect harmony with one another. The other usable stones are Christians who have been faithful to God unto death. The stones that are rotten, cracked, or misshapen represent people who can form no part of the tower of God, even though they were formerly stones of potential value (i.e., they at one time claimed to be Christian). These would include people who have been hypocritical in their faith or who have abandoned the truth.
The vision portrays a social reality, and its ultimate point is a moral one. Those who have been cast out of the church because of their hypocrisy or complacency are urged to repent before the tower is completed, for once the job is done, they will have no place among the people of God.
The Monster. In another important vision, Hermas describes his encounter with a grotesque beast that is symbolic of a spiritual reality (Vision IV). Hermas is passing along the road and to his horror sees a gigantic monster breathing fiery locusts from its mouth and rushing on him with power enough to destroy a city. Frightened nearly to death, Hermas prays for help and is told simply to pass the beast by. As he does so, the monster lies down meekly and does nothing but flick its tongue in the air. We are told that the beast represents a great persecution to come, which will crush everyone who does not turn to God with all their pure and blameless heart.
- Encouragement and Admonition. Like the Revelation of John, The Shepherd of Hermas ultimately aims to encourage and admonish its readers. Those who have fallen into a life of sin after their baptism are encouraged to repent and turn anew to the life of faith; they can trust that they will be given a second chance. But all believers must know that God’s patience with sinners is not without limit, for a day of judgment will come in which the tower of the church will be complete, and those who are outside God’s good graces will feel the power of his wrath.
Claude.ai’s Summary of Bart Ehrman’s:
- “What’s Actually in the Shepherd of Hermas?. See the PDF in the Apocrypha directory in Dropbox.
- “Who Wrote the Shepherd of Hermas, and When?” This paper, drawn from Bart Ehrman’s introduction to his edition of the Apostolic Fathers (Harvard University Press, 2004), tackles two interrelated questions about one of early Christianity’s most widely read texts: the identity of its author and the period in which it was composed.
“What’s Actually in the Shepherd of Hermas?.
This piece by Bart Ehrman is excerpted from his introduction to a bilingual (Greek-English) critical edition of the Shepherd of Hermas, published as part of The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2 (Harvard University Press, 2004). It offers a structured overview of one of the longest and most distinctive early Christian texts outside the New Testament canon, summarizing its content, structure, major themes, and narrative arc.
Background and Genre
The Shepherd of Hermas is an early Christian apocalypse, likely composed in Rome in the early to mid second century CE. Like other apocalyptic literature of the period, it is concerned with revealing divine truths that illuminate earthly realities — including future events, especially a coming period of tribulation before the end of the age. However, Ehrman emphasizes that the text is not primarily future-oriented in the way some apocalypses are. Its deeper preoccupation is with the present struggles of Christian life: how believers should live, how they fall into sin, and crucially, whether there is any hope of restoration for those who have sinned after their baptism. The short but significant answer the book provides is that yes, a second chance at repentance is available — but only one, and the window is closing.
The book is narrated in the first person by a man named Hermas, a freed slave living in Rome. Scholars debate whether the autobiographical elements are genuinely historical or a literary device, but either way they lend the text a personal, confessional quality that distinguishes it from more abstractly theological early Christian writings.
Structure
The Shepherd of Hermas is divided into three major sections. The first comprises five Visions, in which Hermas receives revelations from angelic or heavenly figures. The second is a set of twelve Commandments, ethical instructions delivered by the angel known as the Shepherd. The third consists of ten Parables, allegorical visions that develop and expand on the themes introduced earlier. Ehrman is careful to note that these divisions, while present in the manuscripts, are somewhat artificial — themes bleed across sections, parables appear in the Visions, and the great ninth Parable is essentially an extended elaboration of what Hermas sees in the third Vision. The book is best understood as a continuous, if loosely organized, prophetic and ethical work rather than a neatly compartmentalized one.
The Opening Visions (Visions 1–4)
The narrative begins with Hermas encountering Rhoda, an attractive woman who was once his owner. After observing her bathing in the Tiber river and admiring her beauty, he finds himself entertaining sinful thoughts about her. Shortly afterward, he has a vision in which Rhoda speaks to him from the sky, telling him she has been taken up to heaven specifically to accuse him before God on account of his improper desire for her. This opening episode functions as the inciting event of the entire book: it sends Hermas into deep reflection about sin and forgiveness, and sets up the revelatory sequence that follows.
In response to his distress, Hermas begins receiving a series of visions. The primary revelatory figure in Visions 1–4 is an elderly woman who appears to him in successive guises — growing progressively younger across the visions, a detail the text uses to illustrate the spiritual renewal available through repentance. This elderly woman represents the church. Each Vision is itself multi-layered, comprising not just a single revelation but a sequence of them. In the second Vision alone, Hermas sees the woman reading from a book, receives an explanation of the book’s meaning, encounters a young man who tells him who the elderly woman is, and then sees her appear again directly.
The content of these early visions covers several major concerns. Hermas receives revelations about the sins of his own household and family, which he is instructed to address. He is also shown a vision of a terrifying beast representing the coming tribulation that will precede the end of the age — Christians must brace themselves spiritually for what lies ahead. Most memorably, he is given a vision of a great tower being constructed on water out of various kinds of stone. This tower is a symbol of the church being built up on earth, and the different types of stones — some fit for the building, some rejected and cast aside — represent different kinds of people and their spiritual states. This image of the tower will become the book’s most enduring and developed symbol, receiving its fullest treatment later in the ninth Parable.
The Shepherd and the Commandments (Vision 5 and the Commandments)
At the start of the fifth Vision, the revelatory framework shifts significantly. A new angelic figure appears to Hermas in the form of a shepherd — the figure from whom the entire book takes its title. This is the “angel of repentance,” sent to serve as Hermas’s guide, protector, and instructor for the remainder of the narrative. The appearance of the Shepherd marks a transition in both tone and content: the Visions give way to the more didactic sections of the Commandments and Parables.
The twelve Commandments delivered by the Shepherd cover a broad range of ethical concerns, touching on personal integrity, sexual conduct, family relations, and one’s inner disposition toward God. A recurring concern in this section is what the text calls “double-mindedness” — a wavering, indecisive attitude toward God that is treated as a serious spiritual failing. Ehrman notes that portions of the Commandments bear resemblance to the “two paths” tradition found in other early Christian texts such as the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas, and the book explicitly teaches that two angels — one of righteousness and one of wickedness — compete for influence over every human soul.
The Parables
The ten Parables form the final and longest portion of the book, with the eighth and ninth Parables alone comprising nearly two-fifths of the entire text. Through allegorical visions, the Shepherd addresses topics including the nature of Christian life in a world that is not the believer’s true home, the proper relationship between wealthy and poor members of the church, the importance of sexual purity, and the hope of repentance in light of the imminent end. Different parables explore how various kinds of people respond to the truth of God — some are received into the church (represented again by the tower), while others are rejected.
The ninth Parable revisits and expands upon the tower vision from the Visions, this time in exhaustive detail, examining the different stones that compose it and what each category of stone represents in terms of human spiritual condition. It is the book’s theological and symbolic centerpiece.
The book concludes with the Shepherd instructing Hermas to carry his message to others — urging them toward repentance and good works before it is too late, before the tower is completed and the opportunity for entry is gone.
Conclusion
Ehrman closes by noting that while the Shepherd of Hermas is not linguistically difficult — its Greek is relatively straightforward — it is by far the longest work in the Apostolic Fathers corpus, occupying nearly an entire volume of his edition. Its length and repetitiveness can make it challenging, but its sustained focus on repentance, moral renewal, and communal responsibility gives it a coherent and earnest voice that clearly resonated with early Christian communities, some of whom treated it as near-canonical scripture.
Summary: “Who Wrote the Shepherd of Hermas, and When?”
This paper, drawn from Bart Ehrman’s introduction to his edition of the Apostolic Fathers (Harvard University Press, 2004), tackles two interrelated questions about one of early Christianity’s most widely read texts: the identity of its author and the period in which it was composed.
The Shepherd of Hermas and Its Significance
The Shepherd of Hermas was among the most popular writings in early Christianity. Manuscript evidence suggests it was copied and circulated more extensively during the second and third centuries than virtually any other non-canonical Christian text — more, even, than several books that eventually made it into the New Testament. Its popularity was such that some church fathers believed it deserved a place in the scriptural canon, and indeed it appears as part of the New Testament in the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest complete copies of the NT, dated to around 375 CE.
Who Was Hermas?
Ehrman acknowledges that determining the author’s identity is difficult, and that most of what we can say depends on taking the autobiographical details within the text itself at face value. Based on internal evidence, Hermas appears to have been a freedman living in Rome. References to specific Roman landmarks — the Tiber River and the Via Campana — anchor him geographically to the city. He was connected to the Roman church community, though not in a leadership capacity; he refers to the church’s leaders in the third person, suggesting he was an engaged but relatively ordinary member of the congregation.
Ehrman also notes that Hermas’s theological reflections, particularly on Christology (found in Parables 5 and 9), are somewhat superficial, and his literary skill is modest. These qualities have led most interpreters to conclude he was not part of the intellectual or social elite of the Roman church. This portrait of a theologically unsophisticated layperson is consistent with the book’s general moral tone and its emphasis on practical piety and repentance over doctrinal depth.
The Question of Date
Dating the Shepherd of Hermas is complicated by three pieces of evidence that, taken together, point to widely divergent periods of composition — and cannot be easily reconciled.
The first comes from Origen, writing at the beginning of the third century, who suggested that the Hermas of this text was the same individual Paul greets in Romans 16:14. If true, this would place the author in the mid-first century, making the work roughly contemporary with Paul’s own letters.
The second clue comes from within the text itself. In the second Vision (8.2), Hermas mentions a figure named “Clement,” describing him as a kind of external communications officer for the Roman church — someone responsible for corresponding with other congregations. Many scholars have identified this Clement with the author (or at least the figure) behind 1 Clement, a letter traditionally dated to the mid-90s CE and associated with Clement of Rome, who Eusebius identifies as the third bishop of Rome.
The third and most specific piece of evidence comes from the Muratorian Canon, a list of books deemed appropriate for New Testament inclusion, likely produced in the latter half of the second century. The Muratorian Canon explicitly excludes the Shepherd of Hermas from Scripture on the grounds that it was written “recently” — during the episcopate of Pius, the brother of Hermas, whom Eusebius dates as bishop of Rome from approximately 140–154 CE.
Reconciling the Evidence
The gap between Paul’s letter to the Romans (written in the early 60s CE) and the bishopric of Pius spans roughly 80 to 90 years, making it essentially impossible for a single individual to be connected to all three data points. Ehrman suggests Origen may have simply been making an educated — or wishful — guess, motivated by a desire to give the Shepherd apostolic credentials, since he himself cited it as scriptural authority. Conversely, the author of the Muratorian Canon may have been deliberately downplaying the book’s antiquity in order to argue against its canonical status.
The reference to Clement is similarly inconclusive. The letter of 1 Clement never names its author, and Clement’s exact role in the Roman church remains uncertain. Ehrman notes it is possible Clement served different functions in the congregation at different times, complicating any straightforward identification.
Conclusion
Setting aside these conflicting data points, Ehrman falls back on broader considerations of theme, theology, and ecclesiastical context. The absence of any reference to a single “monarchical” bishop in Rome — only presbyters, bishops (plural), apostles, deacons, and teachers — suggests an early second-century setting, before the consolidation of episcopal authority. Taken together, these factors point to a composition date somewhere in the range of 110–140 CE, possibly written over an extended period of time rather than as a single, unified composition.
