Shepherd of Hermas

Info below was extracted from (if italicized) or paraphrased from Shepherd of Hermas: Author, Dates, and Exclusion from the Bible written by Joshua Schachterle, Ph.D written: October 30th, 2023 and posted on BartEhrman.com

• One of the most popular books that was ultimately left out of the New Testament was the Shepherd of Hermas. It’s an early Christian document that gives us a window into a Christian community and doctrine in the 2nd century. 
• The author claims to be Hermas, a freed Christian slave. Scholars find no reason to doubt these facts.
• Referring again to the blurb from the Muratorian Fragment, if the Shepherd was written “in our times” and the Fragment was written around 170 CE, scholars generally believe that the Shepherd was written in the mid-2nd century.
• The Shepherd is a long book. As Bart Ehrman points out, its overriding concern is the question of what to do when a person who has been baptized sins again. It consists of three sections: the visions, the mandates (or commandments), and the similitudes (or parables). 
  1. The Visions
     • The book starts by introducing Hermas, a former slave living in Rome. Hermas is given five visions in this section.
     • First – An elderly woman who is the embodiment and a representation of the Church appears and speaks to him. Another character then explains that the Church is an old woman because she was the first created thing.
     • Each time Hermas sees her, though, she has grown younger until in the end, she appears as a lovely young bride, the bride of Christ as written about in Ephesians 5:22-33. Hermas discovers later that her gradual transformation represents his soul’s improvement.
     • One powerful image comes from the third vision. In this vision, Hermas is shown some young men building a tower “upon the waters.” The waters are a symbol of baptism, but each of the young men brings stones one at a time and fits them together so well that it looks like the tower is made of one large stone. The tower is another symbol of the church and each of the stones are individual Christians who, when they join the Church, become one.
     • It is during the fifth and final vision that Hermas finally meets the shepherd, an angel responsible for bringing about Hermas to repentance. He also later grants Hermas the mandates and the similitudes, both of which communicate ethical doctrines.
  2. The Mandates – The Mandates are a group of twelve commandments or behavioral rules which Hermas is tasked with relaying to the Church:
     • Believe in God
     • To live in simplicity and innocence; do not speak evil and give alms to all who beg
     • Love truth and avoid falsehood
     • Preserve chastity in your thoughts
     • Learn patience and generosity
     • To know that with every man, there is a good and an evil spirit
     • To fear God and not to fear the devil
     • To do every good and to refrain from every evil deed
     • To pray to God from the depth of the soul with faith that our prayer will be fulfilled
     • To guard against melancholy as the sister of doubt and anger
     • To question true and false prophecies
     • To guard against every evil desire
  3. The Similitudes – The Similitudes are ten parables the shepherd tells Hermas in the form of visions. The tower from the earlier visions is shown again, for example, emphasizing the same symbolic meaning.
• Why was it not included even though it was very popular?
  • Robert Heaton argues that the Shepherd, while not offensive to Athanasius, failed to meet his criteria for solidifying the orthodoxy of Nicaea. It said very little about correct beliefs, preferring to speak of ethical actions as crucial for salvation.
  • Additionally, the words “Jesus” and “Christ” are completely absent from the Shepherd. There is a Son of God mentioned but he’s never explicitly identified with Jesus.
  • Finally, it was not written by an apostle, nor did it claim to be. For many, this was enough to deny scriptural status to the Shepherd of Hermas.

Links

Early Christian Writings – https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/shepherd.html

From the moment of its appearance The Shepherd was received with high esteem in both the East and the West. Several Fathers (St. Irenaeus, Tertullian—whilst still a Catholic,— Clement of Alexandria, and Origen) considered it an inspired work, athough they did not place it on the same footing as the canonical books. The Shepherd was esteemed as the work of a true prophet and was appended to the New Testament in manuscripts of the Bible.

English Translation by J.B. Lightfoot