In my earlier Nutshell post on the Shepherd of Hermas, I indicated what it was and what it was about, but I didn’t actually summarize what it said.  I can do that here, by excerpting part of the Introduction I give in my bi-lingual edition (i.e., the Greek on one side of the page and my English translation on the facing page) in The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2 (Harvard University Press, 2004).

 

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The Shepherd recounts a series of revelations and direct angelic communications to a prophet named Hermas, a Christian from early to mid second-century Rome.  Like other ancient apocalypses, the book is ultimately concerned to reveal the divine truths that affect earthly realities, and to that extent there is some focus on the future course of human events, especially a time of tribulation that Christians will experience before the end of the age, soon to arrive.  But even more the book deals with problems of Christian existence in the here and now, especially the problems of sin and repentance, of Christians remaining faithful to God and returning to him if they have gone astray.  It is particularly invested in the question of whether Christians can have a second opportunity to repent, if they sin after being baptized.  The short answer is that they do have a second chance — but no more.

The book receives its title from the principal angelic mediator and protector of Hermas, the “angel of repentance,” who comes to him, part way through the narrative (Vision 5),  in the guise of a shepherd.

The Shepherd of Hermas is divided into three sections, given in the manuscripts as a series of five “Visions,” twelve “Commandments,” and ten “Parables.”  There is considerable overlap among these groups: revelatory “parables,” for example, are found not only in the final section but in the earlier two as well, and by far the longest unit in the book, the ninth “Parable,” is a detailed explication of what the author sees in the third “Vision.”  Moreover, many of the themes of each section are repeated and developed in others, especially the overarching themes of sin and repentance, but also more specific issues such as wealth and poverty, family relations, business dealings, and indecision towards God (“double-mindedness”).

The book begins on an ostensibly autobiographical note (scholars debate whether the self-references are historical or fictional) as Hermas, a freed slave, becomes reacquainted after some years with his former owner, an attractive woman named Rhoda, whose beauty and demeanor he admires after observing her bathe in the Tiber river.  Soon afterwards he has a vision of Rhoda speaking to him from the sky, telling him that she has been taken up to heaven to accuse him before God because of his evil desire for her.  The vision upsets Hermas and drives him to ponder how he might find forgiveness for his sins.

In answer to his reflections, he is met by an elderly woman, who, in a series of different guises, provides him with the revelations that make up most of Visions 1-4.  Each Vision in fact comprises not just one but a series of revelations:  just in the “second” Vision, for example, Hermas first sees the elderly woman, representing the church, reading a book (ch. 5); he is then given a revelation concerning the meaning of the words of the book (ch. 6); next he has a vision of a young man who speaks to him about the identity of the elderly woman (8.1); and finally the elderly woman herself appears to him again (8.2).

The visions of this opening section of the book include revelations about the sins of Hermas’s own family, a vision of the upcoming tribulation in the image of a terrifying monster, and a vision of the “tower” of the church that is being supernaturally constructed on earth out of different kinds of stone of varying utility — the most enduring image of the book, which will receive fuller treatment in the ninth Parable.

In the fifth Vision a new revelatory agent is introduced, the angelic figure called the Shepherd, the angel set over repentance, who becomes Hermas’s guide, interpreter, and instructor for the rest of the account.  It is the Shepherd who delivers the twelve Commandments, each of which, again, consists not of a single commandment but rather of a series of injunctions covering a wide range of ethical concerns involving personal, sexual, and family relations.  Some portions of the Commandments resemble the “two paths” teaching found in Barnabas and the Didache, and we are told in fact that there are two angels who influence humans (ch. 36), just as God’s creations and human inclinations are twofold (ch. 38).

Following the set of Commandments, the Shepherd then reveals, and usually explains, the ten “Parables,” some of which again comprise a series of revelations, allegories, and parabolic visions.  These involve such matters as the nature of Christian existence in this alien world, the relationship of the rich and poor in the church, the need for sexual purity, the hope for repentance in the face of the coming end, the differences among people who react in varying ways to the truth of God, leading to their acceptance into or rejection from the church, and the like.  The eighth and ninth Parables — allegorical visions of various sticks representing different kinds of people in the world and of various stones that make up the tower (of the church) under construction — are far and away the longest sections of the book, making up nearly two-fifths of the whole.  The book ends with instructions to Hermas to carry out his ministry by urging others to engage in good works before it is too late and the construction of the tower of the church is completed.

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It’s a long book for all that material — the longest among the Apostolic Fathers.  It takes up almost the entire second volume of my edition, and is difficult to translate, not so much because the Greek is difficult (it’s relatively simple) but because it goes on for a very long time!