Loading...Here now is a final post on the early Christian text known as the Shepherd of Hermas, considering what we can know about who wrote it and when — important issues since a number of church fathers early on thought it should be included in the New Testament. (It is actually found as one of the books of the New Testament in our oldest complete copy of the NT, Codex Sinaiticus, around 375 CE)
Here is what I say about such things in the Introduction to my edition of the Apostolic Fathers, Vol. 2 (Harvard University Press, 2004).
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The Shepherd of Hermas was one of the most popular books of early Christianity. Judging from the surviving manuscript remains, it was copied and read more widely in the second and third centuries than any other non-canonical book, even more than many of the books that later came to be included in the New Testament. …
It is difficult to say much about the author’s identity apart from
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