The Shepherd of Hermas

The Shepherd of Hermas was one of the most popular Christian texts in the first centuries of the church. True, it did not make the final cut; that is, it was not included in the New Testament.^a But it was considered canonical by the influential second-century church father Irenaeus. Tertullian, another prominent church father of the next generation, considered it scripture until his own theology changed and he disagreed with it. The great third-century theologian and compiler of the Hexapla,^b Origen, highly revered it, as did many other Christian leaders.

Composed in Rome in the early second century, The Shepherd of Hermas was attached to the Codex Sinaiticus, the major fourth-century manuscript of New Testament found over a century ago at St. Catherine’s monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai. The text is included in a collection of early Christian writings known as the Apostolic Fathers. This appellation for the collection was coined only about three centuries ago to apply to texts written immediately after the texts of the canonized New Testament. In fact, there is some overlap in the dates of the two collections. As described in the third edition to the first collection writings of the Apostolic Fathers (1719), these works were thought to have been composed by “writers who lived so near the apostolical times, that it cannot doubted, but that they do indeed represent to us doctrine, government, and discipline of the church, as they received it from the apostles; the apostles from Christ, and that blessed Spirit, who directed them both in what they taught.” The Apostolic Fathers collection includes numerous texts in the form of letters, as well as other documents.¹

From the title The Shepherd of Hermas, one might suppose Hermas was a place. In fact, it is a name, the hero of the text, not to be confused with Hermes, the Greek messenger god. Both were common masculine names. And he is not a shepherd. The shepherd is an angelic figure who serves as Hermas’s spiritual guide. The work might more precisely be entitled The Shepherd to Hermas.

Who Hermas was remains a mystery. In the last chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he sends greetings to numerous members of the Roman church, one of whom is Hermas (not to be confused with Hermes, to whom Paul also sends greetings in the same verse, Romans 16:14). Origen, among others, thought that the Hermas in Romans and in the Shepherd were the same. This may in part explain the popularity of the text. But today no scholar makes this identification.

Hermas was apparently a manumitted slave. In the opening lines, he describes himself as a threptos, a term most often used to refer to a foundling, an abandoned child brought up as a slave in another household. In the Roman world, this was the most common form of family-size control. For slave-owners, this was a frequent but expensive way to acquire new slaves; many years of feeding and care were required before these foundlings became productive.

At some time in the past, Hermas was sold to a Roman woman named Rhoda. In the opening scene of the text (see the sidebar “A Vision of Beauty”), Rhoda appears as someone Hermas sees again after many years, which suggests he was probably resold to someone else and then manumitted, that is, given his freedom. The manumission of a young adult slave was not unusual in urban areas.

Later in the text (Vision 2.2 [chapter 6]),^c we learn that Hermas has a wife, and children who are giving him trouble because of their irresponsible conduct.

Although Hermas seems to have a certain credibility in the Christian community, he is probably not a presbyter or elder. He may see himself as a prophet, however. Certainly his belief that he has been invested with a unique divine message governs the entire text.

The document can be divided into three major sections: (1) five visions; (2) twelve mandates (or commandments); and (3) ten similitudes (or parables).

The first vision begins with a highly questionable scene that has led some critics to suggest that Hermas’s sexual hangups provide the key to the interpretation of the entire text. Here Hermas sees Rhoda, his former owner, bathing apparently nude in the Tiber! The scene is so evocative of many classical and even biblical scenes of men watching women bathe² that most commentators take it as the product of the author’s imagination. This, in turn, has led scholars to conclude that all the autobiographical information in the text is fictional. The details about Hermas’s family, it is said, are metaphorical references to the Christian community, Hermas’s real family. Back at the Tiber, however, Hermas gives Rhoda his hand to help her out of the river, insisting that his only thought is of admiration: if only he had a wife of such beauty and personality. We know of course—from later in the story—that he does have a wife. How she shapes up in comparison with Rhoda remains unstated, but one suspects the answer is unfavorable.

Soon thereafter, while Hermas is praying and acknowledging his sins, he sees Rhoda as a heavenly vision accusing him of sin against her, despite his continued plea to the contrary.

The conversation then turns to the general need for metanoia, which can be translated a number of ways in English: repentance, penance, or, better, conversion or change of heart. Throughout this long discussion, we are told of the necessity of metanoia or conversion from “double-mindedness” (dipsychia), a term that describes wavering, hesitation and lack of the simple faith that inspires courage.

In Hermas’s next vision an old woman in shining garments sits on a white chair. She is identified as Hermas’s heavenly guide. In the course of her revelations, she gives Hermas a brief written message; he must pray and fast before he can understand its meaning. Then he is shown a tower being built on water by six young men who had accompanied Hermas’s heavenly guide. Various kinds of stones are brought to build the tower. Some are acceptable and some are not. Some are just the right shape; some must be trimmed before they will fit; others are cast away.

Hermas now understands that the woman in the shining garments is the Church. Although first appearing as an old woman, she becomes progressively younger as the revelation unfolds. She explains that this is the effect of the change of heart that is happening in the community: Metanoia, or conversion, makes people young again.

The various kinds of stones brought to the building represent different sorts of people and their response to the call of faith. Square white stones that are perfectly shaped and fit into the tower without further dressing are faithful church leaders and martyrs. Those rejected but not cast far away are not yet ready to fit into the tower but with a change of heart (metanoia) they might yet fit. Those that must first be trimmed have attachments to wealth and power that must first be cut away. As long as the tower is being built, there is still time for conversion. Once the tower is finished, it will be too late. While the woman in shining garments comes from heaven, the tower is founded on this earth and on the waters of baptism. The stones are living stones (compare 1 Peter 2:5)—real people with real weaknesses. Yet the tower also has its eschatological heavenly aspect; its construction is the measure of the time given to the community for change, for conversion. That time is limited. How much time? It would be just as useless to speculate on the author’s chronology as on that of Daniel in his vision of the four beasts and the heavenly enthroned figure (Daniel 7:1–28) or on the signs of the end-time in the so-called Synoptic Apocalypse (Matthew 24:4–36; Mark 13:5–37; Luke 21:8–36).

Toward the end of the section on visions, the woman in shining garments leaves and is soon replaced by a male shepherd, complete with goatskin tunic, a bag over his shoulder and a staff in hand. It is he who gives the title to the entire work; he is to be Hermas’s shepherd or guide. The shepherd announces that he has been sent by “the most distinguished angel” to be with Hermas for the rest of his life. He may well be modeled on the Hellenistic paredros daimoµn an accompanying spirit who is invoked and placated through certain Greco-Roman magical formulas. The shepherd, who is also the “angel of conversion” (ho aggelos tes metanoias), dictates to Hermas the second and third sections of the work, the mandates (commandments) and the similitudes (parables).

The twelve mandates are instruction in the way of virtue. They principally contain teaching on faith, simplicity, truth, chastity in marriage, widowhood and marriage, fear of the Lord, restraint, courage, overcoming sadness, and how to deal with disconcerting spirits.

The world of Hermas, as of most Greco-Romans, was populated by many spirits, both benevolent and malevolent. In the Gospels, for example, good spirits are usually called angels (Matthew 18:20), while evil spirits take possession of innocent persons and must be exorcised. The most dramatic example in the Gospels of demonic possession is the “legion” of demons possessing the Gerasene man in the tombs on the far side of the Sea of Galilee (Mark 5:1–20; Luke 8:26–39; parallel story of two demoniacs, Matthew 8:28–34).^d Here in the Shepherd the demons are not so dramatic, but no less active.

In the mandates of the Shepherd, we find one of the earliest treatments of what was later called “the discernment of spirits” (see the sidebar “The Discernment of Spirits”). Some background is required to understand this concept. It is based on two premises. The first is the belief that both good and bad spirits actively intervene in human consciousness. The second is that human conduct can be classified in two distinct ways—good and bad, or the way of light and of darkness, of truth and falsehood, or of the two spirits. This ethical dualism appears in both Jewish and Christian writings at the turn of the era: for instance, in the Community Rule among the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QS 3.13–4.26), in the Jewish Testament of Asher, in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (5:17–24) and in the later Jewish-Christian Didache and the Letter of Barnabas. These texts assume that human conduct can go two ways, and they use this common belief for moral exhortation to act in the good way and to avoid the bad. This is not yet “discernment of spirits,” however.

We will now look at what the Shepherd adds that makes it a very early example of the “discernment of spirits.” The Shepherd begins his teaching of the two ways in the conventional manner (Mandate 5–6): “Be courageous, so that the holy spirit that dwells in you will not be overshadowed by another evil spirit.” If an evil spirit enters a person, the place will be overcrowded and the sensitive good spirit will feel claustrophobic and leave. The situation is compared to a wormwood that gets into a jar of honey; it spoils the whole jar. The person is then empty of any good spirit, and the evil ones take over (compare Matthew 12:43–45; Luke 11:24–26). The evil spirit then goes about looking for another peaceful person to disturb, forces its way into the heart of that man or woman (the gender-inclusive language is in the text itself), and makes him or her bad-tempered and petty.

Now comes the “discernment”: You will know which spirit is present and active by the desires and impulses that enter your heart. The good spirit urges you to deeds of justice and virtue, to sentiments of purity and reverence. When these urges enter your heart, you know that the good spirit is at work. On the contrary, when impulses to bad temper, bitterness and evil deeds enter your heart, this is how you know that the evil spirit is at work. So when this happens to a faithful person, he or she should shun the evil spirit and make room in his or her heart for the good spirit.

Hermas is thus one of the first spiritual teachers in the Christian tradition to suggest that the presence of God or of the evil spirit can be discerned from a person’s feelings and inclinations. Contrary to the Stoic ethical principle that all desire must be eliminated in order to find happiness, Hermas and this ongoing tradition affirm the value of feelings and desires as sure indicators and guides to how God acts in human lives.

The tradition of the “discernment of spirits” developed further in the following centuries, especially in the desert monastic tradition but also with urban theologians like Origen (185–254 C.E.). In the early modern period, Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), founder of the Jesuit order and author of the Christian classic known as the Spiritual Exercises, highly valued the tradition. It survives today in the type of spiritual direction that is inspired by Ignatian spirituality and is widely practiced under Jesuit influence.

The “discernment of spirits” also enables one to distinguish true prophecy from false prophecy, Paul exhorts Christians not to despise any prophecy, but to test it and then retain only what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:19–22). Communities in which prophecy was alive tended to adopt their own criteria to identify true prophecy. Matthew 7:16–18 sets down the basic rule: By their fruits you will know them; the good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can the bad tree bear good fruit. The Didache, a collection of ethical teachings and church procedures probably written in Syria around the turn of the first century C.E., tells us that prophets are to be received with reverence, but some of them become nuisances by freeloading and overstaying their welcome. The true prophet, we are told, asks only for food, not money, and never stays longer than three days. Most important, the true prophet never orders food while in prophetic ecstasy and then sits down to eat it!³

Hermas’s criterion is equally concrete and practical, affirming the basic rule: The test of the true prophet is his or her life. The effects of the presence of the good spirit will be evident in the true prophet’s simple and humble behavior, while the false prophet, the would-be prophet, is vain, shameless, luxurious and not straightforward—perennial wisdom that has its current-day applications.

Hermas also condemns as false prophets the oracles of his day. The sure sign of a false prophet is that he or she speaks when consulted—and accepts an appropriate fee! Such oracles were very popular in the Greco-Roman religious world. Pagan gods were consulted at their shrines about important life decisions—marriage, business ventures, etc. This was done by posing a question, often in a form requiring only an answer of yes or no, to a shrine prophet who, in ecstasy, would give back an answer believed to be a communication from a deity. The great Sibyls of Delphi, Claros and Cumae, among others, gave their answers in hexameter verse. Hermas takes a dim view of this practice.

The third and by far the longest section of The Shepherd of Hermas is the similitudes, or parables. Encouraging the wealthy to give charity is a leitmotif that runs through the entire section.

For example, in the second similitude (see the sidebar “The Parable of the Elm and the Vine”) the author draws an analogy based on a method of viticulture common in central Italy: Grapevines were tied onto young elm trees that had been cut off vertically and trimmed to grow laterally in order to support the grapevines. Just as the elm trees sustain the grapevine so that it can bear fruit, so the rich who support the poor materially share in the fruit of the prayers of the poor, to whom God is most favorably disposed. In contrast to the familiar biblical condemnation of the rich and defense of the poor (for example, Luke 6:20–25), here the text affirms that the strengths of both complement each other, and that “both together do a completed work.” The chapter ends with a remarkable beatitude: “Blessed are those who have, and understand that their wealth is from the Lord, for the one who understands this will be able to perform good service [diakonia].”

This emphasis on the responsibility of the rich not to luxuriate in their wealth, but to use it wisely for the less fortunate, no doubt reflects a measure of considerable wealth in Hermas’s community. Many of them, like Hermas, must have been freedmen. Archaeological and literary evidence indicate that large numbers of urban slaves were freed, or manumitted, in midlife. Still bound by social and economic obligations to their former owners, many of these freedmen and freedwomen nevertheless had unusual economic mobility in an essentially static society. Christian communities of this period probably included many such freed slaves, and it is probably this group, heady with their new economic freedom and success, to which Hermas addresses himself.

While these themes occur and reoccur amidst giddy images of visionary towers, maidens, cities, mountains, shepherds and vineyards, The Shepherd of Hermas does not have a consistent or coherent Christology. The names Jesus and Christ never appear (a partial exception: the word Christ appears once in an errant manuscript variant). “The Son of God,” however, appears frequently in the similitudes. The Son of God is variously a servant, a rock, a door, the lord of the tower, a great angel and the holy spirit. Those who would seek a systematic Christology from the text are, alas, doomed to disappointment. Because of the absence of the names Jesus and Christ, some have even questioned whether the document is Christian, but there are sufficient indicators (including the parables about the Son of God and allusions to baptism) that it is.

Those who would measure early Christianity solely by the norms of the canonical Gospels or Paul will find the Shepherd deficient, but it is evidence of the diversity of the early Church and its beliefs. Here we see a form of popular Christianity with strong Jewish influence as it was lived in circles of ordinary people in early second-century Rome. Why did it endure, and what accounts for its popularity? It was no doubt valued for the solidity of its teaching about the Christian life. It does not call readers to ecclesiastical penitential discipline, as some modern interpreters would read into it, but to a fundamental conversion of heart that changes one’s attitude from negativity to affirmation, from the hesitation of double-mindedness to a willingness to lead a wholehearted life of faith, love and courage on behalf of others. This is a message for any generation.

The Shepherd of Hermas was one of the most popular Christian texts in the first centuries of the church. True, it did not make the final cut; that is, it was not included in the New Testament.a But it was considered canonical by the influential second-century church father Irenaeus. Tertullian, another prominent church father of the next generation, considered it scripture until his own theology changed and he disagreed with it. The great third-century theologian and compiler of the Hexapla,b Origen, highly revered it, as did many other Christian leaders. Composed in Rome in the early second century, The Shepherd […]