Shepherd of Hermas

3 Episodes

The Shepherd of Hermas is an early Christian apocalyptic and pastoral work, likely composed in Rome during the late first or early second century CE. Structured in three books — Visions, Commandments, and Similitudes — it features Hermas, a former enslaved person, receiving divine instruction through a series of heavenly figures, including an angel who appears in the guise of a shepherd. Despite being cited as inspired by Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and included in Codex Sinaiticus alongside the New Testament, it was ultimately excluded from the biblical canon by the end of the fourth century.

Redirected from: Hermas

Why this topic matters

The name Jesus and the title Christ appear nowhere in the Shepherd of Hermas — not once — yet Clement of Alexandria called it inspired, Origen treated it as scripture, and it sits at the end of Codex Sinaiticus alongside the books that became the New Testament. That gap between the text’s early prestige and its eventual exclusion is what makes it such a precise instrument for tracing how the canon closed: the Shepherd and the Epistle of Barnabas were the two texts that came closest to making it in, which means the boundary of the New Testament was not always where it eventually landed.

The opposition to the Shepherd was not just about contested authority. One of the Commandments instructs a Christian husband who has divorced his wife for adultery to take her back if she repents — a position that struck some early church fathers as advocating for adultery itself, and earned the book the label adulterous. That the near-canonical text closest to early Christianity’s ethical center could be condemned on moral grounds while Revelation kept its place is the kind of detail that makes canon history harder to treat as inevitable.

Where to start

Start here for the best in-depth listening on Shepherd of Hermas: featured segments, featured episodes, and the episode with the most mentions.

Quotes from the Data

“The two texts that came the closest to being included but were ultimately left out were the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. So this is as close as you get to a New Testament apocryphal text that a lot of folks thought should have been in there.”

Dan McClellan Episode 165

“The word, the name Jesus and the title Christ are never mentioned once anywhere in the entire text. But we do have this angel of repentance who is like a shepherd who basically delivers to Hermas the commandments.”

Dan McClellan Episode 165

“There were some early church fathers who treated the Shepherd as a wicked book, as an adulterous book. Because there is instructions for a Christian husband who has divorced his wife because of adultery... It instructs him to reconcile and forgive her and remarry her if she repents. And this is at odds with the ethics of many of the Christians of this time period.”

Dan McClellan Episode 165

“In the Shepherd of Hermas, it says... 'first of all, believe that there is one God who has established all things and completed them and having caused that from what had no being, all things should come into existence.' And so they're now saying, hey, look at these passages. This is all confirmation of creation ex nihilo.”

Dan McClellan Episode 70

Top episodes

Ranked by mentions of Shepherd of Hermas across the transcript. Start with the top mention above, then keep going here.

All episodes

Every episode currently tagged with Shepherd of Hermas.