The Shepherd Of Hermas And The Pauline Legacy

In The Shepherd of Hermas and the Pauline Legacy, Jonathan E. Soyars confronts the scholarly consensus and argues that Hermas’s visions reflect an extensive encounter with texts ultimately included in the corpus Paulinum.

This dissertation argues that Hermas, the author the Shepherd, was meaningfully influenced by a corpus of Pauline letters. Chapter One demonstrates that the Shepherd was probably written at Rome in the first few decades of the second century C.E., when Pauline letters were increasingly known and accruing authority among Christians there and beyond. The Shepherd presents Hermas as at least semi-literate, and he could plausibly have read Pauline letters himself or heard them read or discussed by his fellow Christians in various settings. Chapter Two analyzes the history of scholarship, showing how the minimalist consensus that solidified in the modern period, according to which Hermas probably knew only Ephesians and maybe 1 Corinthians, constitutes a reversal of ancient views and reflects not only the acceptance of multiple methodological false dichotomies but also the widespread adoption of an unduly restrictive reading strategy that inevitably restricts the likelihood of ever detecting a meaningful encounter. It then presents a new interpretive approach that potentially uncovers fresh evidence of Hermas's engagement with Pauline letters. Focusing on the Mandates, Similitudes, and Visions sections, respectively, Chapters Three through Five explore Pauline intertexts in the Shepherd, demonstrating that Hermas adopted, adapted, and synthesized identifiable parts of the corpus Paulinum, including both authentic epistles (1 Thessalonians, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and Romans) and pseudepigraphic ones (Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles), as well as Hebrews. Much of what was foundational for the apostle and his pseudepigraphers was foundational for Hermas too. He discussed major and minor topics and theological themes developed across the corpus through time. He connected relevant parts of different Pauline letters and interpreted them in light of each other. He also implicitly participated in particular Paulinist debates, using specifically Pauline terms. Therefore, Hermas fully deserves the label of Pauline interpreter. He carefully and creatively engaged traditions preserved in Pauline letters, and he also interpreted (and corrected) his own experience and the experience of other Roman Christians in light of those letters. This recognition reorients scholarly study of the Shepherd by reconnecting it with a major current in early Christian thought, thereby expanding the sphere of Pauline influence in the second century C.E. even to texts that do not name the apostle or quote letters attributed to him at length.

The Shepherd of Hermas is one of the oldest and most well-attested Christian works. Its popularity arguably exceeded that of the canonical Gospels. Many early Christian thinkers regarded the Shepherd as authoritative and cited it in their own writings, even though its status as Scripture was controversial. The far-reaching influence of the Shepherd during the first few centuries is attested in part by the many languages in which it was copied: Latin, Ethiopic, Coptic, Middle Persian, and Georgian. The early dating and wide dissemination of the Shepherd of Hermas offers us access to a period when canonical boundaries were elastic. This volume treats religious experience in the Shepherd, a topic that has received little scholarly attention. It complements a growing body of literature that explores the text from social-historical perspectives. Leading scholars approach it from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, including critical literary theory, anthropology, cognitive science, affect theory, gender studies, intersectionality, and text reception. In doing so, they pose fresh questions to one of the most widely read texts in the early church, offering new insights to scholars and students alike.

From its original composition and wide distribution in the early second century, the Shepherd of Hermas has both puzzled and intrigued readers with its strange images, surprising language, and challenging rhetoric. Today, both critical and confessional scholars struggle with placing its message in its original historical-theological context while lay readers find the work to be riddled with countless puzzles. To help dispel some of the mystery and misunderstandings concerning the Shepherd of Hermas, this volume offers a new lucid translation that recreates the original colloquial tone of the work. Accompanying the translation is a commentary that unpacks the meanings of the ancient text. Alongside these, a number of introductions focus on matters of date, authorship, genre, theological and practical content, and the writing’s relationship to other ancient literature.

Composed within the first Christian century by a Roman named Hermas, the Shepherd remains a mysterious and underestimated book to scholars and laypeople alike. Robert D. Heaton argues that early Christians mainly received the Shepherd positively and accepted it unproblematically alongside texts that would ultimately be canonized, requiring decisive actions to exclude it from the late-emerging collection of texts now known as the New Testament. Freshly evaluating the evidence for its popularity in patristic treatises, manuscript recoveries, and Christian material culture, Heaton propounds an interpretation of the Shepherd of Hermas as a book meant to guide his readers toward salvation. Ultimately, Heaton depicts the loss of the Shepherd from the closed catalogue of Christian scriptures as a deliberate constrictive move by the fourth-century Alexandrian bishop Athanasius, who found it useless for his political, theological, and ecclesiological objectives and instead characterized it as a book favored by his heretical enemies. While the book’s detractors succeeded in derailing its diffusion for centuries, the survival of the Shepherd today attests that many dissented from the church’s final judgment about Hermas’s text, which portends a version of early Christianity that was definitively overridden by devotion to Christ himself, rather than principally to his virtues.

A cutting edge introduction to a collection of early Christian writings that stem from a forgotten era in Christian history.

Jonathon Lookadoo guides readers through the early Christian apocalypse known as the Shepherd of Hermas, providing a clear overview of the numerous literary, historical, and theological insights that this text contains for those researching early Christianity. Dividing his exploration into two sections, Lookadoo first introduces the Shepherd by providing an overview of the text to those with limited familiarity, while also focusing on critical issues such as authorship, date, and the Shepherd's complex manuscript tradition and reception history. He then moves to examine the interpretation of particular passages in detail, and by close exploration of theological and literary features he is able to contextualize the Shepherd alongside contemporary contexts. This volume covers the important thematic issues in the Shepherd, and also provides a fresh perspective that arises from a thoroughly textual focus; in so doing, Lookadoo enables readers to engage both with the Shepherd itself and the scholarship that surrounds the text.

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