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HERMAS

(Gk. Hermás),

SHEPHERD OF

A long and rather complicated work belonging to the collection called since the 17th century the Apostolic Fathers. At least the first part of the work, the Visions, was written by an otherwise unknown man named Hermas who lived in Rome or its environs in the first half of the 2nd century c.e., notwithstanding Origen’s attempt to identify him with the Hermas of Paul’s day in Rom. 16:14 (Comm. on Romans 10:31). In spite of much controversy over the autobiographical details in the Visions, they do yield an outline of information about the author. At the same time, the question must be asked whether some of this information is not present for its symbolic or literary value in terms of Hermas’ message to the Church.

From what we can surmise, Hermas was a Christian freedman in or near Rome at the time of writing (Rome and the Tiber on its outskirts, Vis. 1.1.1-2; the Via Campana, Vis. 4.1.2; unfortunately, the conjectured reference to Cumae in Vis. 2.1.1 is now to be rejected on the basis of the best manuscript evidence). The strong influence of Jewish theological and literary themes leads to the conjecture that Hermas may have been a Jewish Christian, of which there were certainly many in Rome at that time. A further conjecture might be that his family came to Rome as Jewish slaves after the defeat of the uprising in Palestine, 66-74 c.e. Hermas has a wife and children, probably already young adults who are not living up to their father’s expectations, but still part of his extended familia (Vis. 2.2.2-3).

The two poles upon which dating of Hermas have hung are the reference to Clement, alive and well, as one whose function is to send letters to other cities (Vis. 2.4.3), and the reference to the Shepherd in the Muratorian Canon as having been written “recently, in our time” by a brother of bishop Pius. The Clement referred to can only be the author of 1 Clement, written in the 90s of the 1st century in the name of the church in Rome to the church in Corinth. Pius was, according to Eusebius (HE 4.11), bishop of Rome in the mid-2nd century, beginning in the early 140s. If both allusions are correct, this could mean a span of as much as 50 years. However, many consider the evidence of the Muratorian Canon unreliable. Even if it is correct, the time span need not be that long: Clement could be considerably older than Hermas and still functioning in the first decades of the 2nd century, and Hermas could be an older brother of Pius.

The text as we have it has three distinct sections: five Visions, 12 Mandates or Commandments, and 10 Similitudes or Parables. The fifth and last Vision is really an introduction to the Mandates, in which the revelatory figure of the Shepherd first appears. The manuscript evidence would suggest that at some very early stage the full three sections were not together as they are now. Various theories of composite authorship have been proposed. Scholarly opinion today favors rather a single author with several redactions. Considered Scripture by Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, the Shepherd continued in high esteem later, though it came to be rejected from the canon. Its popularity continued longest in Egypt, and along with the Letter of Barnabas was included in Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest surviving complete NT manuscript, from the early 4th century. It was the most popular noncanonical document in the early Church.

Outside the Shepherd, Gk. dipsychía (“doublemindedness”) with its related terms is rare in the Christian literature of this era. But Hermas is obsessed with it, using the word group at least 50 times in 24 different contexts, associated more with problems of wealth and excessive concern about business than with any other identifiable issue. The metánoia (“conversion”) word group occurs even more often. Doublemindedness for Hermas is the inability to decide fully in one direction or another, the opposite of singlemindedness, which would enable one to be completely oriented in one direction and make all of one’s decisions accordingly. It is hesitancy, vacillation, moral inconsistency, vincible doubt, and therefore lack of faith as well as of dedication. Its origins for Hermas’ use are in the two-ways tradition, which is a prominent underlying theme of the moral instruction. The teaching on doublemindedness is an early and profound instruction on the discernment of spirits.

Metánoia (lit., “turning around,” “conversion,” “repentance”) is an equally pervasive theme in the Shepherd, perhaps the theme of the whole book. But the theme of a proclamation of a new repentance has been misunderstood and trivialized by modern commentators who have situated the Shepherd simplistically as a key step in the development of the discipline of penance in the Church — and no more. Such an interpretation misses the point. The book is not a call to the doing of penance in some ecclesiastical structure, but to the change of heart and mind that will lead to a change of quality in Christian life. In order to convey that message to the readers, Hermas uses an extraordinary display of Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman images and teaching traditions. For some, ecclesiology is the central concern of Hermas. Others would say that the necessity of conversion or the proclamation of a second repentance is the major issue. Upon closer scrutiny, one sees that these proposals are not mutually contradictory. Conversion or repentance as developed in the Mandates is not individualistic, but rather very much embedded in the community context; most of the moral exhortation is intensely communal, dealing with human relationships as well as relationship to God.

There are clearly two different images of the Church presented in the book as a whole. The first is the idealized heavenly image of the woman growing ever younger, presented in the Visions. This is the transcendent, pre-existent Church already implied in Colossians and Ephesians, the perfect spouse of the pre-existent Christ (Eph. 5:23-24, 26-27). It stands in some tension with the second image, the imperfect human community that struggles with all the problems presented in the Mandates and Similitudes. The union of opposites lies in the image of the tower, which is the Church (Vis. 3.3.3; Sim. 9.13.1). It is both a transcendent eschatological image (Vis. 3.8.9; Sim. 9.32.1; 10.4.4) and a structure for which the building stones must be carefully selected and approved. What the Church is not for Hermas — and this must be emphasized over against careless characterizations — is an institution dispensing forgiveness in exchange for penance performed. Rather, it is a living community of people who struggle for forgiveness and the courage to lead an authentic Christian life.

The name Jesus appears not at all, and the title Christós only perhaps at Vis. 2.2.8, with great manuscript uncertainty. The glorious or great angel is identified as Michael (Sim. 8.3.3), but performs the functions of God or Christ (e.g., Vis. 5.2; Man. 5.1.7; Sim. 5.4.4; 7.2). But the glorious man, lord of the tower (Sim. 9.7.1) and Son of God (Sim. 9.12.8), may be the same as the glorious angel, though this is never stated. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit is the Son of God (Sim. 9.1.1; cf. 2 Cor. 3:17; 2 Clem. 14:4). The only viable conclusion is that the text cannot be pressed too hard for consistency on this question. It represents a theological world in which such clarifications have not yet been made.

The work as we now have it purports to be an apocalypse, but the long didactic and parenetic sections have raised questions throughout the history of modern scholarship as to whether the document as a whole qualifies as such. There is more certainty about Visions 1-4, where the apocalyptic structure is more clearly seen. But the format of revelatory agent and symbolic revelation is sustained from the Visions through to the end of the book. Moreover, the parenetic genre that predominates in the Mandates also appears in the Visions and Similitudes. In short, the differences of genre among the Visions, Mandates, and Similitudes are differences of degree rather than of kind. The two genres of apocalypse and parenesis have been creatively interwoven to meet a new situation. Thus one can understand why the Shepherd of Hermas was so widely popular and evoked such controversy in the early Church.

Bibliography. C. Osiek, Rich and Poor in the Shepherd of Hermas. CBQMS 15 (Washington, 1983); G. Snyder, The Shepherd of Hermas, vol. 6 of Apostolic Fathers, ed. R. M. Grant (New York, 1968).

Carolyn Osiek