This Christian text you've never heard of, The Shepherd of Hermas, barely mentions Jesus − but it was a favorite of early Christians far and wide
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Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Writings that didn’t make it into the Bible, on the other hand, are often called “apocrypha,” a Greek term that refers to hidden or secret things.
Key Points:
- Writings that didn’t make it into the Bible, on the other hand, are often called “apocrypha,” a Greek term that refers to hidden or secret things.
- There are hundreds of apocryphal Jewish and Christian texts that, for one reason or another, were not included in different versions of the Bible.
- Just because a text was deemed apocryphal, however, does not mean that it was unpopular or lacked influence.
Enslaved to God
- The Shepherd urges self-control and fear of God, trying to instill obedience and avoid allowing emotions like fear or doubt to overcome believers.
- My own research on the Shepherd focuses on how the text depicts believers as enslaved to God, as is true of some other early Christian literature as well.
- The writer imagines that God’s holy spirit is able to enter loyal believers’ bodies and possess them, urging them to do what God wills.
- Instead, readers find a story about an otherwise unknown enslaved man named Hermas experiencing visions and talking with divine beings in the Italian countryside.
‘Useful for the soul’
- The Shepherd became one of the most popular texts among Christians for the first five centuries C.E.
- The Shepherd is even included in what scholars consider one of the oldest and most complete Bibles in the world.
- The Codex Sinaiticus, however, a fourth- or fifth-century manuscript now held at the British Library, ends with the Shepherd.
- Even figures who did not include the Shepherd among New Testament texts thought it was too important to be discarded.
An open Bible
- As the Shepherd helps demonstrate, whether a religious text is included or excluded from the Bible is not necessarily an indicator of its popularity or significance.
- While scholars often lament that the Shepherd is boring, pedantic or too long, its style likely made it ideal teaching material for early Christians.
- In religious communities, the idea of “canonical texts” can be especially limiting, determining what believers can or can’t read or believe.