THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS (1st - mid 2nd century) Questions on its authenticity and doubting

[rakovskii]

The Shepherd of Hermas is an account of visions by Hermas of Rome from Christ in the form of a Shepherd. It was a widespread early writing, since the Codex Sinaiticus included it and Clement of Alexandria used it. Origen believed it was written during Clement’s papacy (88-99 AD), and the document (in section 8:3) says to have Clement send it abroad. Paul sent greetings to a Christian Hermas in Rome (Rom 16:14). The Muratorian Fragment, however, says: “But Hermas wrote The Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the chair of the church of the city of Rome [140-155 AD]. And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among the Prophets, whose number is complete, or among the Apostles, for it is after their time.” The Catholic Encylopedia suggests: “Perhaps the most probable view is that the historical data in the book are fictitious; the author was really the brother of Pope Pius, and wrote during his brother’s pontificate… The writer wished to be thought to belong to the preceding generation — hence the name of Clement, the most famous of earlier popes, instead of the name Pius.” (CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Hermas)

The document is here: The Shepherd of Hermas (Roberts-Donaldson translation)

(Question 1) Do you believe that Hermas deliberately thought up his document as part of a literary genre of apocalyptic revelatory visions in expectation of nearing End Times (eg. expecting the Second Coming to occur in the 2nd c. AD)? Or was he simply narrating actual divine supernatural visions, wherein actual divine beings came to him?

The Unam Sanctam Catholicam website says: “Though the book presents its teaching in the form of a vision, it is believed the vision is literary and not meant to be a record of an actual apparition, although there is no harm in taking the latter view.” (Shepherd of Hermas)

(Question 2) What do you think about the Shepherd of Hermas’ passages about wavering in prayer and about doubts? The Shepherd says:
“if thou waver in thy heart, thou shalt surely receive none of thy petitions. For they that waver towards God, these are the doubtful-minded, and they never obtain any of their petitions. But they that are complete in the faith make all their petitions trusting in the Lord, and they receive, because they ask without wavering, nothing doubting”.

What about the time when the petitioner in the gospel asked Jesus for healing while recognizing his own doubt, saying “I believe, help my unbelief”(Mk 9:24)?

The Shepherd also says: “doubtful-mindedness is an earthly spirit from the devil, and hath no power.”
Isn’t having doubt an important part of discernment, like whether something is from God or not?

 

[rakovskii]

(Question 3) In Vision 4, Chapters 1-2, when the Church in the form of a woman says that Hermas escaped harm because he didn’t doubt in the presence of the beast, but those hear and despise the woman’s words in the document would be better off not having been born. Does this sound strange or wrong?

Here is Hermas’ vision of the beast:

I see the dust rising more and more, so that I imagined that it was something sent from God. But the sun now shone out a little, and, lo! I see a mighty beast like a whale, and out of its mouth fiery locusts proceeded. But the size of that beast was about a hundred feet, and it had a head like an urn. I began to weep, and to call on the Lord to rescue me from it. Then I remembered the word which I had heard, "Doubt not, O Hermas." Clothed, therefore, my brethren, with faith in the Lord? and remembering the great things which He had taught me, I boldly faced the beast. Now that beast came on with such noise and force, that it could itself have destroyed a city. I came near it, and the monstrous beast stretched itself out on the ground, and showed nothing but its tongue, and did not stir at all until I had passed by it.

The Church in the form of the woman tells him:

You have escaped from great tribulation on account of your faith, and because you did not doubt in the presence of such a beast. Go, therefore, and tell the elect of the Lord His mighty deeds, and say to them that this beast is a type of the great tribulation that is coming. If then ye prepare yourselves, and repent with all your heart, and turn to the Lord, it will be possible for you to escape it, if your heart be pure and spotless, and ye spend the rest of the days of your life in serving the Lord blamelessly. Cast your cares upon the Lord, and He will direct them. Trust the Lord, ye who doubt, for He is all-powerful, and can turn His anger away from you, and send scourges on the doubters. Woe to those who hear these words, and despise them: better were it for them not to have been born.

The woman’s claim about the punishment of those who doubt the words sounds problematic, because we know that according to St. Clement of Alexandria, “many” people in the Church “despised” the writing called Shepherd of Hermas, and that some other Church writers and fathers downplayed the document in different ways.

 

[Dan_Defender]

(Question 2) What do you think about the Shepherd of Hermas’ passages about wavering in prayer and about doubts?

My own take is that there is no contradiction with the father of the epileptic. It has to do with the progression of faith. The father in that passage is struggling, his faith is small. What the Shepherd is getting at is that for people who are more advanced in their faith, there should be no doubt in their mind when praying. Otherwise their faith is small too. Remember that James said that the prayer of the righteous is powerful. The righteous has no doubts.

 

[thistle]

http://www.ntcanon.org/Shepherd_of_Hermas.shtml

 

[rakovskii]

Dear Dan, thanks for replying.

What the Shepherd is getting at is that for people who are more advanced in their faith, there should be no doubt in their mind when praying. Otherwise their faith is small too.

I think that you understand the Shepherd correctly. But I can’t think of anything in the Bible saying whether a doubting or wavering person’s prayer requests can ever be fulfilled. The epileptic’s father’s request seemed to be a successful request from a doubter, but I guess you could say that his request wasn’t in prayer and maybe Jesus helped his doubts go away before fulfilling the request, even though the story doesn’t say that all his doubts left.

What do you think about Questions # 1 (about whether the author thought up the stories or if they are long, literal visions ) and # 3 (whether people who despise the words of the woman in the controversial document would be better off not being born)?

 

[Dan_Defender]

In my opinion, the author was divinely inspired. And lots of people in the early Church thought so too, the witness to that is the fact that the Shepherd is part of several Bible Codices.

 

[rakovskii]

The Development of the Canon of the New Testament - Shepherd of Hermas

Thanks for posting this, Thistle. Your article says:

“The book is a picturesque religious allegory, in most of which a rugged figure dressed like a shepherd is Hermas’ guide. … The genre of Visions 1-4 is that of a Jewish-Christian apocalypse… The closest parallels to the Similitudes are the parables in the book of I Enoch . These parables, in which typically the telling of a parable is followed by a request for and granting of an interpretation, and finally blessings and curses upon those who either do or do not heed it, are more like allegorical similes than the more familiar parables of the synoptic Gospels.”

So your article doesn’t seem to think that Hermas literally had all these visions, but rather was writing in a genre of apocalyptic literature where the visions were really “allegorical similes” or parables. So your article looks at the document like “Dante’s Inferno”, which was a fictional story about a man’s visions. Do I understand this correctly?

 

[ELCore]

But I can’t think of anything in the Bible saying whether a doubting or wavering person’s prayer requests can ever be fulfilled.

James 1:5-8

 

[rakovskii]

Thanks. That passage says:

5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.

8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

James does not actually say that the wavering person will never receive anything (like the Shepherd says), but that the wavering person shouldn’t think that he will. Some other translations of this passage in James say that he should not expect that he will receive anything.

 

[rakovskii]

Dan,
Thanks for your replies. I can see the Shepherd of Hermas as divinely inspired because of its teachings on morality and also its promotion of Christianity in the early Church.

Do you think that this means that the visions in the document were real, as if the writer hallucinated or literally saw supernatural beings giving him these many messages? Or do you think that he more likely thought up and drafted the document in the genre of apocalyptic literature, like the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso in Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century poem, The Divine Comedy?

 

[rakovskii]

In my opinion, the author was divinely inspired. And lots of people in the early Church thought so too, the witness to that is the fact that the Shepherd is part of several Bible Codices.

Dan,
Do you have any more ideas about the Shepherd?

 

[Dan_Defender]

Origen thought that the Hermas mentioned in Romans 16:14 is the author of The Shepherd.

 

[rakovskii]

That’s a good point. Brian Fitzgerald writes,

Origen, a mid-second century theolo-gian was hardly contemporary either with Hermas or the milieu of the Shepherd. He did consider this work to be canonical so he would be interested in assigning it an early date, and certainly he had the handy reference to an Hermas in Romans 16:14. Although hardly impossible, there is no solid proof for this beyond Origen’s assertion.
https://www.st-philip.net/files/Fitzgerald Patristic series/shepherd_of_hermas.pdf

 

[rakovskii]

Dan,
What do you think about Question number 1?:
Do you believe that Hermas deliberately thought up his document as part of a literary genre of apocalyptic revelatory visions in expectation of nearing End Times?

For example, Dante Alighieri wrote an epic poem called the Divine Comedy in the 14th century describing paradise and hell. But people don’t believe that Dante was narrating a literal supernatural vision that he had.

 

[rakovskii]

Let me try to answer Question 1 for myself:
(Do you believe that Hermas deliberately thought up his document as part of a literary genre of apocalyptic revelatory visions in expectation of nearing End Times? Or was he simply narrating actual divine supernatural visions, wherein actual divine beings came to him?)
Personally, I think that this long text is not an actual supernatural vision by the author, even though someone might imagine that it is. Since it’s not Holy Scripture, there is certainly no requirement that I accept it as actually a literal divine vision.

It’s so long and detailed and sermonizing that it doesn’t sound like a real vision. Think about the longest dream that you’ve had and remember. How many pages would it fill if you wrote it down? Maybe a page at most, I expect. Or have you been on medication or had a mental episode wherein you hallucinate or reality appears supernatural in some way? In such a condition, it’s hard to write with such deep philosophical thought and sermonizing like the author expresses. The visions that he narrates are much more coherent than hallucinations as well.

There was a well known genre of apocalyptic, visionary writings that resemble the Shepherd of Hermas from the first few centuries BC and AD. One of the most famous visionary pieces of literature in medieval times is Dante’s Divine Comedy, describing paradise, purgatory, and hell. Scholars don’t believe that Dante had a literal vision of those places and they accept that he intended it as religious fiction. I think that the Shepherd of Hermas fits into that genre.

On the other hand, it’s true that in the Old Testament and Book of Revelation, there are quite a number of visions, like Ezekiel’s. This is what creates a bit of a problem for me. The Church accepts the Biblical apocalyptic narratives, so one can distinguish them from the Shepherd of Hermas on that basis. But other than the Church’s guidance on the matter, how could someone distinguish the Shepherd from the Biblical visions (like John’s Revelation) in order to conclude that the Shepherd of Hermas is a visionary fiction, whereas the Biblical visions are real? Indeed, were I to guess on my own, I would suppose that the Book of Revelation includes alot that is not a literal vision, but rather John the apostle’s own creative storytelling. Maybe that would apply to the Shepherd of Hermas: it could have some literal visions of the author but be surrounded by other creative fiction that is made up by the writer.

What do you think?

 

[Mintaka]

Arghhhh. You are all hurting me.

Okay, let us talk about the literary genre of vision or dream.

In pretty much every human society, there is an expectation that a true poet, as opposed to just a versifier, is someone who is in contact with supernatural power and knowledge. In short, a poet is also a prophet, and his art is more than the sum of its parts. And that is why people talk about the Muses, inspiration, awen, etc.

So yes, a lot of works talking about visions of dreams are actually accounts of visions or dreams.

The second level is using visions and dreams as a literary device; but very often these were also the work of people.laboring under mysterious inspiration also. It is the phenomenon of being inspired to write about a vision of supernatural journey, and having the writing deepen as one writes. Dante was being very didactic, but the Inferno has a mysterious.power.beyond didacticism.

The third level is the idea that you can say politically edgy things under the guise of prophecy or dream. This is pretty much never going to produce great art. It shows up late. There are some early satires that take the form of a supernatural journey, like The Golden A–, but even that is not entirely a joke when you get to the Isis happy ending.

All our early sources about the Shepherd seem to take it as a genuine record of visions, with the main questions being whether the visions were reliable. Having elaborate visions is pretty common in Christian history.