The Shepherd of Hermas is an anonymously composed text about a friend of the Apostle Paul, who hears the simple lessons of Christianity through visions and visitations by the Angel of repentance.
Part of the early church teachings and taught among Gnostic and other early Christians, The Shepherd of Hermas is a set of short but poignant tale of devotion to God, arranged as visions to the former slave Hermas, together with a set of twelve mandates and ten parables. The brevity of this text, and its topical relevancy to Christendom, made it popular among the early Christians until around the end of the 3rd century.
Each of these writings contain a lesson relevant to the Christian faith; the foundations of Christian ethics may be seen in its pages, with the allegorical stories concerning subjects such as chasteness and aging authored in a hopeful and guiding tone. Allusions to other parts of the New Testament are frequent, suggesting that the anonymous author was experienced in other Christian lore of the time.
Thought to have been composed in the late 1st or early 2nd century, The Shepherd of Hermas remains an important reference for scholars of the Bible and early Christianity. For many years The Shepherd of Hermas was taught alongside the New Testament, but eventually was declared apocryphal by Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria - after this, it fell out of favor among the Christian laity.
This translation to English was composed by Joseph Lightfoot, a Bishop of Durham during the late 19th century. Lightfoot accompanied his priesthood with studies in theology, and this in turn led him to translate Hermas for the modern audience.
