“Then shalt thou admire those who for righteousness’ sake endure the fire which is but for a moment, and shalt count them happy, when thou shalt know (the nature of) that fire” (Letter to Diognetus, chap. x.).
The Shepherd of Hermas, CIRCA A.D. 140
Hermas, the author or compiler of the once famous Shepherd (the Pastor) in a very ancient tradition was identified with the Hermas mentioned by S. Paul (Rom. xvi. 14). This identification was suggested by Origen in the middle of the third century. The Muratorian Canon gives as the approximate date of its composition circa A.D. 140, and suggests another author. Modern scholarship, however, considers that the work in question passed through several redactions, the first belonging to a yet earlier date. If this, as is probable, be the case, then certainly considerable portions of the little volume of the “Shepherd” belong to the reign of Trajan, and possibly to the period of the episcopate of Clement of Rome.[103]
But whether we adopt for the composition of the writing the year 140, or thereabouts, or with Duchesne and Harnack the earlier date of portions of the writing (the last years of the first century), there is no doubt whatever that the work containing the “Visions,” “Commandments,” and “Parables” of Hermas (generally known as the Shepherd) was accepted by the Christians of the second century as a treatise of very high authority. It was publicly read in the congregations along with the canonical (to use a later term) Scriptures, without, however, being put on a level with these sacred writings.
Gradually though we find its authority diminishing, sterner spirits, like Tertullian, misliking its gentle and compassionate directions in the case of the reconciliation of sinners, theologians too, who in the first years were less positive, less precise in their dogmatical definitions, soon began to see how speculative and even wild were some of the statements and definitions of the Persons in the Godhead. Thus the work became less and less an important piece in the arsenal of Christian theology. S. Jerome, for instance, openly flouts it when he writes of the Shepherd as “Liber ille apocryphus stultitiæ condemnandus.” Others, however, of the highest authority in the Church in the third and fourth centuries, such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Athanasius, seem to have ever held the Shepherd in great veneration.
The high place it held in the early Church is shown by its appearing in that most ancient MS. of the Holy Scriptures the Codex Sinaiticus, where it is honoured by being placed at the end of the canonical writings.
But it is as an historical piece of evidence respecting the continued persecutions which vexed the early Church, without any period of cessation, that the work is quoted here. The Shepherd is full of references to this state of things. Renan (L’Église Chrétienne) describes this book in his picturesque vivid imagery as “issuing from a bath of blood.” Lightfoot speaks of it as “haunted in large parts by this ghastly spectre of persecution.” The writer specially alludes to this harrying of the Christian sect in the past, and says that it was likely to continue in the future.
Hermas, in his unique and interesting work, says nothing about the Jewish foes of the Church, and his allusions to the pagans around him are very few. The work may be said to deal exclusively with the inner life of the Roman congregations. On the whole he pictures the life led by the followers of Jesus as fairly satisfactory and good, harassed though it was, but there were many things constantly appearing and reappearing in that life which needed amendment. He dwells with more or less detail on differences, quarrels, bitterness, which arose among themselves, and which too often disfigured and marred the beautiful Christian ideals.
But after all, in Hermas’ evidently faithful and accurate pictures of the Christian congregations in Rome, the point he dwells on with the greatest emphasis is their behaviour in those ever-recurring trials of their faith to which they were constantly exposed through the sleepless, restless ill-will of the Government. Whether the writing dates from circa 140, when Hadrian was reigning, or in part from the last years of the first century in the days of Trajan, it is evident that the position of the Christian community was ever most precarious.