And a few lines lower down the Shepherd further explains, referring to entrance through the gate, and introducing another of the passages cited: [———] "'In this way,' he said, 'no one shall enter into the kingdom of God unless he receive his holy name. If, therefore, you cannot enter into the City unless through its gate, so also,' he said, 'a man cannot enter in any other way into the kingdom of God than by the name of his Son beloved by him'... 'and the gate [———] is the Son of God. This is the one entrance to the Lord.' In no other way, therefore, shall any one enter in to him, except through his Son."(2)
Now with regard to the similitude of a rock we need scarcely say that the Old Testament teems with it; and we need not point to the parable of the house built upon a rock in the first Gospel.(3) A more apt illustration is the famous saying with regard to Peter: "And upon this rock [———] I will build my Church," upon which
indeed the whole similitude of Hermas turns; and in 1 Cor. x. 4, we read: "For they drank of the Spiritual Rock accompanying them; but the Rock was Christ" [———]. There is no such similitude in the fourth Gospel at all.
We then have the "gate," on which we presume Canon Westcott chiefly relies. The parable in John x. 1—9 is quite different from that of Hermas,(1) and there is a persistent use of different terminology. The door into the sheepfold is always [———], the gate in the rock always [———]. "I am the door,"(2) [———] is twice repeated in the fourth Gospel. "The gate is the Son of God" [———] is the declaration of Hermas. On the other hand, there are numerous passages, elsewhere, analogous to that in the Pastor of Hermas. Every one will remember the injunction in the Sermon on the Mount: Matth. vii. 13, 14. "Enter in through the strait gate [———], for wide is the gate [———], &c., 14. Because narrow is the gate [———] and straitened is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."(3) The limitation to the one way of entrance into the kingdom of God: "by the name of his Son," is also found everywhere throughout the Epistles, and likewise in the Acts of the Apostles; as for instance: Acts iv. 12, "And there is no salvation in any other: for neither is there any other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved."
The reasons given why the rock is old and the gate new [———] have anything but special analogy with
3 Compare the account of the new Jerusalem, Rev. xxi. 12
ff.; cf. xxii. 4, 14. In Simil. ix. 13, it is insisted that,
to enter into the kingdom, not only "his name" must be
borne, but that we must put on certain clothing.
the fourth Gospel. We are, on the contrary, taken directly to the Epistle to the Hebrews in which the pre-existence of Jesus is prominently asserted, and between which and the Pastor, as in a former passage, we find singular linguistic analogies. For instance, take the whole opening portion of Heb. i. 1: "God having at many times and in many manners spoken in times past to the fathers by the prophets, 2. At the end of these days [———] spake to us in the Son whom he appointed heir [———](1) of all things, by whom he also made the worlds, 3. Who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his substance, upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had made by himself a cleansing of our sins sat down at the right hand of Majesty on high, 4. Having become so much better than the angels,"(2) &c., &c; and if we take the different clauses we may also find them elsewhere constantly repeated, as for instance: [———] The son older than all his creation: compare 2 Tim. i. 9, Colossiansi. 15 ("who is... the first born of all creation"—[———], 16, 17, 18, Rev. iii. 14, x. 6. The works of Philo are full of this representation of the Logos. For example: "For the Word of God is over all the universe, and the oldest and most universal of all things created" [———]
