evidence of the existence of the episcopal form of government or of resistance to its introduction. He appears to use ἐπίσκοπος as synonymous with πρεσβύτερος and always speaks of the government of the church as in the hands of the elders, without hinting that one elder enjoyed authority over others. Clement, indeed, is recognized as the organ by which the church of Rome communicated with foreign churches; but we are not told that implied a pre-eminence in domestic rule. Similarly, though we infer that the presbyters had seats of honour in the church assemblies, we are not told that one had a seat higher than the rest. Either it was not the case or it was too much a matter of course to be mentioned. But a message regarding dissensions is sent τοῖς προηγουμένοις τῆς ἐκκλησίας καὶ τοῖς πρωτοκαθεδρίταις. It is a very forced explanation of the last plural noun to suppose it means some one of the προηγούμενοι who desired to make himself the first, nor have we reason to think that the word implies any sarcasm. It is more natural to understand that besides the presbyters there were others, such as the teachers and prophets (Mand. xi.), who in church assemblies were given seats of honour.
The church had at the time of this writing enjoyed a good deal of quiet, but this had evidently been broken by many harassing persecutions, in which some had apostatized. Usually their danger is described as no more than of loss of goods and of injury to worldly business; but there had been (though perhaps not recently) martyrs who had given their lives and endured crosses and wild beasts for the Name of the Son of God. They could have saved themselves by denial or by committing idolatry. Thus they suffered as Christians, and it has been inferred that the date must be later than the well-known letter of Trajan to Pliny which first made the profession of Christianity unlawful. Yet it seems possible to assign an earlier date to The Shepherd, and to I. Peter which is affected by the same argument, when we remember that Trajan only gave imperial sanction to the rule on which Pliny had been acting already, and on which others had probably been acting previously; or Pliny implies that trials of Christians were then well known. And it may be argued that after the edict of Trajan obstinate profession of Christianity was liable to be punished with death, whereas in the time of Hermas it seems to have been punished only by fine or imprisonment. Hermas lost his business in the persecution, having been betrayed, it seems, by his children. At the time of the visions he was apparently farming. Zahn, who places the persecution under Domitian, ingeniously conjectures (p. 133) that Hermas was one of those to whom, as Dion Cassius tells (68, 2), Nerva made restitution by giving land instead of the goods of which they had been despoiled by Domitian.
It is disappointing to have to add that an ordinary Christian of to-day would find in the book neither much interest nor edification, and that the historical student finds in it much less help than he might expect. Hermas is absorbed in trying to bring about a practical reform; he shews much less interest in doctrine, in which possibly as a layman he was perhaps not accurately instructed; he never quotes either O. or N. T., nor is his language much influenced by Scripture phraseology, and some would describe him as having preached not the Gospel, but merely a dry morality. The inference was natural, if Pauline Christianity is so much in the background in Hermas, that he must have been an anti-Pauline Jewish Christian; and this may seem confirmed by the fact that the N.T. book which has most stamped itself on his mind is the Ep. of St. James. Yet a closer examination finds no real trace of Judaism in him. It is scarcely credible that one brought up a Jew should seem so unfamiliar with O.T.[1] The Jewish nation and its privileges are not even mentioned, nor the distinction between Jew and Gentile. Michael is not the guardian angel of the nation, but of the Christian church.
The only express quotation is from the lost apocryphal book of Eldad and Modad. His use of either O. or N. T, not being indicated by formal quotation, but only by coincidences of language or thought, there is room for difference of opinion as to his use of particular books. The proofs of the use of the Epp. of James and of Ephesians seem decisive, and only a little less strong in the case of I. Peter and I. Cor. Of his use of the Gospel and Revelation of St. John we are persuaded, though we admit that the evidence is not conclusive. We believe also that the knowledge of sayings of our Lord which Hermas unmistakably exhibits was obtained from our Synoptic Gospels, the coincidences with St. Mark (see Zahn, p. 457) being most striking.
Where Hermas had lived before he was sold to Rome we can only conjecture. According to a reading which there seems no good ground to question, he supposes himself in one of his visions to have been transported to Arcadia, and Mahaffy says (Rambles in Greece, p. 330, 2nd ed.) that the scenery he describes suits that in Arcadia, and does not suit the neighbourhood of Rome. Zahn conjectures that Hermas was born in Egypt because the architecture of the tower of Hermas's visions resembles the description in Josephus of the Jewish temple in the Egyptian Heliopolis.
The Shepherd has been edited by Hilgenfeld (Nov. Test. ext. Can. Rec. 1866) and Gebhardt and Harnack (Patres Apostolici, 1877). The latter ed. is indispensable, and contains a full list of editions, and of works treating of Hermas. Some interesting discussion is to be found in the reviews of Gebhardt's ed. by Overbeck (Schurer, Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1878), Donaldson in Theological Review (1878), and Zahn, Göttingen gelehrte Anzeigen (1878). Zahn, Der Hirt des Hermas (1868), is the work from which we have learned most. Another ed. is by Funk (Pat. Apost. Tübingen, 1878). A Collation of the Athos Codex of the Shepherd with intro. by Dr. Lambros, trans. and ed. with preface and appendices by Dr. J. A. Robinson, has been pub. by Camb. Univ. Press; a cheap Eng. trans. of The Shepherd by Dr. C. Taylor (2 vols.) by S. P.C. K.; and in
- ↑ The contrast is striking if we compare the fullness of O.T. quotation in Clement's ep. with the scantiness in Hermas. Harnack noted seven passages which seem to shew acquaintance with O.T. Four of these relate to passages quoted in N.T. books which seem to have been read by Hermas; the other three are doubtful.
