The Shepherd of Hermas: The Book That Almost Made It Into the Bible

What Is the Shepherd of Hermas?

The Shepherd of Hermas is a Christian literary apocalypse composed in Rome during the first half of the second century CE. It was one of the most popular and widely read texts in the early church — so popular, in fact, that many Christian communities treated it as scripture. It appears in the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest complete New Testament manuscript (c. 330-360 CE), bound alongside the canonical books as if it belonged there.

The text is long — longer than any single book of the New Testament — and consists of five Visions, twelve Mandates (commandments), and ten Similitudes (parables). It tells the story of Hermas, a freed slave in Rome who receives revelations from two heavenly figures: an elderly woman who represents the Church, and a shepherd who is the angel of repentance. Through these encounters, Hermas learns about sin, repentance, and the moral demands of Christian life.

The Muratorian Fragment, an early list of canonical books dating to around 170-200 CE, mentions the Shepherd approvingly but excludes it from scripture because 'Hermas wrote it quite recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while his brother Pius was occupying the chair of the bishop of the city of Rome.' This suggests the Shepherd was written during the papacy of Pius I (c. 140-154 CE), though some scholars date parts of it earlier.

The Five Visions

The book opens with Hermas encountering Rhoda, a woman who had once been his owner and whom he found attractive. He sees her bathing in the Tiber River and thinks to himself that he would be happy to have a wife of such beauty. This fleeting desire becomes the occasion for divine instruction. Rhoda appears to Hermas in a vision and tells him that God is angry with him — not for the desire itself, but because the thought reveals a deeper spiritual complacency.

In subsequent visions, an elderly woman appears — at first decrepit and aged, then progressively younger and more beautiful. She represents the Church, and her rejuvenation symbolizes the community's capacity for spiritual renewal through repentance. She shows Hermas a great tower being built from stones — some polished and fitting perfectly, others cracked or rejected. The tower is the Church, and the stones are individual believers. The message is clear: not everyone who calls themselves Christian is actually building the Church.

The visions are vivid, often disturbing, and psychologically astute. Hermas's own moral failings — his wandering eye, his inability to discipline his children, his business anxieties — are not abstract sins but recognizable human struggles. The Shepherd of Hermas is one of the earliest Christian texts to take the interior life of an ordinary believer seriously.

The Doctrine of Second Repentance

The central theological contribution of the Shepherd is its doctrine of second repentance. In the earliest Christian communities, baptism was understood as a complete cleansing of sin. But what happened when baptized Christians sinned again? Some early texts, including the Epistle to the Hebrews (6:4-6), suggest there was no second chance: 'It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened... if they fall away, to restore them again to repentance.'

The Shepherd of Hermas offers a different answer. Through the angel of repentance, God offers one more chance — but only one. 'After that great and holy calling,' the shepherd tells Hermas, 'the Lord gave repentance to all who believe in him... He who knows that after sinning he can repent is already living in sin. But the one who sinned and then repented with his whole heart — for him there is repentance.' This is a carefully balanced position: mercy is available, but it is not unlimited.

This doctrine addressed a real pastoral crisis. As Christianity grew and attracted members who were not all equally committed, the question of post-baptismal sin became urgent. The Shepherd's solution — one chance for repentance after baptism — became influential in the development of the Christian penitential system, though later church practice would eventually allow for multiple confessions and absolutions.

The Twelve Mandates: Ethics for Everyday Christians

The Mandates section contains practical ethical instruction delivered by the shepherd-angel. The twelve commandments cover truthfulness, simplicity, chastity, patience, faith, self-control, cheerfulness, and the discernment of true and false prophets. They read like a moral handbook for ordinary believers navigating the complexities of life in a pagan city.

Mandate 4 addresses marriage and divorce with surprising nuance. If a spouse commits adultery, the faithful partner must divorce them — but must remain unmarried in case the adulterous spouse repents and returns. If the faithful partner remarries, they block the path of repentance. This teaching prioritizes the restoration of the broken relationship over the innocent partner's freedom — a position that would influence later Christian marriage theology.

Mandate 11 provides detailed instructions for distinguishing true prophets from false ones. A true prophet is gentle, humble, and abstains from worldly desires. A false prophet exalts himself, seeks prominence, charges money for prophecy, and gives private consultations. The specificity of these criteria suggests Hermas was dealing with actual false prophets in his community — charlatans who exploited believers' desire for divine guidance.

The Ten Similitudes: Parables of the Church

The Similitudes are extended parables — allegories about the nature of the Church, the relationship between rich and poor, and the final judgment. The most famous is the parable of the willow tree (Similitude 8): an angel distributes branches from a great willow to a crowd. Some return their branches green and flourishing; others return them withered, broken, or half-dead. Each condition represents a different spiritual state.

Similitude 9 expands the tower-building vision into an elaborate allegory. The tower is built on a rock, and the rock is the Son of God. Stones from twelve mountains — representing different types of believers — are tested before being placed in the tower. Some are carved to fit. Others are rejected and broken. The vision is both hopeful and sobering: there is room in the tower for many kinds of people, but not for those who refuse to be shaped.

Throughout the Similitudes, wealth and poverty are recurring concerns. Rich Christians are compared to vines that cannot grow without clinging to elm trees (the poor). The rich depend on the poor for prayers, and the poor depend on the rich for material support. This mutual dependence, rather than charitable condescension, is the model for Christian economic life.

Why the Shepherd Was Almost Scripture — and Then Wasn't

The Shepherd of Hermas was treated as scripture by Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian (who initially accepted it and later rejected it). Its inclusion in the Codex Sinaiticus shows that as late as the mid-fourth century, at least some communities still considered it canonical. The text was read publicly in churches alongside the letters of Paul and the Gospels.

Its eventual exclusion from the canon was based primarily on its late date and its authorship by someone who was not an apostle. The emerging principle of canonicity required texts to be written by apostles or their direct companions — a criterion the Shepherd could not meet. Its theology was not the issue; its credentials were.

The text remained influential even after its exclusion. Its penitential theology shaped the development of confession and absolution. Its ethical mandates influenced monastic rules. Its vivid imagery — the tower, the willow, the aging woman who becomes young — entered the stream of Christian imagination and stayed there.

Reading the Shepherd Today

The Shepherd of Hermas is a reminder that the New Testament we have is the result of editorial decisions that excluded texts which were beloved and authoritative for centuries. It is not a Gnostic text or a heretical document — it is a thoroughly mainstream Christian work that simply failed to make the final cut.

For anyone interested in understanding what ordinary Christians in second-century Rome actually believed and practiced, the Shepherd is indispensable. It is one of 43 ancient sources that preserve different facets of the Jesus movement. Explore all of them at originaljesus.io, where an AI trained on every surviving text can help you encounter the full breadth of early Christian thought.