Arethusa

The Shepherd of Hermas is an early Christian text, probably written in the second century c.e.,¹ that recounts a series of divine revelations given to the freed slave and Christian believer Hermas inviting him and other Church believers to experience μετάνοια, an “inner change” (Grundeken 2015a.10).² The book receives its title from the principal mediator of the revelations, an angel of repentance who comes to Hermas in the guise of a shepherd. As many scholars point out, this text was very popular in the early Christian era, as can be seen from its closeness to the Canon,³ its wide attestation in both non-scriptural manuscripts of the time before Constantine⁴ and the [End Page 221] Oxyrhynchus papyri,⁵ and its many translations during the first centuries of the Christian era into Latin, Ethiopian, Coptic, Georgian, and Pahlavi (Cecconi and Tornau 2014.6–7). The complete text of the Shepherd contains five visions and two other sections dedicated to commandments and parables, but the first four visions originally constituted an independent section, the so-called Book of Visions (hereafter BV).⁶ My paper focuses on this first part of the Shepherd and aims to reassess its literary status.

Since the study of Martin Dibelius in 1923, many theologians and New Testament scholars have analysed the Shepherd and reached a consensus about its theological content, genre, and function. To begin with, the Shepherd is believed to convey a double theological message, as it both offers a portrayal of the Church (Pernveden 1966) and calls its members to μετάνοια (Grundeken 2015b). Secondly, this text belongs to the category of apocalyptic literature, as it contains many features typical of this genre, namely, visions, intermediaries, heavenly books, and references to eschatological events.⁷ The Shepherd is thus considered to be part of a larger pool constituted by the many Jewish and early Christian texts written in the imperial era such as 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, Revelation, and the Apocalypse of Peter (for a full list, see Carey 2014.218). Finally, the Shepherd was in all likelihood meant to address Christian believers⁸ and have an educative effect on them that among New Testament scholars is usually called paraenetic.⁹ This argument was first suggested by the Muratorian Fragment, [End Page 222] which in about 170 c.e. “recommends the Shepherd for private edification” (Cecconi and Tornau 2014.4), and by the many citations of the Shepherd among the Church Fathers (see again Cecconi and Tornau 2014.4). Eusebius (third–fourth century c.e.) even reports that the Shepherd was a text “indispensable” to Christians and especially “to those in need of elementary instruction” (Hist. Eccl. 3.3).¹⁰ Each of these three features—the call to μετάνοια, its apocalyptic genre, and its paraenetic function—applies not only to the Shepherd as a whole but also specifically to the BV. This is documented by the four visions which appear in this section of the text and by some passages which are paraenetic in a more specific sense as they consist of “concise and benevolent injunctions” (Starr and Engberg-Pedersen 2004.4)¹¹ inviting members of the Church to undergo an inner change.

However, the scholarly assessment of the literary quality of the Shepherd is often negative and unsatisfactory. Some theologians have criticised the cohesion of this text. To mention two examples, in her influential commentary, Carolyn Osiek defines the structure of the Shepherd as “loose” (1999.13), and A. Hilhorst points out inconsistencies while commenting upon the beginning of the Shepherd (see Hilhorst 1988). Three partial exceptions to this negative criticism are Humphrey’s, Young’s, and Lipsett’s studies, which combine theological and literary observations in order to discuss Hermas’s μετάνοια as a key element of the Shepherd (Humphrey 1995.119–49, Young 1994, and Lipsett 2011.19–53). Moreover, scholars have so far failed to situate the Shepherd in the broader literary context of the imperial era.

My paper identifies in the BV an unnoticed literary technique through which the paraenetic call to μετάνοια is specifically addressed, that is, a consistent use of images that demand...