(1) The manifold tensions that arise within Virtuosensekten as they grudgingly accommodate the demands of Massenreligiosität—in the process of missionary expansion and organizational development—form a central thematic and empirical concern in Max Weber's historical-comparative studies in the sociology of religion: see especially the analytical over view provided in chapter VI of Economy and Society, vol. 1 (Berkeley, 1978), edited by Roth, G. & Wittich, C.Google Scholar; also fundamental is the account of Buddhism in The Religion of India (New York, 1958), translated and edited by Gerth, H. & Martindale, D.Google Scholar. For an insightful explication and use of these principles as they apply to early Christianity, see Schluchter's, Wolfgang introductory essay in his important edited volume, Max Webers Sicht des antiken Christentums: Interpretation und Kritik (Frankfurt, 1985)Google Scholar. On the sociology of new religious movements more generally, consult Wallis, R., The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Robbins, T., Cults, Converts and Charisma (Beverly Hills, 1988)Google Scholar; and Barker, Eileen, New Religious Movements (London, 1989)Google Scholar.

(2) I have examined this subject more broadly in ‘The sect-church dynamic and Christian expansion in the Roman Empire: persecution, penitential discipline, and schism in sociological perspective’, British Journal of Sociology, 44 (1993), 303–339CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(3) On the sociology of sect phenomena generally, see Wilson, Bryan, Religious Sects (New York, 1970)Google Scholar. Ernst Troeltsch—in dialogue with Max Weber—provided the early classic treatment in Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tübingen, 1911)Google Scholar, but contributed to much subsequent confusion in the field through his misleading insistence that sects are predominantly tied to lower status groups, and as such negatively oriented to the wider society. Weber's sect-church model—grounded in distinctive forms of religious intensity and experience, and corresponding patterns of affiliation and organizational identity—is analytically more judicious, and cognizant of the fact that the social composition of most sects and churches is not only internally variable, but also remarkably diverse when viewed in historical and comparative perspective.

(4) An invaluable overview is provided by the distinguished panel of specialists commissioned by Williams, Rowan (ed.), The Making Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(5) The existence of syncretizing or paganized ‘semi-Christians’ has been discussed on occasion, but there is general agreement that this phenomenon begins to reach sociological significance only in the late 2nd century, and more pressingly in the 3rd and 4th centuries—i.e. with the shift to ‘mass religiosity’ and the ascendancy of ‘church’ over ‘sect’. See Guignebert, C., Les Demi-Chrétiens et leur place dans l'Église antique, Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, LXXXVII (1923), 65–102Google Scholar; and Bonner, Gerald, The Extinction of Paganism and the Church Historian, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 35 (1984), 339–357CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Most fundamentally, it is imperative not to lose sight of the fact that ‘conversion matrixes’ are historically and culturally variable, with each case requiring differing degrees of worldly disengagement and acculturation into new symbolic universes and vocabularies of motive. The transitional move from polytheist to Christian entailed a far greater existential rupture and cognitive resocialization than did conversions from Judaism; and likewise in comparision to the later conversions of Jews and Christians to a conquering Islam. Regarding the latter, see the important collection of essays in Gervers, M. and Bikhazi, R.J., eds., Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries (Toronto, 1984)Google Scholar.

(6) See the classic account by Nock, A.D., Conversion (Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar, who documents the inherently pluralistic nature of Greco-Roman religiosity, and the syncretizing mystery cults in particular, which featured multiple ‘adhesions’ rather than exclusive, doctrinally-based ‘conversions’. Adherence to Christianity could not serve as an additive spiritual ‘supplement’, as was the case in polytheism, but only as a negating ‘replacement’, one mandating, moreover, an open repudiation of past allegiances. Dodds, E.R., Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, likewise emphasizes the ‘powerful attraction’ of Christianity's ‘totalist’ creed: ‘one choice, one irrevocable choice and the road to salvation was clear’, p.134. For further discussion, see Burkert, Walter, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, Mass., 1987)Google Scholar and Meeks, Wayne A., The Origins of Christian Morality (New Haven, 1993)Google Scholar.

(7) It appears that the pre-baptismal probationary and instructional requirements in the founding Christian communities were brief and rudimentary, but became extended and elaborated over the course of the 2nd century. See Folkemer, Lawrence, A Study of the Catechumenate, Church History, 15 (1946), 286–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the evolution of baptismal credal formulae and practices, consult Whitaker, E.C., Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy (London, 1970)Google Scholar.

(8) On baptism as cleansing regeneration, see the Pauline epistle to Titus 3.5 [c.65?, 85?]; on receiving an impress of the heavenly through bestowal of the Spirit, see Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.11.2 [c.190], which discusses 1 Corinthians 6.9–11. An excellent overview is provided in Pelikan, Jaroslav, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (Chicago, 1971), chapter 3Google Scholar. The various religious connotations of baptism are well summarized in Ferguson, Everett, Baptismal Motifs in the Ancient Church, Restoration Quarterly, 7 (1963), 202–416Google Scholar. Christian baptism as ‘spiritual empowerment’ is the distinguishing dimension, basically unparalleled in the purificatory lustrations common in polytheism; cf. Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, op. cit., chapter 4, ‘The Extraordinary Experience’.

(9) The centrality of the Spirit in the lives of the early Christians is unmistakeable: on the various ‘gifts of the Spirit’, see Galatians 5.22ff. [c.50]; as the ‘first fruits’ of salvation, a ‘pledge’ and ‘installment’ of what is to come, Romans 8.23 [c.63], 2 Corinthians 1.22 [c.53], Ephesians 1.13–14 [c.60?], Hebrews 6.4 [c.68]; as an indwelling ‘quickening’ power, Romans 8.11, 1 Corinthians 3.16, 6.19–20 [c.52], 2 Corinthians 5.17, etc. As Gerd Theissen has cogently observed, according to Christian self-understanding, ‘the congregation itself is presentative (or realized) eschatology. To belong to it already in itself means belonging to a new world’, Social Reality and the Early Christians (Minneapolis, 1992) trans. by Kohl, M., p. 266Google Scholar.

(10) This claim to a higher virtue is a central theme in the various ‘defenses’ of Christianity offered by the so-called apologists of the 2nd century, such as Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus, and Athenagoras. Typical is the following boast by Minucius Felix: ‘You forbid adultery while practicing it, whereas we are the husbands of our wives alone; you punish crimes committed, but with us the mere thought of such is a sin; you fear the voice of witnesses, but for us our conscience alone suffices, without which we do nothing; and finally, the prisons are crowded to overflowing with your own people, but not a single Christian is there, except on a charge of his religion or as a so-called renegade [i.e. from an ancestral faith]’ (Octavius 25.6 [c.220]).

(11) For detailed and evocative portraits of the early Christians as spiritual ‘overachievers’, see Fox, Robin Lane, Pagans and Christians (New York, 1987)Google Scholar and Brown, Peter, The Body and Society (New York, 1988)Google Scholar. Note too that Christìan moral discourse is heavily saturated in the metaphorical language of athleticism, with believers commonly characterized as ‘athletes of Christ’, ‘competitors in the contest (agôn) for eternal life’, ‘God's champions’, and so on. A sociological overview on norms of perfectionism and heightened interpersonal affection as coping or compensatory mechanisms can be found in the classic work by Gerth, Hans & Mills, C. Wright, Character and Social Structure (New York, 1953)Google Scholar, chapter VII.4, ‘Anxiety and Social Structure’.

(12) As forcefully expressed in the Fourth Gospel: ‘If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of this world, I myself have chosen to deliver you out of the world, for this the world hates you’ (John 15.19 [c.90]). Note too the concluding appeal for imminent deliverance in the prayer that closed each celebration of the eucharist: ‘May grace come and this world pass away… Lord come (maran atha)’ (Didache 10 [c.95]). Gager, John, Kingdom and Community (Englewood Cliffs, 1975)Google Scholar provides a detailed analysis of the millenarian theme in early Christianity, with insightful comparative materials drawn from anthropological and sociological studies.

(13) For a full documentation of the struggle against Satan and his minions, see Russell, Jeffrey Burton, Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (Ithaca, 1981)Google Scholar. An analytical over-view is provided by Smith, Jonathan Z., Towards Interpreting Demonic Powers in Hellenistic and Roman Antiquity, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (1978), II: 16.1, 425–439Google Scholar. See also Brenk, Frederick, Demonology in the Early Imperial Period, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 1979, II: 16.3, 2068–2145Google Scholar.

(14) Christian moralizing commonly employed the topos of the ‘Two Ways’, i.e. light or darkness, virtue or vice, Christ or world, to dramatize the choices that must be made in attaining salvation; see, e.g., Didache 5.1 [c.95], Epistle of Barnabas 20 [c.97?, 135?]. Polytheists understandably understood that proposed contrast in a different light, as exemplified in their steady denunciation of Christians as anti-social misanthropes, godless deviants disloyal to kin, city and empire; for details, consult Barnes, T.D., Pagan Perceptions of Christianity, in Hazlett, Ian (ed.), Early Christianity: Origins and Evolution to A.D.600 (London, 1991), 231–243Google Scholar. As for the cosmic struggle, note that some scholars have argued that the ending of the Paternoster alludes specifically to Satan, given the grammatical construction hrusai apo tou ponêrou, ‘deliver us from the evil’ (Matthew 6.8–13 [c.85]), and the tendency for Church Fathers to use the substantive ho ponêros or to ponêros, ‘the evil one’, when referring to the devil. Origen's celebrated commentary on the passage certainly accords primacy to deliverance from the Tempter, the Evil One (On Prayer 2.18.30 [c.234]).

(15) All these devices are connected to the pressing boundary construction and maintenance efforts of a still marginal sect, which had to ‘define itself’ against the Judaism from which it was then contentiously emerging and the hostile Hellenistic-Roman world which it sought to convert. Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger (London, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar provides a penetrating anthropological analysis of the common ‘pollution and taboo’ mechanisms utilized in the forging and fortifying of group identities. See also Blasi, A.J., Early Christianity as a Social Movement (New York, 1988)Google Scholar.

(16) Misinterpretations of the agapê and eucharist, respectively.

(17) Two benchmark accounts on the subject of imperial persecutions are de Ste-Croix, G.E.M., Why were the early Christians persecuted?, Past and Present, 26 (1963), 6–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Barnes, T.D., Legislation against the Christians, Journal of Roman Studies, LVIII (1968), 32–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(18) Particularly revealing is the fact that when Christians receive their earliest literary ‘notices’ by polytheists, they are uniformly presented as obstinate and irrational death-seekers: cf. the philosopher Epictetus, Discourses 4.7.6 [c.115], who deduces that their ‘disdain for death’ comes ‘from habit’; the emperor Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.3 [c.170], who refers to their ‘mere opposition’ and suicidal ‘theatricality’; and the physician Galen (b. 130), who records that the Christian ‘contempt of death is patent to us all’, a phrasing which suggests that martyrdom was both fairly commonplace and a defining Christian proclivity (the extant Arabic version is also rendered ‘patent to us every day’ in some translations). Cf. Walzer, R., Galen on Jews and Christians (London, 1949)Google Scholar. Frend, W.H.C., Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford, 1965) is still the standard general workGoogle Scholar; Bowersock, G.W.Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar provides an important supplement on the ‘social construction’ aspects, properly emphasizing the primacy of the Hellenistic and Roman contexts, but needlessly skeptical regarding the Jewish legacy of religiously-based resistance and maximal defiance.

(19) Such, at any rate, seems to have been the majority view. In certain circles no such distinction was made: see, for example, the report preserved in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 5.24. [c.300–325].

(20) See Musurillo, H.A., The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar. In keeping with the other-worldly orientation of the faith, memorials for martyrs were celebrated as their ‘true birthdays’, cf. The Martyrdom of Polycarp 18.3 [c.156]. The hotly disputed question concerning the actual number of victims—the ‘body count’—is sociologically misplaced: far more important in shaping Christian practice and belief was the perception of persecution, and here the vigorous ‘propaganda’ response by the faithful to publicize all suffering, to exalt and elevate martyred exemplars, more than compensated for any lacklustre prosecutorial efforts—presuming such was the case—by Roman officials in the early period. Indeed, the Christian ‘cult of martyrdom’ and its attending ‘siege mentality’ finds expression in virtually every literary offering that predates the great Constantinian reversal. For a nuanced account of one such celebratory text, see Shaw, Brent, The Passion of Perpetua, Past and Present, 139 (1993), 3–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who offers a fascinating exegesis of the Christian ‘martyr complex’ and the gender politics involved in the subsequent patriarchal ‘editorializing’ of Perpetua's own account of female heroism [c.203].

(21) As tellingly confirmed by the fact that Christianity was still very much a minority faith on the eve of Constantine's conversion in A.D. 312, with most scholarly estimates placing the number of adherents at only a 5 to 10% range, empire-wide, out of a total population of 60 to 70 million. Moreover, all the sources and signs indicate that Christianity's pre-Constantinian surge in growth was generally late, concentrated in the latter half of the 3rd century. See especially MacMullen, Ramsay, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven, 1984)Google Scholar, and Fox, R. Lane, Pagans and Christians (New York, 1987)Google Scholar. In my ‘Sect-Church’ paper, op. cit., note 2, a sociological clarification of this elusive question of numbers and rates of expansion is attempted by charting the internal changes—mainly in matters of ideological self-understanding and penitential practice—that carried Christianity away from sectarian exclusiveness towards greater disciplinary tolerance and mass recruitment, a trend that accelerated and gained ascendancy within the movement over the course of the 3rd century. Rodney Stark, drawing upon modern studies of the growth-rate patterns of new religious movements, provides a questionable ‘arithmetic of the possible’ for the early Christian case in his The Rise of Christianity (Princeton, 1996)Google Scholar. Positing a steady 40% growth-rate per decade (and with it an implicit and unsustainable assumption that wider social contexts and the internal dynamics of the movement remained constant), Stark deduces that a network conversion model—wherein an exponentially expanding ‘surface of interpersonal contacts’ yields impressive increases in membership ranks—best accounts for the seemingly ‘miraculous’ ascendancy of Christianity. For problems with Stark's ahistorical linearity assumptions and rational-choice speculations, see my review article in The Sociology of Religion, 58 (1997), 191–195CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Far more compelling analytically is Bulliet's, Richard quantitatively-based study Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period (Cambridge, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which builds upon two essential principles: that the ‘convert pool’ to any religion is sociologically and psychologically diverse; and that the social contexts within which proselytization and conversion occur are highly dynamic. Bulliet's own insightful schema identifies the following basic ‘convert types’: innovators, those earliest recruits—zealots, true believers—comprising approximately 2.5% of the population in a logistic, S-shaped distribution curve; early adopters, risk-taking religious pioneers or social marginals that constitute the next 13.5% of the convert population; the early majority, the following 34%, and typically featuring those of higher social standing who are attracted to a movement then moving from fringe to respectable or mainstream status; the late majority, again estimated at 34%, and primarily consisting of religious moderates and social conservatives who ‘jump on the bandwagon’ once the stigmas and challenges of membership have been removed; and finally the laggards, the remaining 16% of the population, mainly comprised of traditionalists who are members of old establishments, secular as well as religious.

(22) For a comprehensive overview, see Wilken, Robert, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven, 1984)Google Scholar.

(23) Peter Brown, The Body and Society, op. cit., p. 66.

(24) See the chapter of the same revealing title in Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, op. cit. A representative early statement can be found in Clement of Alexandria, Paidagogos 2.10.100 [c.190], ‘if we renounce the deeds of the flesh, having clothed this purified flesh with immortality, we attain unto the standard of the angels’ (to metron tôn angelôn).

(25) Among the more important studies, replete with key passages from the primary sources, are Watkins, Oscar, The History of Penance (New York, 1920)Google Scholar; Poschmann, Bernard, Paenitential Secunda: Die Kirchliche Busse im ältesten Christentum (Bonn, 1964)Google Scholar; and Palmer, Paul, Sacraments and Forgiveness (London, 1960)Google Scholar. I offer a sociological reading of the controversies and schisms that arose over the earliest penitential reforms in ‘The sect-church dynamic’, op. cit., note 2. See also Hepworth, Mike and Turner, Bryan, Confession: Studies in Deviance and Religion (London, 1983)Google Scholar, especially Turner's chapter 2, ‘Confession and social structure’.

(26) Adding greatly to the confusion and ambiguity here is the fact that Jesus's words and actions—as represented in the Gospels—relate almost exclusively to the imminence of the Kingdom of God: his positions on repentance, atonement, and mercy are oriented towards eschatological rather than ecclesiastical interests. Tertullian, following his conversion to the anti-clerical, rigorist, and apocalyptic ‘New Prophecy’ sectarian movement known as Montanism, would make much of this point in his On Purity [c.218], a work of embittered, rearguard criticism against growing penitential laxity in the Christian mainstream.

(27) On concerns over the Parousia: its imminence repeatedly promised, as in ‘The night is far spent, the day is at hand’, Romans 13.11–12 [c.63]; ‘the time has drawn near’, 1 Corinthians 7.29 [c.52]; ‘the end of all things is at hand’, 1 Peter 4.7 [c.80?]; and most importantly, Jesus's own ‘there are some standing here who shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come in power’, or ‘this generation itself shall not pass, till all these things are fulfilled’, Mark 9.1, 13.30 [c.70]; Matthew 24.34 [c.85]; but the delayed arrival occasioning anxiety, as attested in, e.g. ‘there shall come in the last days scoffers, deceivers walking after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? For since then our fathers have fallen asleep, and all things continue as they have from the beginning’”, 2 Peter 3.3–4 [c.90?]; cf. 2 Thessalonians 2.1–3 [c.52]; and of course the inevitable recourse to temporal recalibration, as in ‘one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day’, 2 Peter 3.8.

(28) Save, of course, the extraordinary relief that could be obtained through martyrdom, the ‘baptism of blood’. On this aspect, see especially Origen's Exhortation to Martyrdom [c.235].

(29) An attempt to exclude the text from the lectionary is found in the so-called Muratori Canon, a fragmentary late 2nd-century catalogue, which urges private reading on grounds that the number of prophets ‘is settled’ and that it is a work too recently composed for apostolic certification. As for other reasons why the work was ultimately denied scriptural status, it is all but certain that in the aftermath of the Council of Nicaea in 325, with its consolidation of the Trinitarian conception of the godhead, Hermas’ work was found, retrospectively, to contain theologically suspect elements. Most glaringly, an ‘adoptionist’ Christology—i.e. the man Jesus becomes the Son of God and secures divine grace on account of his life of extraordinary faith and virtue—is implied on occasion in the text (see especially Similitude 5); and similarly troublesome is the strict monotheistic formula advocated in the opening Mandate: ‘First of all believe that God is one’. But in addition to running afoul of subsequently established ‘orthodoxies’, one should not discount a purely pragmatic consideration: The Shepherd is a massive composition, which by its sheer size alone would detract from the primacy of the Gospels and the various Apostolic Epistles. We shall also see that the core message of Hermas' text is temporally-bounded, such that its pastoral value would invariably diminish with subsequent developments in penitential practice. For details on the formation of the scriptual canon and the formation of the scriptural canon and the shifting status of The Shepherd within it, consult the general introduction to the new edition Schneemelcher, Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1 (Louisville. 1991)Google Scholar. See also the learned overview by Chadwick, Henry, The New Edition of Hermas, Journal of Theological Studies, VIII (1957), 274–280CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who concludes that the text enjoyed ‘authoritative status for long enough in ecclesiastical circles of sufficient importance to exercise an epoch-making influence upon subsequent doctrinal developments’. For this paper, I have utilized both the critical edition by Whittaker, Molly, Der Hirt des Hermas (Berlin, 1956)Google Scholar, and the Loeb version in volume II of the Apostolic Fathers (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar, with facing Greek/Latin and English texts, translated by Kirsopp Lake.

(30) Although the text does contain references to practical kinship and domestic matters—e.g. on proper relations between spouses, between parents and children—as well as various autobiographical elements, the new repentance dispensation is clearly offered to the Christian community or ‘family’ at large, a point underscored by the repeated injunctions to Hermas that his special ‘ministry’ or mission is to carry this revelation to ‘all the servants (douloi) of God’.

(31) These practices form part of the standard psycho-physical prelude to religious arousal, along with the ingestion of chemical stimulants and other means of mental and physical exertion and/or disorientation. The visions experienced by Hermas are rather transparent and direct by-products of auto suggestion. The author presents himself as a deeply troubled soul anxious over seemingly minor offenses and in doubt over his salvation; he prays repeatedly and engages in excessive fasting (he is actually warned at one point that his repeated requests for visions will seriously impair his health). The spiritual ‘relief’ that Hermas receives through ‘inner dialogue’ with divine agents accordingly corresponds to the pressing social psychological needs of his ‘reference group’ and ‘generalized other’, i.e. the wavering and fallen saints of his extended Christian ‘family’. For a theoretical overview of these analytical principles, consult Mills, C. Wright, Language, Logic and Culture reprinted in his Power, Politics and People (New York, 1963)Google Scholar.

(32) In addition to more than fifty referrals to the dipsychoi in The Shepherd, see among other sources, 2 Peter 3.3–4 [c.90?]; 1 Thess. 4–5; 2 Thess. 2 [c.52]; James 1.8, 4.8 [c.65]; 1 Clement 11.2, 23.2–3 [c.96] 2 Clement 19.2 [c.150]; Didache 4.4 [c.95]; Epistle of Barnabas 19.5 [c.97?, 135?]. As Rodney Stark notes in his The Rise of Christianity, op. cit., note 19, new religious movements commonly experience a ‘crisis of confidence’ phase as the founding generation begins aging and contemplates the reality of limited missioinary success and non fulfillment of millenarian prophecies.

(33) For a richly documented and analytically incisive study that includes the subject of heavenly messengers, see Segal, Alan, Heavenly Ascent in Hellenistic Judaism, Early Christianity and their Environment, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 1980, II: 23.2, 1333–1394Google Scholar.

(34) Polytheistic critics such as Celsus [c.170] would naturally make much of this Christian demand for uncritical acceptance, mocking their slogans, ‘Do not question, but believe’, or ‘Thy faith will save thee’, and ‘The wisdom in the world is a bad thing and foolishness a good thing’. See Origen's reply to these charges in his Contra Celsum 1.9 [c.248].

(35) It is this scene which finds prominent representation in the largest catacomb of Naples, that dedicated to St. Januarius, a bishop martyred in 305 during the so-called Great Persecution under Diocletian. Gracing a portion of the ceiling of the vestibule to the first catacomb, and dating from the first half of the 3rd century, the painting depicts three angelic maidens in the construction of the Tower, conveying and placing inside the stones of the saved. As catacomb art was highly standardized iconographically, employing abbreviated stock symbolism with a marked preference for salvation themes—Noah in the ark, the Good Shepherd, the three men in the fiery furnace, Jonah and the whale, Daniel in the lions' den, the raising of Lazarus, the resurrecting phoenix—the depiction of the Tower in this important place for pilgrimage and commemorative worship is noteworthy, paticularly suggestive of a widespread familiarity with Hermas' text.

(36) Indeed, in an astute rhetorical reappropriation, the prophet-visionary deliberately utilizes the sphragis or ‘seal’ language of baptism to legitimize and frame the meaning of the remedial metanoia temporarily on offer. For of those wavering and fallen saints who presently repent, Hermas reports that they will receive a ‘second seal’ from the angel of repentance (Similitude 8.6.3).

(37) In Similitude 7.4 it is observed that ‘he who repents must torture his own soul, and be humble in all his deeds and be stricken with many diverse afflictions’. Herein lies one of the sources for the Christian practice known as exomologesis, that complex of attitudes and actions which formed the core of the emerging sacrament of penance. Meaning ‘to confess in full’ or ‘utterly’, exomologesis featured public displays of grief in the form of wailings and prostrations before the faithful, the donning of sackcloth and ashes, repeated fastings and continuous prayers. After a lengthy period of expiation—during which time the penitent would be ‘excommunicated’, i.e. denied access to the eucharist—the presbyters or bishop would impart a ‘laying on of hands’ before the assembled congregation, thereby restoring the believer to the ranks of the saved.

(38) Hence my disagreement with Henry Chadwick's reading which sees in The Shepherd a ‘subtle and revolutionary doctrine of the church as a school for sinners’, op. cit., note 22, p.276. Nor can I follow Dibelius, Martin, Der Hirt des Hermas (Tübingen, 1923)Google Scholar who surmises that Hermas represents ‘das Alltagschristentum der kleinen Leute’, p.425. Both of these interpretations project onto the intentionality and understanding of Hermas himself developments that were to follow, i.e. they predate the arrival of Massenreligiosität. It cannot be too strongly stressed that while The Shepherd offers relief to wavering and fallen saints, this is a single, temporally restricted opportunity; the option of perpetual penitence and restoration—endless recidivism—is explicitly and repeatedly ruled out.

(39) On the surviving fragments of the book and the subsequent history of the Elchasaites, see Klijn, A.F.J. & Reinink, G.J., Patristic Evidence for Jewish-Christian Sects (Leiden, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also the important paper by Henrichs, Albert, The Cologne Mani Codex Reconsidered, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 83 (1979), 339–367CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which documents the emergence of Manichaeism out of the syncretistic currents that passed through Elchasai and other baptist sects.

(40) The ‘coddling of adulterers’ charge is found in Tertullian's Montanist diatribe, On Purity [c.218], a withering indictment against falling virtuoso standards in the Church, where ‘purity is now thought of as the moderation of lust, not its complete renunciation’. The ‘dead man’ label derives from a third century Gnostic treatise, the Apocalypse of Peter, translated by Brashler, J. & Bullard, R., in Robinson, J., ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English (New York, 1988)Google Scholar. This particular tractate offers condemnations of those who ‘name themselves bishops and deacons’, ‘dry canals’ whose ignorance of the truth leads others to spiritual ruin. For the connection here with The Shepherd, which blasts the ‘false knowledge’ of the Gnostics in the Parable of the Mountains (Similitude 9.22), see the insightful account by Koschorke, Klaus, Die Polemik der Gnostiker gegen das kirchliche Christentum (Leiden, 1978), 54–60Google Scholar.