An Apocryphal text from the New Testament?

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00][music] >> Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

[00:00:04]>> And I'm Dan Beecher.

[00:00:05]>> And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things, Dan?

[00:00:17]>> They're going. We're rocking and rolling. We're having a good time, and I am looking forward to this one. We got a uh an Is It Canon today, and we're going to be talking about some It is a book that I have never heard of, and I assume that most of our uh viewers have also never heard of it. So, I'm pretty excited to dive into it.

[00:00:42]>> Yeah.

[00:00:43]>> let's let's just jump in with Is It Canon?

[00:00:47]>> [music] >> And the the book that we're talking about, The Shepherd of of Hermas? Of Hermes? Of of It's a shepherd.

[00:00:59]H E R M A S >> Yes.

[00:01:01]>> Um and and who who is because Herma Herma Hermas is not a shepherd himself.

[00:01:09]>> No. [snorts] >> Uh who So, Hermas is uh apparently, you know, if we're just going to take it at face value, a a former slave, a slave.

[00:01:20]>> Yes.

[00:01:20]>> person who was sold into slavery uh and uh and in to to a a woman Is the Is the name of the woman Rhode?

[00:01:33]Is that Is that what I'm reading correctly?

[00:01:35]>> You can transliterate it in a few different ways, but Rhoda is how I usually see it.

[00:01:39]>> Oh, okay.

[00:01:40]>> Yeah. Well, let's let's maybe maybe we give a little broad um 30,000-ft view before >> Oh, fine. Fine.

[00:01:48]>> verse one, we can look at verse one and get an awful lot of uh data here.

[00:01:53]>> Yeah.

[00:01:53]>> But but Hermas is is the main character, and then the Shepherd of Hermas is a figure that comes in as kind of the spirit guide, the psychopomp, if you will, to kind of lead this the the second two-thirds of the book.

[00:02:11]Basically, yes, yes. Come in, man, and know me better is is what the the Shepherd famously doesn't say. And so, but this is a fascinating text that I think more people should know about because >> There were an awful lot of people who thought this text was canonical in early Christianity for the first couple of centuries.

[00:02:31]>> So, situated in time, when was this written?

[00:02:34]>> It was probably written, I think scholars would say you got to cast a pretty wide net just because it's a lot of things are not clear here, but I think some scholars would say the earliest it was written was probably somewhere between 70 to 90 CE, and then the latest maybe around 150 CE.

[00:02:53]>> So, so situated well within the range of other books that are definitely canonical.

[00:02:58]>> Yes, yes. The there's there's significant overlap between the the compositional window for the Shepherd of Hermas and several other texts that end up making it into the canon.

[00:03:09]And and we see folks who who treat it as inspired scripture. In fact, the Clement of Alexandria in his Stromata said talks about repeatedly sites the Shepherd of Hermas and here talks about how this some of this stuff was inspiration. He's talking about this therefore it is in a divine manner that the power which spoke to Hermas by revelation and and wrote a the church, the woman, is is this power he's talking about. By revelation said, "The visions and revelations are for the double-minded who ponder in their hearts whether these things are or are not. So, this is an influential early Christian who says this is inspired and goes on to quote it a number of times. You have other folks who seem to treat it as inspired scripture. It is included in Codex Sinaiticus.

[00:04:07]>> Right.

[00:04:07]>> Which is one of our earliest, if not our earliest, uh codex that contains more or less the entire New Testament and then included the um the Epistle of Barnabas or the Letter of Barnabas and then at the very end the Shepherd of Hermas.

[00:04:27]And you have others who who quote part of the first chapter of the Shepherd of Hermas, which talks about creating things from things that are not as evidence of creation ex nihilo, although that's not really what it is.

[00:04:39]Um but >> Oh, really? Cuz when I read it, I was like, oh, that's pretty seems pretty clear.

[00:04:44]>> Yeah, but it's not what's going on and we can talk a little bit about what's going on there when when we get to that passage. But um yeah, it it was it was debated. You have other folks like Tertullian coming in at the the end of the 2nd century CE who say, nah, this is not really canonical.

[00:05:01]Origen thought it was inspired, but doesn't include it in his list of New Testament texts.

[00:05:05]>> Mm.

[00:05:06]>> Uh Eusebius treats it as one of those secondary texts. So, it almost has kind of an apocryphal status.

[00:05:13]But by the time you get to the end of the 4th century and the actual firming up of a canon, it gets left out.

[00:05:20]>> Right.

[00:05:21]>> It uh the when it comes to the New Testament, the two texts that came the closest to be included to being included, but were ultimately left out, were the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. So, this is as close as you get to a a New Testament apocryphal text that a lot of folks thought should have been in there.

[00:05:43]>> I will say it reads a little differently than a lot of the uh the the other texts. It's It's I mean it's It starts out with a story about seeing a girl naked and moves on from there.

[00:05:55]>> You could You could just label it, "Let's get weird." because it >> [laughter] >> it gets really weird. And it's divided up into three books.

[00:06:03]>> Yeah.

[00:06:03]>> And the first book is usually referred to as the visions and there are five visions ranging from like one to seven chapters each. And then the fifth vision is really an introduction of the second book, which is the commandments. And there are 12 commandments. And then the 12th commandment introduces the third book, which is the similitudes.

[00:06:26]And the the shepherd gets introduced when we move from the visions to the commandments. And the shepherd kind of shows up and is like, you know, the the lady is clocking out and this is now night shift. I'm up. So, I'm taking over.

[00:06:43]But But also I I think the name Hermas drops off at that point as well. We don't We don't hear about Hermas after that.

[00:06:51]But Hermas is narrating the story and and we can go to to verse one of of the first vision.

[00:06:58]And and you mentioned that he was sold into slavery. It starts off, "The one who raised me sold me to a certain Rhoda at Rome."

[00:07:07]And so we can we can say a few things about this. The one who raised me, he doesn't say my parents.

[00:07:13]>> Right.

[00:07:13]>> And and what's probably going on here is that this Hermas was probably an orphan or left out for exposure or something like that. And so they would have initially been raised by somebody who probably would have treated them as an enslaved person.

[00:07:29]>> I was going to say, yeah, born it sounded I just assumed that he was born into slavery.

[00:07:35]>> Yeah, and it was probably I think most scholars would say if we had to choose, we would probably say he was orphaned or exposed or something like that. Somebody picked him up and and said, "Cool, got a kid."

[00:07:50]>> Free kid.

[00:07:51]>> Yeah, and then um if if they did not use Hermes as slave labor when he was growing up, they sold him as slave labor. And then and then it goes on to say, "Many years later, I became reacquainted with her and began to love her as a sister."

[00:08:07]And so many years later makes it sound like she must have either manumitted him or sold him off again and somehow he got free and then suddenly runs back into her or something and feels this um sisterly love uh for for Rhoda.

[00:08:28]>> [laughter] >> And sisterly until one sentence later.

[00:08:32]>> Yeah, and then after some time, so we're skipping ahead a lot.

[00:08:36]After some time, as she was bathing in the river Tiber, I saw her, gave her my hand, and brought her out of the river. Seeing her beauty, I thought in my heart, "How happy I would be if I had such a wife both in regard to beauty and manner. I wanted only this, nothing more." Now, I mentioned to you before we started recording, I have seen nutria swimming around in the Tiber. Um [laughter] I would not trust uh a person coming out of the Tiber River. Uh certainly wouldn't be like, "Here, take my hand." Um I might throw a rock.

[00:09:12]>> was nicer back then.

[00:09:13]>> I'm I'm sure it was somewhat nicer, but but they they still had, you know, they they still uh occasionally threw uh you know, dug somebody up and burned their corpse and threw them in the Tiber. That just kidding, that's from centuries after that. But um yeah, it is a uh that's a that's a questionable river in my in my experience.

[00:09:31]>> Dan does not trust the Tiber.

[00:09:33]>> But yeah, he's he's walking along and he's like, "What's this? A naked lady?

[00:09:38]Oh, it's Rhoda, my former master and then someone I loved in a sisterly manner who suddenly I have a certain kind of feeling for."

[00:09:48]>> Yeah.

[00:09:49]>> Um a few feet below my head. Um Anyway, moving on. As >> yeah, it the the the version that I was that I've been looking at is is slightly different than yours, but yeah, it it is interesting because the wording that I see is I would be he thinks to himself, "I would be a happy man if I could but get a wife as handsome and good as she is."

[00:10:16]>> Yes.

[00:10:16]>> Which seems to me as purely innocuous a thought as a human being can have seeing [laughter] a beautiful woman nakedly emerging from a river. That that [laughter] feels like as as pure of a thought as you can have or as non-sexual a thought as you can have.

[00:10:34]>> What what it makes me think of is, "Wow, that sure is a pretty lady down there. I wonder if she dates one of the Yankees."

[00:10:41]>> [laughter] >> I don't know that reference.

[00:10:43]>> know that reference? Okay, then.

[00:10:45]Uh >> Oh oh oh, I got it. I I think I That's Is it Chris Farley?

[00:10:50]>> Yeah, it's Chris Farley.

[00:10:51]>> Okay. Okay. Anyway, but uh it is not an innocuous thought.

[00:10:57]>> No. It turns out it's a highly problematic thought.

[00:11:00]>> Turns out he is in trouble >> Yes.

[00:11:03]>> uh about this thought.

[00:11:05]>> Yeah.

[00:11:05]>> Um and we we we obviously don't have time to go through this whole book. It is a very long book. Um but yeah, he he gets he he has a a vision.

[00:11:16]>> Yes.

[00:11:17]>> Uh do you want to just quickly explain what the vision is and >> Yeah, so he he gets he gets sleepy and he's like, "You know what? I got to confess my sins." So he's praying and he has a vision, "Heaven opened and I saw that woman upon whom I had set my heart greeting me from heaven with "Hello, Hermas."

[00:11:38]>> [laughter] >> Uh looking up at her, I said, "Lady, what are you doing here?"

[00:11:44]>> [laughter] >> But she answered, "I was taken up in order to reproach you for your sins before the Lord."

[00:11:51]>> [snorts] >> I said to her, "Will you now reproach me?"

[00:11:56]"No," she said, "but listen to what I am about to say to you. The God who dwells in the heavens and created what is from what is not and increased and multiplied it for the sake of God's holy church is angry with you because you sinned against me."

[00:12:15]So, he's like, "Uh what are you talking about?

[00:12:19]I've always been real nice to you. What do you mean?" Yeah, and then it says, "Laughing, she said to me, the evil desire arose in your heart.

[00:12:29]Do you not think it is an evil thing? If an evil desire arises in the heart of a just man, it is a sin, a great one.

[00:12:36]Uh so so basically, he did wrong in jonesing for for her Tiber-water-drenched form and she's there. She's been taken up and is is there to call him to repentance.

[00:12:53]Um and he's uh yeah, he gets chewed out a little bit and and we we have this interesting then suddenly the lady's really old.

[00:13:03]And and now what it is and and here the lady's kind of representative of the body of the church, the church community, and where the the sins that have beset the church community have aged the woman.

[00:13:19]And then later on, she she's rejuvenated because there is repentance that is going on. And so there's there's an awful lot of of finger wagging about repentance going on in these visions. The visions are intended to help people feel bad about themselves. But, there's also a concern to build the triumphant church and kind of establish the the community of believers and distinguish them from the reprobate men of the world. So, so Hermas is kind of chastised and has to figure out what's going on here and has to be a part of the the good ones.

[00:13:58]>> Yeah. I guess one of my questions is if if the woman is actually a metaphor, if she is the church or whatever.

[00:14:08]Who is Hermas?

[00:14:10]I presumably also a metaphor.

[00:14:13]Uh >> I think I think he's probably a just a metaphor for the hearer or the reader.

[00:14:20]>> Right.

[00:14:20]>> Put yourself in Hermas's shoes. Surely you have lusted after a woman, you have drawn from the waters of the Tiber. So, so you can you can you can read yourself into Hermas's shoes.

[00:14:34]Um >> [clears throat] >> So, yeah. I And And I think the the point of the And then in the fifth vision, which is taking place a couple three weeks later, we get the introduction of the angel of repentance who has come in the guise of a shepherd.

[00:14:50]>> Mhm.

[00:14:51]>> And [clears throat] uh the shepherd might be symbolic of of Jesus. But, here's something interesting.

[00:14:58]The word the name Jesus and the title Christ are never mentioned once anywhere in the entire text.

[00:15:06]>> Right.

[00:15:06]>> Um but but we do have this angel of repentance who is like a shepherd who basically uh delivers to Hermas the commandments, which which take up the the content of the the second book and and these Commandments are um Commandments about faith in God, avoiding evil speaking, uh giving alms in simplicity. Uh you have basically we're getting back to the the rules for the church. Kind of similar to when we talked about the Didache where there were a bunch of rules that, you know, the you the apostle can stay 2 days, but on the third day that means he's a bad dude and you got to get him out of there. Um and he and there's an interesting one that is actually the source of some of the opposition to the canonization of the Shepherd of Hermas cuz there there were some early church fathers who um treated it treated the Shepherd as uh a a wicked book, as an adulterous book.

[00:16:12]>> Oh.

[00:16:13]>> Because there is instructions for a Christian husband who has divorced his wife because of adultery. If she's committed adultery and he's divorced her, it instructs him to reconcile and forgive her and remarry her if she repents.

[00:16:32]>> Okay.

[00:16:33]>> And this is this is at odds with uh the ethics of many of the Christians [snorts] of this time period who said, "No, that's that's the end of the story. That's the one the one thing that merits divorce is adultery. And so to take back an adulterous wife is to advocate for adultery." And so this is one of the the reasons that there were some Christians who condemned the Shepherd of Hermas is because it it advocated for forgiving a repentant formally adulterous woman.

[00:17:07]>> Yeah.

[00:17:08]>> So um that comes in one of the Commandments.

[00:17:11]>> Yeah. The other commandment like other topics within the Commandments are things like honesty and sexual purity and not slandering people.

[00:17:24]Just sort of nice, you know, standard things.

[00:17:28]>> Yeah, pretty run-of-the-mill sets of commandments.

[00:17:31]>> Yeah.

[00:17:32]>> Um and then we get to these similitudes and and there's an interesting one that came up recently in a video that I did where somebody was asking about what this the first similitude means when it says that at one point it talks about wealth and what you're supposed to do with wealth.

[00:17:53]>> Mhm.

[00:17:53]>> And it says instead of >> Horde it like a dragon.

[00:17:56]>> [laughter] >> Like a troll under a bridge.

[00:17:59]>> That's right.

[00:17:59]>> to horde that stuff.

[00:18:01]Um well, what the the the first similitude says is instead of lands therefore buy afflicted souls according as each one is able and visit widows and orphans and do not overlook them and spend your wealth and all your preparations which you received from the Lord upon such lands and houses.

[00:18:24]Now, the the question here is what does that mean? Buy afflicted souls.

[00:18:29]>> Yeah.

[00:18:30]>> There's an argument that >> It's It's an especially weird construction from a book that starts out with slavery. Like >> Yeah.

[00:18:38]>> A book that starts out with I was sold to someone.

[00:18:41]>> Yeah.

[00:18:42]>> It feels like a weird metaphor to say go out and buy souls.

[00:18:47]>> Well, and and the author never says that was a bad thing.

[00:18:52]>> Right.

[00:18:52]>> The author is just like, yeah, the one who raised me sold me and then a little while later, you know, she did it for me big time.

[00:18:59]Um the Yeah, it's odd.

[00:19:02]And so there there is an argument that has been made that that this is talking about buying enslaved folks to manumit them. Which Which would sound like uh condemnation of the practice of buying, selling, and owning other human beings, enslavement.

[00:19:21]>> I don't think that's what's going on here.

[00:19:23]>> Yeah, that's not how I interpreted the idea.

[00:19:25]>> Yeah. The There are a couple things that interpretations that I think would come first.

[00:19:31]There because there is no practice known from early Christianity of purchasing enslaved folks, even just enslaved Christians >> Yeah.

[00:19:40]>> in order to free them. We As far as we know that never happened.

[00:19:44]There were folks who would go around and pay fines in order to free people from prison.

[00:19:51]>> Oh, interesting.

[00:19:52]>> of more in the vein of I was imprisoned and you visited me. Kind of the true religion of James.

[00:20:00]Um the idea of buying afflicted souls would mean to pay to free um you know, imprisoned souls.

[00:20:09]>> Mhm.

[00:20:10]>> So, that's one thing that it could be about. Another thing is that it could be just a poetic way to refer to general charity because immediately after it says visit widows and orphans.

[00:20:20]>> Yeah.

[00:20:20]>> And orphans and widows are are kind of your your standard symbols of the poor and the needy. These were the canaries in the coal mine of social justice. And so, the idea may just be, "Hey, if you've got wealth, instead of buying up land, go spend it on helping the poor and the needy and the widows and the orphans and the foreigners and the oppressed."

[00:20:42]>> Yeah, I mean, when I read that phrase, that afflicted souls phrase, to my mind what it meant was you're buying them out of their affliction. You know what I mean? Go pay for them to no longer be afflicted. You have the means to help them.

[00:20:58]>> And and I think that's probably the best reading or at least the the intended sense that's probably sitting closest to the surface.

[00:21:07]I think the I the idea of imprisoned people paying for them to be freed, I that certainly could work here. And but I think both of those would take precedence over understanding this as condemnation of the practice of slavery or an advocacy for paying to manumit enslaved folks, which if it was done at all, probably would have just been limited to Christians.

[00:21:30]>> I I'm just going to brag a little bit and say that my ancestor Henry Ward Beecher used to buy people out of slavery and freedom, so >> Very nice.

[00:21:39]>> That's a that's a that's a my that's a Beecher tradition, but doesn't seem to but probably not a >> [laughter] >> Hermas tradition.

[00:21:48]>> What what time period was this?

[00:21:50]>> That was that was right during abolition, right right before the This was Henry Ward Beecher, who was the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin and a lot a lot of really cool Beechers right around that area.

[00:22:04]>> Yeah, very nice.

[00:22:06]>> That's a great heritage.

[00:22:09]>> Um and [clears throat] I have family my my mom actually wrote a historical fiction book about it.

[00:22:17]We have family that ran one of the stations on the Underground Railroad.

[00:22:22]>> Boom.

[00:22:22]>> Um so yes.

[00:22:24]>> So we're we're the cool white >> [laughter] >> We need to sign off now.

[00:22:33]>> [laughter] >> And we're done.

[00:22:36]We've ruined everything. All right.

[00:22:38]>> Um but yeah, we've got we've got 10 similitudes. A lot of them have to do with >> Similitudes are just like parables, right?

[00:22:46]>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:22:47]Um and you know, like one of them is the vine is supported by the elm, so is the rich man helper or helped by the prayer of the poor. So yeah, there there these similitudes that are supposed to do kind of the same things. We we had a bunch of commandments, a bunch of thou shalt, and now we're we're um giving you a bunch of parables to help you further to help further kind of uh cement the idea that you should be a good person. Um and a lot of it has to do with alms giving, a lot of it has to do with maintaining the integrity of the of the Christian community, a lot of it has to do with um being just for protecting the the poor and the innocent from the unjust. Uh and all of that kind of stuff. So, ultimately, it's really advocating for uh it's a it's kind of constructing a an early Christian uh communal ethos and and ethical system uh even though it's going about it in weird ways.

[00:23:47]>> Yeah.

[00:23:48]>> Um so >> It This feels This feels like uh it was written a little It feels a little like it was written by uh John of Patmos's like better adjusted brother.

[00:23:59]>> [laughter] >> Or something.

[00:24:00]>> Still not all there.

[00:24:01]>> Still weird, but like not apocalyptic.

[00:24:05]Just uh be nice.

[00:24:08]>> Yeah, it is uh but I mean, if you if you're not familiar with it, it is worth a read.

[00:24:14]>> It's interesting, yeah.

[00:24:15]>> Just so you can get a sense, because, you know, a lot of times when we reconstruct what early Christianity must have been like, we're really just taking our own experiences and kind of using them as the skeleton for for trying to understand these things. Read this text and you will understand just how alien early Christianity should be to you. How this is one of the one of the more popular texts that just barely missed out on being canon, and it is a weird one. So, yeah, it is it is an alien world.

[00:24:47]>> Yeah. I'm guessing you would swap this out for Revelation. If you were If you were going back in time to try and to try and influence the >> if if somebody said to me, uh if a naked lady came out of the tire you know distributing swords I would and and said you get to swap out revelation for one of these books and I would most likely take the Shepherd of Hermas depending on what books were available but but certainly over revelation yeah.

[00:25:17]>> Interesting all right well there you have it friends uh Thanks so much for joining us if you would like to become a part of keeping this show rocking and rolling and keeping us and our families fed you can go and join up and be a patron over on patreon.com /data over dogma where you can get access to an early and ad-free version of every episode you can get the after party which is bonus content that Dan and I do every week you can force us to answer your questions as a as a patron and we will do it so please consider becoming one of our patrons if you can't do that that's fine go out and give us five stars on the various places that you can do so share an episode if you think that this would be interesting to somebody that you know or you know your Facebook feed or whatever we always appreciate a share and Thanks so much to Roger Gaudi for editing thanks to you for tuning in and we will talk to you again next time.

[00:26:28]>> Bye everybody.

[00:26:30]>> [music]