The Shepherd of Hermas was one of the founding documents of the orthodox Christian church. It was cited, often as scripture, by such luminaries as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian, and at least the first sections entered the New Testament of the Codex Sinaiticus. It reached its final form in the second century; moreover, it is commonly thought to have been composed over a period of decades, of two or more earlier sources drawn together. These sources might have been contemporaries of the canonical New Testament.
While leafing through Parable 5 (Hermas 54-60), I began to suspect textual strain pointing to just such an earlier source. This project investigates the seams in the text, and explicates whatever pre-Hermas sources there be - and when they were written.
Hermas is divided into three sections. Chapters 1-24 are generally collected as the "Four Visions". For various reasons (notably the emphasis on external rather than internal threats: Jefford pp. 140-1) this is considered the earliest part of the book. Following this is an "Apocalypse" - a "revelation" (ch. 25-49) - incorporating twelve "Mandates" (ch 26-46). Capping the book is the "Parables" or "Similitudes".
Parable 5 is primarily intended to teach how to fast, but its second half gets bogged down in explaining its own imagery. It is organised:
| Verse | Description |
|---|---|
| 54 | Argument |
| 55:1-8 | Parable, pt. 1 |
| 55:9-11 | Parable, pt. 2 |
| 56 | Conclusion |
| 57-59 | Explanation |
| 60 | Coda |
Immediately note that 55:1-8 and 9-11 are separate stories. 55:1-8 is about how the servant goes beyond his master's orders by tending the plot. The ending - and moral - of 55:1-8 has the loyal servant rewarded by the master with adoption, on equal footing with "the son that is most loved". 55:9-11 starts with the servant still nothing more than a trusted servant. In this story, he is given surplus food in lieu of being invited to the banquet. He chooses to give the surplus of that food to his fellow servants. In the end, he is rewarded with nothing more than the repeat of the vow already made; that he is co-heir with the son.
55:9-11 adds themes fully in line with the rest of Hermas. Most notably, it illustrates the belief in Parable 2 (Hermas 51) that excess wealth may be traded to the poor for excess leisure time, to be spent in prayer. 55:9-11 assumes that the landowner is an analogue of God; when the servants pray, the master hears - and favours the generous slave.
This brings us to the second theme of Hermas; a proto-Methodist sense that grace is alienable. To Hermas, being reaffirmed in one's position of favour is not a redundancy. One may sin even after baptism, and still be forgiven (if only once - 29:8). Note also 6:4 in the first visions, 49:2 in the "mandates", and 77:1-5 in the Similitudes. It is therefore enough reward that God notices good deeds a second time around.
The ultimate point of the parable, however, is to illustrate the assertion of Hermas 54, that a fast held in a vacuum is "not a fast". Some early Christians went so far as to dismiss fasting as useless (Thomas 6:1, 14:1). Hermas 54-56 intended to define what might constitute a true fast. In 55:10, the good servant first allotted himself "enough" of what his master gave him, and then redistributed the rest. 56:7 gave general instructions; like a "Hunger Lunch" at Shrewsbury School, the faster first calculates an average cost for a meal, goes for a day on "bread and water", and finally delivers the money saved to the poor. In this way the fast is done for the sake of others, not the self.
Meanwhile, the theme of 55:1-8 is treated as character portrayal. The servant is established as one who goes out of his way for his master. There is not yet a hint that he would go out of his way for his fellows; insofar as they figured into 55:1-8 at all, they did not help him any when he was weeding the vineyard. While it is a nice backdrop for his selfless actions later on, the whole of 55:1-8 goes unmentioned in ch. 56.
The explanation of the parable does not leave 55:1-8 alone, however. After ch. 56 the teaching becomes much more defensive. The narrator provokes this by asking about the imagery used. Unlike Parables 1-4 (and, for that matter, ch. 56 in this parable), the teacher then abuses the narrator: "you are exceedingly arrogant in asking questions" (57:2). Then follows a lengthy attempt to explain the symbols.
The images deal almost entirely with 55:1-8. For example, the slave is likened to the Son of God, and the beloved son is made into the Holy Spirit (incoherently, and at variance with 89:5). The exception is 55:9-11's food, explained as God's laws (58:2). Even this food is an exceptio probans regulam, given that the food was already treated, in literal fashion, in 54-56. And this analogy is dropped when the images are discussed further later on.
The author of 57-59 took many pains with 55:1-8, even to the point of threat if one should look closer. What was so special about it?
The most striking feature of 55:1-8 is its affinity to the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, well-attested in Christianity and in the Synoptic Gospels in particular (Mark 12 = Matt 21 = Luke 20 = Thom 65). This parable takes its cue from the fenced-vineyard metaphor of Isaiah 5:1-7 and Psalm 80:8-16, which in turn borrows from Fertile Crescent imagery of the god as "irrigation master" (Charlesworth, p. 148). The metaphor was, as Jefford put it, a "conscious reflection of Israel's understanding of itself" (Jefford p. 153) at least up to the time of the Thanksgiving Hymns of Qumran (Charlesworth pp. 145-7). The gospels and 55:1-8 add that the master (and, implicitly, his son and some other followers) went on a journey and assigned some people to look after the vineyard. It also notes that the douloV (slave) is loyal, and that the master's klhronomoV (heir) happens to be ton uion autou ton agaphton - "his son that was favoured". Eventually the master returns, or will return, and will reward the tenant(s) according to their desserts. Besides these pluses unique to the Tenants tradition, Hermas 55:1-8 reflects nothing from Isaiah or the Psalm beyond what appears in the gospel parables.
55:1-8 is a wild version of the Wicked Tenants. So which came first? To answer that, it would suffice if the Gospel versions contained language that only made sense in a Shepherd context, or vice versa.
The "favoured son" does not appear in the sole copy of Thomas in which this parable appears, the Nag Hammadi translation into Coptic. Charlesworth also proposed that Mark's version of the parable probably "circulated in an Aramaic oral form" beforehand: Charlesworth noted that Mark neglected to add objective pronouns, and Richard Anderson later added that there is wordplay between the "son" and "stone" that only makes sense in Hebrew - ben and 'eben. Mark also left alone an ending at variance with the way Mark described the crucifixion: death inside the vineyard and tossed out later (ibid. p. 155).
Although "son" was probably original, the honorific agaphtoV derives from God's endorsement at the Synoptic Transfiguration as per Mark 9:7. This in turn took its own point of departure from Psalm 2:7, adding the agaphtoV presumably on the assumption that David, the Beloved (and first messiah) had written the psalm. This was of more interest to Mark than to Thomas; even if more than one copy of Thomas 65 existed, we should not expect to find the word "beloved" in it. It is also unimportant to the parable, if read outside the Gospel of Mark. Whether Thomas, putative pre-Mark, or indeed no parable at all precedes Mark's tale: the son being "favoured" is Mark's, and therefore does not appear before the written synoptic gospels.
Hermas 55, unlike Thomas 65, is attested in four manuscripts of differing textual families, and "beloved" appears in all four. The Greek Papyrus Michigan 129 even dates to the third century (Holmes p. 331), far predating Nag Hammadi and almost predating the earliest extant copies of Mark. We should not expect agaphtoV here, either - the nearest match in Hermas is 89:5's hgaphmenoV - but here it is.
As for the other gospels: Luke has God endorse Jesus in 3:22 (his John the Baptist tale) and in his own Transfiguration scene in 9:35, but without the "beloved"; but "beloved" successfully hid in 20:13 of his Vineyard. Matthew does the reverse; the "beloved" stayed in 3:17 and 17:5 but fell out of 21:37. (Incidentally, this shows that the connexion between Transfiguration and the Wicked Tenants was deliberate on Mark's part; and that it was overlooked by the others, who kept the wording inconsistently and thus out of context. Yet another reason why I favour the Markan Priority hypothesis. But enough about me...)
In this case, the ton uion autou ton agaphton most closely matches Mark 9:7 and Luke 20:13 against its abbreviation in Mark 12:6; and Luke 20:13 is in the context of the Vineyard. The author had read Luke or possibly Mark. Hermas may be a "Jewish" document, and the ideas lingering behind 55:1-8 may trace their ancestry to Jefford's "conscious reflection", but 55:1-8 as it stands derives entirely from known texts of Christianity.
So 55:1-8 had been formulated by one familiar with Christian literature. The author of 57-59 for his part believed in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. What "divided the house against itself"?
Based on how 57-59 tried to re-interpret 55:1-8, my guess is that the author of 57-59 was worried 55:1-8 might be heretical. In the Parables context, 55:1-8 flowed from the tongue of an angel of God. It thus became a doctrinal statement - that mortals could be elevated to be equal with the Son. This might work in a Markan context where the Son was a wonder-working sage, all too human. But not for the Trinitarian. When 57-59 changed the Son to the Spirit, and made the slave the Son in his place, man was no longer potentially on a par with the Son.
As a secondary motive, the author of 57-59 also felt that not enough of the background images had been explained (such as the food). The author(s) of Parables 1-4 explained their images. But as mentioned earlier, ch. 56 did not explain the images of 55:1-8, in particular the relationship between the beloved son and the favoured slave. ch. 57-59 puts this parable on an equal footing to Parables 1-4.
It is inconceivable that the Christian "glosses" within 55:1-8 belonged to the author of 57-59. If 55:1-8 had not been linked to the "beloved Son" by the time the latter author read the parable, that latter author would not have hamstrung the story by adding the heterodox passage and then excusing it away. 55:1-8 is the earliest stratum of the parable, not an intrusion.
A few have hypothesised that Hermas precedes the gospels, for the hardly disputable reason that there is so little gospel material in it. There is no talk of Jesus's earthly deeds, even the resurrection; even the words "Jesus", "Saviour", and "Christ" are absent.
But 55:1-8 is hardly the only reference to gospel material. One can find it especially in the ninth and tenth "Parables". The (Synoptic) Kingdom of God makes its first appearance (89:3), along with a concentration of references to the (Johannine) pre-existent Son (also brought up in 57-59, and in a Paulinesque intrusion into 69:2). The Son is likened to a gate, as in John: "I am the way, the truth, and the life". Resurrection through water - a baptismal motif - first appears in 93. This is also the only place in Hermas, outside Parable 5, where the Son is "beloved by him".
Some dismiss the last parables as additions to the text; one reason is the focus on orthodoxy as opposed to orthopraxy, particularly the attention paid the Son. If so, then they might remove chapters 57-59 from the Similitudes as well. (Apart from its affinity to the later chapters, the author of 57-59 had the opportunity to rewrite 55:1-8 in a more orthodox manner. That he didn't could mean that 54-56 was already popular when he found it. But that would be beyond the scope of this project.) Chapters 54-56, however, has a primary concern in fasting, not christology, and its place is with Parable 2. And this parable is stuck with 55:1-8, belonging to a stratum before any changes were made, even forcing some of them. Those who argue for an early date of Hermas are really talking about selected components; little beyond Hermas 24 can be among the select.
As for why even the final version generally avoids the Gospels - Christ on Earth was not important to Parables 1-8, and the final editor may have decided that the gospels, describing a Son incarnate, did not do justice to the Son's celestial majesty.
I posit that Hermas 55:1-8 was one of the sources for The Shepherd. At first it was a mere edifying tale, a way of telling what the Wicked Tenants should have done, and how they might have been rewarded if they had. When the first compiler of Parables 1-8 found it - or created it - he used it as background to his little guidebook on proper fasting. At some point most Christians agreed that the Son was to be adored on a level with the Father, so one of the editors elected to explain it.
Any thoughts? e-mail me :^) zimriel@sbcglobal.net
The first version of this project was written 30 May-1 June 2000, with a clarification added on 3 June. 30 June, I added some periphery from Charlesworth. 10 Sept 2001, added Anderson's, er, input, also changed my email (and again 2 Jan). 2 June 2002, maybe the Parables author was the writer of 55:1-8.
The Lucan Jesus shows no partiality. The invitation is extended to everyone. 'If those who follow Jesus are not those one would expect, it is not because Jesus excluded some but because some excluded themselves'". This means Luke implicitly included the Jews by contrast with Matthew. More, there is explicit accommodation of Judaism in Acts, wherein Luke's early Christians worship in the Temple. Luke was pro-Temple and pro-Judaism (provided the Jews listened to what Luke believed the Law and Prophets said about Jesus); this was all the reason Luke needed to remove Matthew's (or Mark's) overt condemnations of the Temple and the Jews, concentrating on the latters' leadership alone. As with Matthew's proclamations, so with Mark's insinuations: Anderson agrees that Luke was smart enough to notice a Biblical allusion when she saw one. Until a better critique emerges, the solution remains: Luke read Mark's Vineyard parable, and got rid of the Biblical references.