The Shepherd of Hermas

There was a Middle Persian translation made for a Manichaean readership, which survives in a single fragmentary manuscript found at Turfan in what is now China.

He delivers to Hermas a series of precepts (mandata, entolai), which form an interesting development of early Christian ethics.

One point which deserves special mention is the instruction of a Christian husband's obligation to forgive and take back an adulterous wife upon her repentance.

[3] The eleventh mandate, on humility, is concerned with false prophets who desire to occupy the primary, or best seats (that is to say, among the presbyters).

In the third vision it looks as though only the holy are a part of the true Church; in Similitude 9 it is clearly pointed out that all the baptized are included, though they may be cast out for grave sins, and can be readmitted only after repentance.

[3] Textual criticism, the nature of the theology, and the author's apparent familiarity with the Book of Revelation and other Johannine texts are thought to set the date of composition in the 2nd century.

Since Paul sent greetings to a Hermas, a Christian of Rome (Romans 16:14), a minority have followed Origen of Alexandria's opinion that he was the author of this religious allegory.

These authorities may be citing the same source, perhaps Hegesippus,[12] whose lost history of the early Church provided material for Eusebius of Caesarea.

The witnesses are the Muratorian fragment, the Liberian Catalogue of Popes (a record that was later used in the writing of the Liber Pontificalis) and a poem written by "Pseudo-Tertullian" in the 3rd or 4th century AD.

The Muratorian fragment, generally considered to have been written c. 170 AD (although a few scholars disagree with this dating),[13][14] may be the earliest known canon of New Testament writings.

[16] Bogdan G. Bucur says the document was widely accepted among orthodox Christians, yet was not criticized for apparently exhibiting an adoptionistic Christology.

[25] Hermas has some similarities to Montanism, such as a support of a belief in prophetic gifts and disciplinarian rigorism, however a direct connection does not exist.

The English translation by William Wake (Archbishop of Canterbury 1716–1737) is given in W. Hone and J. Jones's Apocryphal New Testament (London, 1820).