Good Shepherd

I received this commandment from my FatherThis passage is one of several sections of John's Gospel which generate division among Jews.

Several authors such as Barbara Reid, Arland Hultgren or Donald Griggs comment that "parables are noticeably absent from the Gospel of John".

The form of the image showing a young man carrying a lamb around his neck was directly borrowed from the much older pagan kriophoros (see below) and in the case of portable statuettes like the most famous one now in the Pio Cristiano Museum, Vatican City (right), it is impossible to say whether the image was originally created with the intention of having a Christian significance.

[9][10] However, by about the 5th century, the figure more often took on the appearance of the conventional depiction of Christ, as it had developed by this time, and was given a halo and rich robes,[11] as on the apse mosaic in the church of Santi Cosma e Damiano in Rome, or at Ravenna (right).

"The touching parable of the lost sheep shows our Lord’s compassionate love for individual sinners.

The lost sheep signifies a sinner who, obeying his own evil inclinations and the allurements of sin, has separated himself from Jesus, and is shut out from the number of the faithful.

Chapters 11–12 of the Mandaean Book of John are about "a shepherd who loves his sheep" who leads them on to the World of Light.

[15] In ancient Greek cult, kriophoros or criophorus (Κριοφόρος), the "ram-bearer" is a figure that commemorates the solemn sacrifice of a ram.

In two-dimensional art, Hermes Kriophoros transformed into the Christ carrying a lamb and walking among his sheep: "Thus we find philosophers holding scrolls or a Hermes Kriophoros which can be turned into Christ giving the Law (Traditio Legis) and the Good Shepherd respectively".

[16] The Good Shepherd is a common motif from the Catacombs of Rome (Gardner, 10, fig 54) and in sarcophagus reliefs, where Christian and pagan symbolism are often combined, making secure identifications difficult.