Shepherd of Hermas

About this text

A lengthy visionary text featuring an angel in the form of a shepherd. Covers repentance, moral living, and the nature of the church through parables and visions.

Significance

Extremely popular in the early church. Listed alongside Scripture in some early canons.

How to Read This Historical Text

Shepherd of Hermas is included here as a historical and educational resource, not as Scripture and not as a replacement for the biblical canon. Readers may find it useful for understanding the ideas, debates, devotional language, and literary settings that surrounded Jewish and Christian communities in different periods.

Read this text with context in mind. Notice its era, category, and relationship to canonical passages, then compare its themes with the Bible itself. Some library works preserve valuable historical background, while others represent viewpoints that many Christian traditions rejected. Inclusion in this library does not mean endorsement of every claim or doctrine in the text.

For more about how The Bible Companion handles public-domain writings, Bible translations, attribution, and devotional material, see the Sources & Editorial Policy.

Key excerpts

"The angel of repentance says: Repent, for the Lord has sent me to walk with everyone who repents with their whole heart, and to purify them from sin."

"The church is built upon waters because your life was saved through water."

Scripture cross-references

• 1 Peter 3:20-21 — Salvation through water — same baptismal theology
• Revelation 21:14 — The church built on foundations — similar imagery

Continue exploring

This text is one of 19 in the Early Christian Writings (Non-Canonical) category, and one of 62 across the entire library.