presented to
Gbe Xibran?
of tbe
of Toronto
lab? falconer
from tbe boohs of tbe late
Sir IRobert falconer, *.
IpresiDent of tbe Tflniversitg of Toronto, 1907-1932
THE
WITNESS OF HERMAS
TO
THE FOUR GOSPELS
Eonfcon: C. J. CLAY & SONS,
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,
AVE MARIA LANE.
OTambtitige: DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO.
F. A. BROCKHAUS. : MACMILLAN AND CO.
T
THE
WITNESS OF HERMAS
TO
THE FOUR GOSPELS
BY
C^TAYLOR D.D. '•»
MASTER OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE
LONDON
C. J. CLAY AND SONS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
AVE MARIA LANE
1892
[All Rights reserved^
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
PREFACE
TH E Shepherd of Hermas is an incompletely worked mine of allusions to the Gospels and other writings. It has been undervalued because it has not been understood. In form it is a lengthy revelation to one Hennas, written down by himself; but while some take his story for history, perhaps more deem it an offspring of the imagination, and place it in the same category with the famous Pilgrims Progress. Its author, who has a sufficiency of sacred and secular lore at command, never cites by name, except once from the now lost Eldad and Modat, but weaves his materials artfully together into a fabric which must be unravelled with some care before it can be seen of what elements it is composed.
The Witness of Hermas to the Four Gospels is an incidental result of a detailed study of the Shepherd in relation to the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles for the purpose of deciding which of the two writings
VI PREFACE
borrowed from the other. And first it seemed to come out clearly that Hermas had many covert allusions to the Teaching ; and next that his use of it was so comprehensive that the best method of com- parison was to read through the Teaching, note things at all remarkable in it, and search for hidden traces of them in the Shepherd. By this a priori method I was led to anticipate the discovery of the word Gospel under some disguise in the work of Hermas, and I found it in the form dyyeXta dyadrj, Good Tidings.
A singular illustration in the context is usually left unexplained, and has been thought to have no meaning ; but as soon as it was seen that the Gospel was referred to (as was not unnatural at the end of the third apparition of the Church to Hermas) it became possible to interpret the passage in the light of the doctrine of Irenaeus, that from the nature of things there can be neither more nor fewer than four true Gospels, because "when God has made all things compounded and fitted together, the form of the Gospel too must needs have been well compounded and compacted." Taking for granted and as known to all that the universe was compounded of a tetrad of elements, he infers that the complete Gospel must have been made up of a tetrad of Gospels. When
PREFACE Vll
therefore Hermas writes in his chapter on the Good Tidings, "for the world also is compacted of four elements," he would have us know that it was recog- nised in his day in the metropolis of the Empire that the Canonical Gospels were four in number.
For the date of the Shepherd of Hermas the Muratorian fragment gives approximately the limits 140 — 150 A.D. ; and we may say that, even if the work was finished only toward the end of the period named, its testimony would still go back to not far from 140 A.D., since the idea of so extensive and elaborate a composition must have been already for some time in the mind of the writer. Not having encountered any obstacle to acquiescence in the Muratorian date of the Shepherd in the course of my comparisons of it with other writings, I am content to accept that date provisionally, without denying that there are considera- tions, urged by weighty authorities, which seem to shew that Hermas may have written somewhat earlier. In any case, if the argument of this essay be sound, the Four Gospels have been shewn to have attained to their exclusive and canonical position a third of a century or more before Irenaeus made his statement that there were, and could not but have been, four " Gospels of the Apostles " and four only.
VI PREFACE
borrowed from the other. And first it seemed to come out clearly that Hermas had many covert allusions to the Teaching ; and next that his use of it was so comprehensive that the best method of com- parison was to read through the Teaching, note things at all remarkable in it, and search for hidden traces of them in the Shepherd. By this a priori method I was led to anticipate the discovery of the word Gospel under some disguise in the work of Hermas, and I found it in the form ayyeXia dyaOr}, Good Tidings.
A singular illustration in the context is usually left unexplained, and has been thought to have no meaning ; but as soon as it was seen that the Gospel was referred to (as was not unnatural at the end of the third apparition of the Church to Hermas) it became possible to interpret the passage in the light of the doctrine of Irenaeus, that from the nature of things there can be neither more nor fewer than four true Gospels, because "when God has made all things compounded and fitted together, the form of the Gospel too must needs have been well compounded and compacted." Taking for granted and as known to all that the universe was compounded of a tetrad of elements, he infers that the complete Gospel must have been made up of a tetrad of Gospels. When
PREFACE Vll
therefore Hermas writes in his chapter on the Good Tidings, "for the world also is compacted of four elements," he would have us know that it was recog- nised in his day in the metropolis of the Empire that the Canonical Gospels were four in number.
For the date of the Shepherd of Hermas the Muratorian fragment gives approximately the limits 140 — 150 A.D. ; and we may say that, even if the work was finished only toward the end of the period named, its testimony would still go back to not far from 140 A.D., since the idea of so extensive and elaborate a composition must have been already for some time in the mind of the writer. Not having encountered any obstacle to acquiescence in the Muratorian date of the Shepherd in the course of my comparisons of it with other writings, I am content to accept that date provisionally, without denying that there are considera- tions, urged by weighty authorities, which seem to shew that Hermas may have written somewhat earlier. In any case, if the argument of this essay be sound, the Four Gospels have been shewn to have attained to their exclusive and canonical position a third of a century or more before Irenaeus made his statement that there were, and could not but have been, four " Gospels of the Apostles " and four only.
Vlll PREFACE
The proof that Hermas prefigured this dictum of Irenaeus is followed by a search for traces of the Gospels in the Shepherd, which is in the main a fresh enquiry ; but I have profited by the perusal of Zahn's kindred study in Der Hirt des Hermas (1868), and have used Hilgenfeld's Hermae Pastor (1881) as a summary of the conclusions of exegetes from Cotelier to Harnack and Funk. For suggestive criticism and counsel in the final revision I am indebted to the learning and judgment of Dr Sanday. At an earlier stage I had, with much advantage, discussed some dubious points with Dr Gifford.
Notes of the essay were read at Sion College on the 22nd October 1891 and shortly afterwards in Cambridge. Two years previously I had written of Irenaeus that "his analogies for the necessity of there being Four Gospels must have been suggested by Hermas."
C. TAYLOR
CAMBRIDGE
25/// March 1892
I.
HERMAS
AND
THE FOUR GOSPELS.
OYAEN TAP KENON OYAE A2YMBOAON
HERMAS AND THE FOUR GOSPELS.
THE late Bishop of Durham, in his volume of replies to the book Supernatural Religion, gives this summary of the early evidence for the Gospels at the end of the essay on the Churches of Gaul (p. 271):
One other remark on the testimony of Irenaeus suggests itself before closing. Irenaeus is the first extant writer in whom, from the nature of his work, we have a right to expect explicit information on the subject of the Canon. Earlier writings, which have been preserved entire, are either epistolary, like the letters of the Apostolic Fathers, ivkere any references to the Canonical books must necessarily be precarious and incidental (to say nothing of the continuance of the oral tradition at this date as a disturbing element) ; or devotional, like the Shepherd of Hermas, which is equally devoid of citations from the Old Testament
4 HERMAS AND
and the New ; or historical, like the account of the martyrdoms at Vienne and Lyons, where any such allusion is gratuitous; or apologetic, like the great mass of the extant Christian writings of the second century, where the reserve of the writer naturally leads him to be silent about authorities which would carry no weight with the Jewish or heathen readers whom he addressed. But the work of Irenaeus is the first con- troversial treatise addressed to Christians on questions of Christian doctrine, where the appeal lies to Christian documents. And here the testimony to our four Gospels is full and clear and precise.
It is a prevalent opinion that the work of Hernias is of little or no value for the history of the Canon. But I have been led to think that its testimony, especially to the Gospels, is strong and convincing, although it does not lie on the surface : that it says in effect that the number of the Gospels was actually and necessarily four, as Irenaeus said after it : and that Irenaeus was indebted to Hermas in respect of that important and remarkable statement, for which the later writer is always taken to be the independent and original authority.
THE FOUR GOSPELS. 5
i . Hermas.
I said that I had been led to think that Hermas has something of great value to tell us about the Gospels ; and I meant by this that I had been led on step by step by train of argument to a conclusion which was as unexpected as it was unsought. I was not thinking of any moot point in the history of the Canon, but only of the relation of the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles to the Shepherd of Hermas. I was writing an article on this for the Journal of Philology, and had satisfied myself that Hermas not only used, but used up the Teaching; so that anything very striking in that manual had only to be looked for in the Shepherd, and there it would in due course be found in one disguise or other*. Coming near to the end of the comparison of the two writings, I was considering the words in the last chapter but one of the Teaching, "And your prayers and your alms and all that ye do, so do as ye have it in the Gospel of our Lord," when it occurred to me that there ought to be some trace of the word Gospel in Hermas.
* The method of Hermas is to some extent shewn below by examples independent of the Gospels in the preamble of the section on Hennas and the Synoptic Gospels.
6 HERMAS AND
I set to work to read through the Shepherd for the purpose of finding in it a disguised trace of the word euayye'A(,oi>, gospel. I came to Vis. iii. 13. 2, and found ayyeXict dyaOtf, good tidings, which was evidently the thing sought. Then at once it seemed clear to me, in the light of sayings of Irenaeus which will be quoted below, that under the figure of the bench (o-vju,i//e'Aioi>^) standing firmly on four feet, in the immediate context, Hermas refers to the Four Gospels, comparing them to the four elements of the world. Thus a meaning- was found where apparently none had been found before ; for the fullest commentary on the Shepherd, with all the learning of all previous commentators at its back, has nothing to add here to the laconic sentence of a contemporary, Argumentatio mere inepta, it is mere nonsense.
The passage in question is the peroration of the account of the Church's appearances to Hermas in three successive forms :
In Vis. i. she was an aged woman who sat alone upon a great white chair of snowy wools (2. 2) and read from a book to Hermas. When she had done reading she rose from the chair, and four young men
* The word is from the Latin sub sell iuni. In Rabbinic Hebrew it takes the form safsal. On the bench see also Mand. xi.
THE FOUR GOSPELS. 7
came and carried it off to the East, and two others carried her to the same place (4. i, 3). The word for chair or seat is that used in the saying, The scribes sit in Moses seat, and it denotes also an easy chair suited for a sick person. The Church accordingly both teaches from it ex cathedra, and (as we shall see) reclines upon it as sick and at the point of death.
In Vis. ii. she is seen walking and reading a little book (i. 3). Hermas mistakes her for the Sibyl, but is told that she is Ecclesia, the Church. Why then was she presbytera, elderly ? Because she was created first of all things, and for her sake the world was framed (4. i). The thought of the place in creation thus assigned to the Church necessitates a like broad conception of the relation of the Gospel to the universe. In this vision the Church hands her booklet to Hermas, bidding him return it to her when read (i. 3), for the revelation was not yet complete (4. 2).
In Vis. iii. she reappears with the six young men : says to them, Go and build : and shews Hermas the vision of a great tower being built by them upon the waters, of bright square stones, itself foursquare (2. 5). The tower (she tells him) is herself, the Church. It is the spiritual creation, which is established upon the floods (Ps. 24. 2), because your life was saved and
8 HERMAS AND
shall be saved by water (i Pet. 3. 20) ; and it is founded by the word of the almighty and glorious Name (3. 5), being the outcome of the preaching of the Gospel to the world. When she has done speak- ing, the six young men carry her away to the tower, and four others carry the bench thither (10. i). The vision ends with an ostensible explanation of her three apparitions. In the first vision she was old and dying and seated on a chair, because every weak person sits on a chair that the weakness of his body may be com- forted (11.4). In the next she was standing, as if risen to new life, and was less aged than before (12. i). In the third she looks quite young, but for her hair, and is very joyous and seated on a bench ( i o. 5 ). For as when to one sorrowing come good tidings he straightway forgetteth (Jas. i. 24) the former sorrows, and giveth heed to naught but the tidings that he heard, and is strengthened thenceforth unto good, and his spirit is renewed through the joy which he received ; so ye too have received renewal of your spirits by seeing these good tilings. And whereas thou sawest her seated on a bench, the position is a firm one ; for the bench has four feet and stands firmly ; for the world likewise is compacted of four elements. They then that have repented shall be completely young
THE FOUR GOSPELS. 9
again and foimdcd (Col. i. 23), if they repented with their whole heart. Now thou hast the revelation com- plete. Thou shalt ask nothing more of revelation ; but if aught be lacking yet it shall be revealed to thee (13. 2 — 4). Thus the vision ends.
A general view of the three visions confirms the hypothesis that the third alludes to the Gospel reve- lation as complete. Vis. i. described the Church under the old dispensation as decaying and old and ready to vanish away. She accordingly vanishes for the moment, and her chair is carried off and is not seen again. In Vis. iii. the bench takes its place ; and at the end of the vision it is deposited in the tower, and thus becomes, as it should if it represents the Gospels, a permanent possession of the Church. The chair was her seat of teaching and authority under the former dispensation: what can her new seat the bench, which stands on four feet, signify but the four- fold Gospel ? The word founded, from Col. i. 23, is well chosen to express firm foundation on the faith of the Gospel by the word of the almighty and glorious Name. We may say then that it is the Four Gospels that are signified by the feet of the Church's seat, and that are likened to the four elements of the world.
The reader of the Shepherd will be struck by the T. H. 2
IO HERMAS AND
intricate connexion of its parts and the subtle way in which attention is called to this by the use of corresponding words and phrases.
Sim. ix. describes the building of the tower over again and at greater length than Vis. iii. The tower is, as we have seen, the spiritual counterpart of the creation, Hernias evidently following the same tradition as Papias and others, who interpreted the Mosaic cosmogony as a mystery of Christ and the Church. The tower in the similitude is built foursquare, so that it could contain the whole world (2. i), and of stones from twelve mountains representing all the nations of the world (17. i — 2). But first of all four sets of stones come up out of the deep, and these make four rows or tiers in the foundation of the tower (4. 3). The word for rows being crrot^ot, and the tower being a spiritual cosmos, the suspicion at once arises that the four rows are meant to correspond to the four o-roi^a or material elements spoken of in Vis. iii. 13, and to refer, like these, to the Four Gospels. To anglicise the wordplay we may say, that the elements of the foundation of the tower, in Sim. ix., correspond to the elements of the world. The words / was joyous beholding such good things (10. i) are parallel to the words in Vis. iii. i^ joyous and seeing these good things,
THE FOUR GOSPELS. I I
where the good things are the good tidings of the Gospel ; and the expression founded in the vision answers to the setting of the four rows in the founda- tion of the tower. These links between the similitude and the vision confirm the suspicion that the fourfold foundation likewise adumbrates the fourfold Gospel.
But its four tiers are said, in the explanation of them given to Hermas, to mean the four generations or ages of the world from the beginning (15. 4) ; and what have pre-Christian generations to do with the Gospel of Christ ? The answer is, that the Gospel, like the Church, is regarded by Hermas as ideally prior to the creation : that because the four tiers are parts of the tower or Church, the generations for which they stand must in some sense have been evangelized : and that the fourth and last generation, consisting of apostles and teachers of the preaching of the Son of God, is expressly said to have gone down to the underworld after death and preached to the preceding generations (16. 5). Each of the four so- called generations therefore had a Gospel preached to it, the generations being artificially reckoned so as to make the revelations to them correspond in number to the Canonical Gospels. The last revelation is curiously the actual Gospel delivered to the apostles, which
12 HERMAS AND
includes the four Gospels. What Hermas hints at by his figures of the bench and the foundation of the tower is put into words by Irenaeus in his great work, the Five Books against Heresies.
The numbers of the stones in the four rows are 10, 25, 35 and 40 respectively (4. 3), of which the decades are expressed in Greek by the initials of John, Cephas, Luke and Matthew. S. Peter was the traditional authority for S. Mark's Gospel. Two fives remain, according to the best text, and a meaning might be suggested for these also ; but we must pass on to the sayings of Irenaeus.
2. S. Irenaeus of Lyons.
The famous sayings of S. Irenaeus on the number of the Gospels gave a meaning to the figure of the bench in Vis. iii. 13 of Hermas as soon as it was seen that the Gospel was the subject of the passage. Then the thought occurred to me, Did Irenaeus borrow the idea of his sayings wholly or in part from Hermas ? It was possible, for Hermas wrote a generation before him. Was it not only possible but probable ? Eusebius gives the answer, in a passage quoted by Bp Lightfoot at p. 45 of his volume above mentioned. Eusebius is speaking of Irenaeus as
THE FOUR GOSPELS. 13
a witness to the New Testament. First he gives his testimony to the Gospels : he goes on to the Apocalypse : afterwards he says, And he has made mention too of the First Epistle of John, adducing very many testimonies out of it, and likewise also of the First Epistle of Peter. And he not only knows, but even receives the writing of the Shepherd, saying, Well then spake the Scripture which says, First of all believe that God is one, even He that created all things. Thus we learn that Irenaeus received the Shepherd and quoted its first commandment as Scripture, which implies a very high degree of respect for the work. It was likely then or not unlikely that he would reproduce the ideas of Hermas on the Gospels, if they were sufficiently remarkable ; and that they certainly were, if we are right in our interpretation of the hieroglyphs by which we have supposed the Shepherd to allude to the number of the Gospels.
In Iren. in. u. 11 — 12 (ed. Harvey) we read, that there are not more than four Gospels, nor could there be fewer. For since there are four regions of the world, and four catholic winds, it was natural that the Church, which is spread over the whole earth, and has the Gospel for its pillar and stay and breath of life, should have four pillars, blowing incorruption
14 HERMAS AND
from all quarters and rekindling mankind. The Word, the artificer of all things, that sits upon the Cherubim and holds the universe together, when He was mani- fested to men gave us the Gospel in four forms but held together by one Spirit. For the Cherubim are fourfaced (Ezek. i. 6) and their faces are emblems of the working of the Son of God. For the living creatures have respectively the aspects of lion, calf, man, eagle. And the Gospels are consonant with these, upon which Christ sits. The Gospels of S. John, S. Luke, S. Matthew and S. Mark are then made to correspond to the living creatures in the above order, being characterised from their beginnings as (so to say) the divine, priestly, human and spiritual Gospels respectively. Correspondingly, continues Irenaeus, the Word conversed with the patriarchs as Divine: gave priestly ordinances to those under the Law : afterwards was made Man : and sent forth the gift of the Spirit to all the earth. This sending forth corre- sponds to S. Mark's, Go ye into all the world. ..And tJiey went forth and preached everywhere. As was the working of the Son of God, which was quadriform, such was the form of the living creatures, and such the character of the Gospel. And on this account there were four catholic covenants given to humanity ;
THE FOUR GOSPELS. 15
through Adam, Noah, Moses and our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the Latin version, or through Noah, Abraham, Moses and Christ, according to the Greek text of Irenaeus. The Gospels in some order correspond to these, the last in order corresponding to the actual Gospel covenant.
Hence they are idle and unlearned, nay and au- dacious, that deform the Gospel by wrongly admitting more or fewer than four faces of it. The Gospels of the Apostles only are true and firm, and it is impossible that there should be more or fewer than these, as we have shewn at such length. For when God has made all things compounded and Jit ted together, the form of the Gospel too must needs have been well compounded and compacted. This argument evidently assumes that the world is compacted of f out elements*.
The phrase "Gospels of the Apostles" illustrates Justin Martyr's Memoirs of the Apostles, and it is explained by the traditional ascription of the Four Gospels to the Apostles Matthew, Peter, Paul and John respectively. It remains to compare the series of sayings quoted from Irenaeus with the corresponding representations of Hernias.
* Ain Tfcrvaptov oroi^eta)!/ Kparetrtu ( Vis. iii. 13): Tatian made a Gospel compounded of the Four Gospels, and called it the Diatessaron.
1 6 HERMAS AND
Hermas in Vis. iii. depicts the Church as seated on a bench with four feet, which represent the Four Gospels ; and in Sim. ix. i. i the Shepherd explains to him that the holy Spirit that had appeared to him in the form of the Church was the Son of God. Irenaeus says that the Son of God sits upon the four Cherubim, or living creatures, and that these correspond to the Four Gospels. Thus, briefly, both writers represent Christ as seated on the Four Gospels. With the Cherubim compare in Hermas the four young men who carry off the bench to the tower.
Hermas in Vis. iii. argues that the Gospels, the supports of the Church's seat, are four in number because the world is compacted of four elements. Irenaeus likewise concludes that the Gospel must have had four constituents, in order to correspond to the fabric of the universe, which was understood to be made up of four elements.
Hermas in Sim. ix. hints at the Four Gospels by the four rows in the foundation of the tower"" : Irenaeus
* A study of the style of Hermas having led me to expect that his four o-rot^eTa would reappear somewhere in some disguise, the allusion to them in the four orol^ot seemed too obvious to be accidental. At first the writer seemed to say that the aroT^ot had no connexion with the Gospels. But afterwards it was seen that he was merely giving their interpretation in two instalments : first, they were the four cosmic generations from the beginning (15.4): next, they had had the Gospel
THE FOUR GOSPELS. 17
makes the Gospels the four pillars of the Church. Thus, briefly, both describe the Church as an edifice supported by the Four Gospels ; and at the same time they liken them again implicitly to the four elements, the Church being conceived of as spread over, or able to contain the whole world.
The four rows in Hermas stand for cosmic genera- tions, each of which had received a Gospel message corresponding to one of the Four Gospels. So, ac- cording to Irenaeus, the Logos revealed Himself to all the four generations, and each of them received a covenant, each revelation and covenant corresponding to one of the Canonical Gospels. The last generation in each case receives the actual Gospel, which com- prises the Four Gospels. The Church in Irenaeus was the Gospel for its one pillar, and the Gospels for its four pillars : analogous to this in Hermas are the figures of the one bench with four feet and the one foundation with its four rows or tiers, representing the Gospel and the Gospels.
So many agreements of two writers in ideas so extraordinary cannot be accidental. Their obvious
preached to them (16. 5), and it was this that qualified them to be four rows in the foundation of the tower (4. 3), which was therefore (in a sense) founded upon the fourfold Gospel.
T. II. 3
1 8 HERMAS AND
explanation is that Irenaeus borrowed more or less from Hermas, whose work, as Eusebius tells us, he not only knew but even received and quoted as Scripture. If it should ever be proved that there was some source from which the two may have drawn all that they had to say independently, this must have been of not later date than Hermas, and my case would not be impaired. I maintain on the strength of the evidence adduced, that the famous sayings of Irenaeus on the actual and necessary fourfoldness of the Gospel were not his own, but a reproduction of what Hermas had written a generation before: that Hermas, in his enigmatic way, represented the Four Gospels as having already ob- tained a unique and Canonical position : and that, in any case, they had obtained this position in the life- time and to the knowledge of Hermas, who wrote, not in any obscure corner of the world, but in its capital, Rome.
3. Pythagoras and Philo.
The notion of Hermas and Irenaeus that the Four Gospels correspond to the four elements of the world implies that the Four Gospels were actually recog- nised by the Church when they wrote : that in the nature of things, according to their view of it, there
THE FOUR GOSPELS. 19
could not have been more or fewer than Four Gospels : and that the Gospel as a unit corresponds to the world. This analysis makes it at once obvious that the notion was a development and had a history, and was not altogether and exclusively the product of one mind or one age.
In Iren. in. n. u it was said that the Gospel corresponds to the working of the Logos, who holds all things together. That the Logos holds all things together (Wisd. i. 7) was a well-known doctrine of Philo, which was made use of even by New Testa- ment writers. See Col. i. 17, with the illustrations in Bp Lightfoot's edition. From the Logos of Philo it was easy and natural for a Christian writer to pass to Christ, or the Church, or the Gospel ; and when this had been brought into relation with the universe, it was no less natural, as soon as the Four Gospels had asserted their exclusive position, to compare them to the four elements of the world, making out that its constitution determined what must be the number of the Gospels. An interesting variation on the idea of Philo is found in chap. 6 of the Epistle to Diognetiis, which teaches that, as the soul is in the body, so are Christians in the world. The soul is shut up in the body, but itself holds it together : and Christians are
2O HERMAS AND
confined in the world as in prison, while it is they that hold the world together. According to the Midrash, Adam was created of cosmic dimensions, and his dust was taken from all parts of the earth. The Sibylline Oracles make his name an acrostic of the four points of the compass, N WES.
But the thought of the necessary fourfoldness of the Gospels was in part due to the Pythagoreans' doctrine of numbers, and especially to their theory of the tetractys or quaternion, the sum of the first four numbers. Irenaeus, in the first paragraph of his first Book, refers to the famous Pythagoric tetractys as the reputed root of all things.
Philo speaks in this way of the simple tetrad or number four, which he declares in De Op. Mundi 16 to have been the beginning or germ out of which all heaven and the world were evolved.
Hernias lets us know that he was acquainted with these speculations in cosmogony when he dwells upon the squareness of his cosmic tower and the several stones thereof. It was similimembrius (Iren. n. 15. 3), each part being like the whole. The rudimentary fact that square-faced figures fit well together and fill up space would have led the philosophers to imagine a primeval tetrad of which the world was symmetrically
THE FOUR GOSPELS. 21
built up. Of kindred origin must have been the expression in Aristotle's Eth. Nic. i. 10. 1 1 for the perfect character, " foursquare without reproach."
To conclude, as soon as it was recognised that the " everlasting Gospel" was inherent in the system of things, and that the true "Gospels of the Apostles" were just four in number ; these would be made out to be a manifestation of the mystic tetrad, and thus we should have come by a natural process of thought, and must sooner or later have come, to the at first sight strange comparison, as in Irenaeus and Hermas, of the Four Gospels to the Four Elements of the World. The reasoning of both writers alike may fail to satisfy ; but beneath their Argumentatio mere inepta lies the solid fact, that the Church in their day was established on the same Four Gospels on which it still stands.
II.
HERMAS
AND
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS,
HERMAS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS.
The Shepherd of Hermas having been found to allude to the Canonical Gospels as four in number, it remains to shew that it makes free use of their subject matter and phraseology, although it never cites them expressly. But we shall first give some indication of the peculiar method of Hermas by an example of its application to the Old Testament followed by some illustrations from one of his favourite authorities, the Epistle of S. James.
In Sim. ix. we read, And he took me away to Arcadia, unto a certain rounded mountain, and set me on the top of the mountain ; and he shewed me a great plain, and round about the plain twelve moun- tains (i. 4). And in the midst of the plain he shewed me a great white rock rising up out of the plain : the rock was higher than the mountains, foursquare, so that it could contain the whole world (2. i). On the
T. H. 4
26 HERMAS AND
rock, above a gate hewn out of it, a tower is built of stones brought from all the mountains (4. 2, 5), in the last days (12. 3). The tower is the Church (13. i). The rock on which it is built is therefore the mountain of the Lord's house; and its being higher than the mountains alludes to the saying of Micah 4. i and Isaiah 2. 2, And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be estab- lished in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; and all nations shall flow into it. The twelve mountains, from which stones are brought for the building of the tower, represent all the nations of the world. This is a good example of allusion to a writing by or with the help of symbols, a method which Hennas applies with characteristic ingenuity in all parts of his work. We shall next give a few ex- amples out of many of the use which he makes of the Epistle of S. James.
S. James i. 6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. 7 For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. 8 A doubleminded man is unstable in all his ways. iv. 8 Cleanse yoitr hands, ye sinners ; and purify your hearts, ye doubleminded.
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 27
The word doubleminded and words related to it are much used by Hermas, and sometimes in contexts which point distinctly to S. James. Thus in Mand. ix. we read, For every doubleminded man, except he repent, shall hardly be saved : cleanse therefore thy heart horn doiiblemindedness ; and put on faith, for it is strong ; and believe in God, that thou shall receive all the things that thou askest (6 — 7). The epithet un- stable or "unruly" (Jas. 3. 8) is attached to the demon of evil speaking (Jas. 4. u) in Mand. ii. 3 : in Mand. v. Hermas writes, And thenceforth, being filled with the evil spirits, he is-unstable in all his action, being drawn about hither and thither by the evil spirits (2. 7), these taking the place of the wind or winds in Jas. 1.6: and in Sim. vi. he adds, For many who are -unstable in their plans project many things, and nothing succeeds at all with them ; and they say that they are not helped-on-the-zwy in their actions, and... they blame the Lord (3. 5), as it is said in Jas. i. 13, " I am tempted of God."
S. James i. 27 Ptire religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Traces of this verse are found in Mand. ii. 7, And
28 HERMAS AND
thy heart pure and undefiled: Vis. iii. 9. 2, And visit one another, and help one another : Mand. viii. 10, To minister to widows, to visit orphans and those in want : Sim. i. 8, Visit widows and orphans, and overlook them not : Vis. iv. 3. 4, The gold part (on the head of the dragon) are ye that have escaped this world. ..5 [from which] they shall be unspotted and pure that are elect of God unto eternal life : Sim. v. 6. 7, For all flesh found itndefiled and unspotted, in which the Holy Spirit dwelt, shall receive a reward. 7. i...thy flesh pure and undefiled: Sim. ix. 26. 2, The stones that have the spots are dishonest deacons, who embezzled the livelihood of widows and orphans, and made gain of their ministry. Thus the verse is taken to pieces, and its parts are scattered all over the Shepherd.
S. James iv. 7 Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Cleanse your hands, ye sinners &c. 9 Be afflicted, and mourny and weep : let your laiighter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
The use of verse 7 is very evident in Mand. xii., and attention is called to this by commentators. We have already shewn traces of verse 8 in the Shepherd; and the Church addresses Hernias in terms of verse 9 in Vis. i. 2. 2 sq., " Hermas, hail : and I, sorrowing and weeping, said, Lady, hail : and she said to me, Why
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 2Q
art thou sullen, Hernias, the longsuffering and easy tempered, that wast always laughing? Why thus heavy (jcany^s) of aspect, and not joyous ? " This well illustrates the light touch with which the author of the Shepherd handles his materials. As he deals with the Epistle of S. James and with the Old Testament, so he deals with other writings * ; and among them, as it seems, the Four Gospels, with which we shall en- deavour to shew that he was well acquainted, be- ginning with the Synoptic Gospels.
i . The Nativity.
Of the stones approved for the building of the tower some were shaped naturally and had no need to be hewn. Irenaeus suggests a meaning for this, which is found to fit in with the representations of Hermas. In Iren. in. 27 the prophet Daniel's stone cut out with- out hands is said to have prefigured Christ as to be
* A comparison of the Shepherd with the Teaching in the Journal of Philology led me to write thus of Hennas (xvm. 324) : Of greater importance than the proof that Hermas knew the Didache is the discovery of his way of using his authorities. He allegorises, he disintegrates, he amalgamates. He plays upon the sense or varies the form of a saying, he repeats its words in fresh combinations or replaces them by synonyms, but he will not cite a passage simply and in its entirety. This must be taken into account in estimating the value of the Shepherd as a witness to the canonical Books of the New Testament.
3O HERMAS AND
born of a virgin. He was to come into the world as a stone from the earth by an act of God, without operation of the hands of the men that hew stones. Accordingly Isaiah wrote, " Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, / lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone." For His advent was to be not of the will of man, but of the will of God (Joh. i. 13). Irenaeus (in. 30) compares the framing of Adam by the hand of God, of unwrought or virgin earth. Hermas distinguishes between hewn and unhewn stones in both of his accounts of the building of the tower. Hewn stone might not be used for an altar of God (Ex. 20. 25).
In Vis. iii. the unhewn stones, which go of them- selves into the building, signify those whom the Lord approved because they walked in the str (tightness of the Lord and directed themselves by His commandments (5. 3). S. Clement of Alexandria in Paed. i. 9 says that the iota of the name lesus represents the straight and natural way ; having in mind doubtless the familiar representation of the two ways by the letter Y, which was attributed to Pythagoras. Such play upon the forms of the letters would have been well understood in the days of Hermas, so that an allusion to lesus in the words "walked in the straightness of the Lord"
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 31
would have occasioned no difficulty. If such allusion there be, Hermas means the unhewn stones collectively to signify Christ, whom Irenaeus saw prefigured in Daniel by the stone cut out without hands. S. Clement near the end of Strom, vi. 16 further teaches that the Decalogue points to lesus as the Word, the letter iota being the Greek figure for Ten.
In Sim. ix. ten square, bright, unhewn stones come up first from the deep, and twelve virgins together bear them stone by stone, and deliver them to the builders (3. 4). The virgins encircle the gate (4. i), which is the Son of God incarnate (12. 3). The tower is built upon the rock, which is the Son of God, regarded as preexistent (12. 2) : the ten stones com- pletely cover the rock, and they make a foundation for the tower (4. 2) : thus they represent the Son of God, who is Himself the foundation (14. 6), and we may suppose their number to refer again to the name lesus. The stones brought from the twelve mountains are hewn by the men — " the men that hew stones " (Iren.), before they are carried through the gate by the virgins (4. 5) ; but the four rows of foundation stones, which come up from the deep (4. 3), are fitted and built into the tower unhewn, as being endued with singular native purity (16. 7). Thus the whole foun-
32 HERMAS AND
dation, Christ, is of unhewn stone ; so that in ac- cordance with the symbolism of Iren. in. 27, He is immaculate and born of a virgin. We shall see that the twelve virgins represent the Holy Ghost.
2. John the Baptist.
The features of the Baptist may be traced in the Shepherd, the angel of repentance (Sim. ix. i), and in his double the Shepherd, the angel of retribution (Sim. vi. 3). The title of the former, who is sent to dwell with Hermas (Vis. v.), is suggested by S. Mark i. 2, 4, " Behold, / send my angel. ..\to be a preacher] of re- pentance'' The Baptist wore a girdle of a skin, and did eat lociists and wild honey : men were in doubt who he was, and said, " Who art thou ?" (Joh. i. 19), and so Hermas says to the angel of repentance in Vis. v. 3, Who art thou ? The severity of the angel of retribution answers to the preaching of the Baptist in Matt. 3. 7 sq., " O generation of vipers. ..bring forth fruit worthy of 'repentance... God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees : therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire'' With this compare also
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 33
in Sim. viii., For the Lord, being moved with com- passion, sent me to give repentance to all, although some were not worthy on account of their deeds ( 1 1 . i). The worthy are those whose rods, cut from the great willow, are given back green and flourishing : their rods bring forth fruit which marks them as worthy of repentance. The building of the tower is a sustained illustration of the words, God is able of these stones &c. In Sim. iv. 4 the dry trees are cast into the fire. The two angels are clad in skins of the goat, corresponding to the Baptist's girdle of skin. Is there any sort of trace of the preacher's diet of lociists and wild honey in the Shepherd ?
Before pronouncing that there is not, we must notice that Hernias has a way of going off at a word, and using it without too strict regard to the context from which he borrowed it. Thus, whereas in chap. 1 3 of the Teaching, it is said, " When thou openest a jar of wine or oil, take the firstfruits and give to the prophets ; " Hermas, who has more to say against the false prophets than in favour of the true, takes occasion to make a parable of an empty jar packed away with jars of wine or oil, and to compare the false prophet to the empty jar (Mand. xi. 15). In Mand. v. he has a
parable of a jar of honey made bitter by a little worm- T. H. 5
34 HERMAS AND
wood (i. 5), which may or may not have been sug- gested by the Baptist's " wild honey." The epithet of this honey is transferred to the angel of retribution, who is said in Sim. vi. to be as it were wild of aspect (2. 5), and bitter to the sheep (3. 2) ; and the locusts in the Gospel might easily have been transformed by two steps into the ''fiery locusts" coming out of the mouth of the dragon in Vis. iv. i. 6. These indeed may have been suggested by Rev. 9. 3 sq. ; but if there had been no second mention of locusts in the New Testament, Hermas would have found material for a parable in S. John the Baptist's locust-food as he does in other kinds of food.
According to S. Luke 3. 21 — 22, Jesus being baptized by John, "and praying, the heaven was opened, And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape." In Vis. i. i. 4, Hermas "praying, the heaven was opened;" and in Vis. iii. and Sim. ix., as we shall see, the Spirit is represented in the bodily shape of seven women and twelve virgins respectively. The title "beloved son" (Luke 3. 22) is used in Sim. v. of the son of the owner of the field (2. 6), and it is said of him the son is the Holy Spirit (5. 2).
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 35
3. The Temptation.
Matt. 4. i — ii. Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. He fasts forty days, and the tempter comes to Him and says, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. He replies, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. A mysterious episode is described in Sim. ix. 1 1 , the full interpretation of which cannot be entered upon here. Hermas and the twelve virgins keep vigil by the tower, in preparation for a great revelation. They pray without ceasing, and in the morning the Shepherd comes and asks Hermas, On what didst thou sup ? / s^lpped, Sir, said he, on words of the Lord all the night. This fast, during which he was fed on words of the Lord, must have been suggested by the Gospel narrative of the Temptation.
Next, the devil takes Jesus to the holy city, sets Him on the pinnacle of the temple and says, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down : for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning thee : and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone. Accordingly in Vis. i. 4 two so-called men ''bear up" the Church, which
36 HERMAS AND
adumbrates Christ, in their arms, and carry her off; and in Vis. iii. 10 the six young men carry her away to the tower. These men correspond also to the ministering angels of Matt. 4. 1 1. Temptation by the devil is spoken of in the Shepherd in Mand. xii. 5 and elsewhere. He prevails against the " empty;" but against the " full in the faith " he has no power, or gains but transient successes (Sim. ix. 31).
Lastly, the devil taketh Him unto an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. The physical im- possibility of seeing all the kingdoms of the world from one spot has led to much speculation about this verse. The idea of it being so striking, Hermas would naturally have brought it into his allegory if he saw his way to do so. Now in Sim. ix. i (p. 25) the Shepherd takes Hermas to an Arcadian mountain top, and shews him a great plain surrounded by twe1 c mountains, which represent all the nations of die world. Thus, with his usual ingenuity, the writer brings in a clear though unobtrusive allusion to the scene of the third and last temptation, according to S. Matthew's reckoning.
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 37
4. The Transfiguration.
. In Sim. ix. it is said of the gate cut out of the rock, The gate so glistered (!crTiA./3ez>) above the sun that I marvelled at the brightness of the gate (2. 2). The gate meaning the Son of God, and the word for glister being found once only in the New Testa- ment, namely in S. Mark's account of the Trans- figuration, we may infer that Hermas borrowed the word from Mark 9. 3, "And his garments became glistering (R. V.), exceeding white ; so as no fuller on earth can whiten them."
5. The keys of the kingdom of heaven.
It is said in Matt. 16. 18 — 19, " Thou art Peter, and ^lpon this rock I will binld my chitrch ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven'' The famous controversy on the meaning of the rock in verse 18 is of long standing. Hermas in Sim. ix. settles it for himself by making Christ the rock on which the tower or Church is built. The twelve virgins are the appointed guardians of the tower, and are ordered not to depart from it (5. i). They stand
38 HERMAS AND
round the gate (3. 2), and it is their function to carry all the stones for the building of the tower through the gate and deliver them to the builders, and any stones put into the building by the men, and not carried through the gate by the hands of the virgins are imable to change their colours and become fit for inser- tion in the tower (4. 6 — 8). The power of the keys therefore is in the hands of the virgins. What then do they represent ? Assuming without proof for the present that they represent the Holy Spirit, we see at once from their number that they are the Holy Spirit as distributed to the Twelve Apostles. To these, in a sense, or strictly speaking to the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, Hermas represents the " keys of the kingdom of heaven " as given. They have the power to open and shut, and none can be admitted into the tower without having been passed by them through the gate. The change of the various colours of the stones ap- proved, namely to white, is explained by Isaiah i. 18, Though your sins be as scarlet^ they shall be white as snow ; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Those not brought through the gate by the virgins cannot obtain remission of sins, for it is said in the Fourth Gospel, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost : whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 39
them ; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are re- tained " (20. 22 — 24). This passage is referred to in Sim. ix. 25, where the apostles and teachers of the Gospel are said to have received the Holy Ghost.
6. The Sower and other Parables.
In chap. 9 of the Teaching is the striking Eu- charistic prayer, "As this broken bread was once scattered in grains upon the mountains, and being gathered together became one ; so let thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth unto thy kingdom. For thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever." The idea of this is found in Sim. ix. of Hermas, but for bread he gives us a stone. Stones scattered upon the twelve moun- tains, which represent all the nations of the world, are brought together for the building of the tower ; and this when it is finished shews no join, but looks like a single stone cut out of the rock, so completely do its many once scattered stones become one (9. 7). He deals in like manner with the parable of the Sower, replacing seeds again by stones.
In the Gospel parable there are three cases of failure and three degrees of success, the seed which
4O HERMAS AND
falls on the good ground bringing forth thirty, sixty or a hundred-fold. In Vis. iii. 2. 9 some of the rejected stones, being thrown to a distance from the tower, fall on to the way, but roll aside to where there is no way, thus corresponding to the seeds which fell by the way side : other stones fall into the fire and are burned, corresponding to the seeds which, when the sun was up, were scorched: other stones fall near the waters and desire to roll into them, but are not able, thus corresponding to that which withered away because it lacked moisture*. It is a feature of the parable of the Sower that an explanation of it is given, not without some censure of the disciples who require it. So the Church explains the parable of the stones to Hermas, at the same time reproving him for his curiosity in desiring to know all about the tower (3. i). In the course of her exposition we come upon extracts from the Sower, such as These are they that heard the word (7. 3), and "when affliction ariseth, on account of their wealth and their affairs they utterly deny their Lord " (6. 5). The three cases of success in the Gospel parable have their counterparts in the three kinds
* Here the seed which fell upon stony ground is referred to twice, and that which fell among thorns is passed over. But this is referred to (as we shall see) in Sim. ix. 20.
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 41
of stones approved for the building of the tower ; whereof the choicest are the foundation stones, and the remainder are distinguished in Sim. ix. as facing- stones and smaller stones which, like rubble, have to be placed on the inside (7. 5).
In Sim. ix. it is written, And from the third moun- tain, that had thorns and thistles, they that believed are such as these : some are wealthy, and some en- tangled in much business. The thistles are the rich, and the thorns they that are entangled in manifold business. These cleave not to the servants of God, but go astray and are choked by their transactions. And the rich hardly (SuovcoXcus) cleave unto the servants of God, fearing lest they should be asked for something by them. Such therefore shall hardly enter into the kingdom of God (20. i — 2). The symbolism of the thorns and the being choked by the cares of business come from the parable of the Sower (Matt. 13. 22). The saying that the rich shall hardly enter into the kingdom of God points to a different context in the Gospels, where it is connected with the command to sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and with the saying, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God (Matt. 19. 24). We may say then that T. H. 6
42 HERMAS AND
Hernias must have had his attention drawn to this, and that, the saying being so remarkable, he was likely to have made such use as he could of it. Now in Vis. \\\. many stones lie round about the tower and not far from it, like the scribe who was not far from the kingdom of God. Some of them are round, humped stones which will not fit into their square places in the building (2. 8). Hermas asks what this signifies. How long will he be without understanding ? The fine, round stones are they that have faith, but also worldly wealth, which, when affliction ariseth, leads men to deny their Lord. When will they be of use for the building ? When their seductive wealth has been hewn away. For as the round stone, except some of its substance be cut off, cannot become square ; so the rich in this world, except their wealth be cut away, cannot become fit for the Lord's use (6. 5 — 6). When they have been squared, they will fit into their places in the building ; but how shall the condition of giving to the poor be satisfied ? Sim. ix. explains this. The Lord orders their riches to be cut down, but not to be all taken away ; so that they may be able to do some good with the residue and live unto God, seeing that they are of a goodly sort. There- fore they are cut round about a little and fitted into
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 43
the tower (30. 5). They were hard to cut (6. 8), but the Lord of the tower so valued them [Mark 10. 21] that he would have some of them used (9. 4).
A few verses earlier in the Gospel is the saying, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of God. To this add the repeated saying that the last shall be first, and the words from the parable of the Vineyard, ''beginning from the last unto the first" (Matt. 20. 8). Now in describing the twelve mountains in Sim. ix. 19 — 29, Hermas begins with the last in order of merit and ends with the first: "From the first mountain, the black one, they that believed are such as these : apostates and blasphemers against the Lord and be- trayers of the servants of God... And from the twelfth mountain, the white one, they that believed are such as these : they are as babes into whose heart no guile entereth...As many of you, saith he, as shall continue and be as babes, not having guile, shall be more glorious than all the aforesaid. For all babes are glorious before God and first in His sight. Blessed then are ye, as many as put away wickedness from you and put on guilelessness : as first of all ye shall live unto God." Ye, the last, shall be first.
The parable of the Tares also is interpreted in
44 HERMAS AND
the Gospel, and it is said, The field is the world : so Hernias explains his parable of a Vineyard in Sim. v., and says, The field is this world (5. 2). Angels play a part in both parables. In the parable of Hermas it will be seen that expressions from several Gospel parables come in incidentally. In the parable of the Tares the wicked and the good look alike, and are only separated at the end of the world. Hermas changes tares to trees, as he changed seeds to stones, and gives us his own short parable in Sim. iii. of many trees not having leaves, which seem all alike dead in the winter of this world. Sim. iv. again is a parable of trees, some sprouting and some dry : the righteous shall dwell in the world to come, but the wicked shall be burned as logs, as it is said, bind the tares in bundles to burn them (Matt. 13. 30).
It would be in the manner of Hermas to turn the Mustard Seed into a hailstone. We may think there- fore that his very small granule of hail in Mand. xi. 20 hints at that least of all seeds. Irenaeus in Fragm. 29 (quoted by Zahn) seems to connect Sim. viii., on the great willow overshadowing plains and mountains, with the mustard seed, and thus to suggest that Hennas was thinking of it again in his similitude. Those who give up their rods dry, but having a very
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 45
little green (10. 3), are those who have faith as a grain of mustard seed, and repent and work right- eousness. The reader of the Shepherd will easily find traces of other Gospel parables therein.
7. Miracles and Signs.
Most of the Gospel miracles were wrought upon the persons of men, the remainder being signs of lordship over the material world. The latter will be touched upon in the next section, on Hernias and the Fourth Gospel. Under the former head come miracles of healing, which the Shepherd, in the sections on the tower, converts into the shaping of stones rejected by the builders. Many such stones are seen in Vis. iii. lying about the tower, seamed, stunted, or otherwise unfit for use (2. 8); like the " great multitude of impo- tent folk, of blind, halt, withered," who lay about the pool of Bethesda, waiting to step or be cast into the water when it was troubled (Joh. 5. 7). In Sim. ix. the stones lying by the tower are given over to the Shepherd to cleanse, and he says that he will hew most of them, and cast them into the building (7. i — 4). Although cleansing, which goes with hewing (8. 4), applies to all the stones, it suggests in particular the
46 HERMAS AND
cleansing of Lepers, who are graphically symbolised by the stones with a scab or scurf (tyajpiaKOTes). " These are they that denied and returned not unto their Lord, but became barren and desolate : they that cleave not to the servants of God, but keep apart and destroy their own souls" (26. 3). This is explained by the customary isolation of lepers and the spiritual death typified by their disease. Lastly, as it is said in the Gospels that some afflicted persons could not be healed, and that miracles in certain cases could not be wrought on account of men's hardness of heart and unbelief ; so it is said in Sim. ix. that some of the stones were so hard that they could not be hewn (8. 6).
Akin to miracles of healing is the casting out of devils. The idea of possession by evil spirits runs through Mand. v. Men of little faith cannot cast out devils (Matt. 17. 20); but they that have much faith withstand the devil, and he departs from them, finding no entrance (Mand. xii. 5). Hermas personifies evil speaking and the like, and selfwill, as demons, in Mand. ii. 3 and Sim. ix. 22 — 23. He makes double- mindedness a daughter of the devil (Mand. ix. 9), grief and sharp temper her sisters (x. i. i), and evil desire a daughter of the devil (xii. 2.2); somewhat as in the Gospel persons whose works are evil are called
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 47
children of the devil. We need not now attempt to disentangle the writer's doctrine of demoniacal pos- session from its allegorical accessories : it is enough to see that he writes as such a writer might have written with the Gospels as his point of departure. A conspicuous word in these is Swo/us, in the sense both of divine power and of its manifestation by miracles or " mighty works." Hermas takes it up and uses it frequently : he calls one of his twelve virgins Power \ and in Mandates vii. ix. xi. xii. he insists upon the lack of power in the devil and all that is earthly, and upon the power of faith and of the Holy Spirit, as coming "from above."
Of signs, the Shepherd seems to glance at the sign of the prophet Jonah, when in Vis. iv. i it compares the great beast which Hermas encounters to a /C^TOS^ (Matt. 12. 40), that is a " whale" or sea-monster (R. V. marg.). The comparison does not of itself help us much to determine the creature's form, since in a figurative work any sort of monster might be regarded as coming up out of the sea (Rev. 13. i) ; but it does point, and may have been intended merely to point,
* The most effective word to describe the beast is dragon, which is an alternative to KIJTOS in the Greek of Gen. i. 21. The beast seems to be of a composite order, as we shall indicate in a subsequent section.
48 HERMAS AND
to the one place in the New Testament where the word " whale" occurs, and thus to the sign of Jonah.
8. The cleansing of the Tower.
In Sim. ix. 6 — 7 a great array of men are seen to approach, and among them one of such lofty stature as to overtop the tower. He scrutinises every stone of it, and strikes each with a rod three times. Some thereupon become black as "a coal" (Lam. 4. 8), and others are found faulty in one way or other. All these are cast out and laid by the side of the tower, and other stones are put in their place. The stones which had been laid aside are then ordered to be cleansed carefully: those which will fit in are replaced in the building: and the rest are cast far away from the tower. Searching the Gospels for parallels to the approach of the colossal man in his glory, to test and discriminate between the stones that had been placed in the walls of the tower, we notice in Matt. 25. 31 sq., When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory : And before him shall be gathered all nations : and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS.
49
goats &c. This accounts for the attendant array of ''men" or angels in the similitude. The process of testing may be described after the manner of the Baptist, with stones again for seeds, and with a phrase borrowed from Sim. ix. 30. 3, in the words, His rod is in his hand, and he throughly purges his tower : the charring of worthless stones at the touch of the rod represents the burning of the chaff in Matt. 3. 12. A further question might be asked, Are the Gospel narra- tives of the cleansing of the temple also hinted at by the cleansing of the tower ?
9. The Cross.
It is a commonplace in patristic literature that the Crucifixion was prefigured by Isaiah 65. 2, " I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people;" and by the holding up of the hands of Moses by Aaron and Hur, whereby Jesus (Acts 7. 45) was enabled to discomfit Amalek at Rephidim (Ex. 17. 12). The Teaching, in its last chapter, enumerates three signs of the truth, the first the sign of an outspreading (e/cTreracris) in heaven. The meaning of this is dis- puted ; but it seems to denote a spreading out as of bright clouds (Job 36. 29) in heaven, so as to form a cross. Interpreting the sign thus, I assumed that traces T. H. 7
5O HERMAS AND
of it were to be found in Hernias; feeling that, what ever else might have led him to denote cruciform nsioii by mere extension not so defined, the fact that lliis "sign" was in the '/cuchinir was good ground lor iln- surmise tint it v. . , noi absent from the Sln-./>- /!<T(l. And first I found a trace of it in K/'.v. iv., whi< h will be comment d upon under the Ix-ad of Ilermas and tin- l''<>itrl/i. Gospel. Next I noticed in Sim. ix., And ihe virgins had spread out tkeir haml\, M il about tO receive Something from the men (3. 2). Here the phrase which in Isaiah was understood to point to tin ( .uMlixion: in tin- S/ic/>//cn/ it d'-arly had amysti< meaning, lor ii id that such --tones as were not
borne through the gate, the Son of dod, by the hand-, of the virgins, could not change their colours (4. S) : and, the allusion in ehan«e ol colours • obviously to
the rbmiasioa oi itm (p. j8)f a referem e td iln- ( re
and the Atom -UK nl was seen io |,e a|)|>ropriat-- and IM « < , ,.iry. Thus ihe < OOtCXl juslilied the ini.-rprei.i lion suggested by the /'t-<n/iing.
In /7s. iii. -j aftu.il CTOSSC pohen ol, and an
indirect allusion to the Crucifixion lollo. \\\\\ I,
* Remission Of Sin. tlnou-h the ll<j|y (,l)o\! ptf ftUppOtet the 4 MHI
lixioil, ,T. Ill foil. .'•.. •-. 'i AI , (.idinyly (he Virgins, win. M-|)H '.ciil lli«- < ,li" I I M: )!)«• slouc v llh III' Mi'li ol the < !(»•,.
TMK SYNoi-Tfe- 00 PELS. 51
then is a di splay of courtesy between the Church and Hermas. She says to him, Sit thou here (Jas. 2. 3) upon ili'- bench, and she insists upon hi(> being seated while although he pr;ty, her to be sealed
first. But when he assays to seat himself upon the right hand, to i, it ion she motion-, him to the left.
lie had been unmindful of the Lord ing, "Sit
not down in th<- highest room" (Luke 14. The
nVht hand was for those who had won a certain honour, as havin" suffered scoundngs, imprisonments, at afflictions, crosses, wild beasi . for the Name. When therefore she at last seats herself upon the rkdit, she claims to have suffered crosses, as she has indeed done in the i i of all her members who had iinden/one that form of martyrdom. Jiut ffflCC the rJiurch is also a manifestation of the Son of God, her MI on the ri^ht hand implies in particular the
< rijufjxion of Christ, and His consequent exaltation to the nVht hand of God, according to S. Mark 16. 19, and Jiek 12. 2 and other passages,
i o. 7 'lie final mis^ ion of the Apostles.
S. Matthew's Gospel ends thus (28. 18 — 20), "All unto me in d in earth. Go
52 HERMAS AND
ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you : and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen." In S. Mark 16. 15 — 16 the apostles are commanded, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to the whole creation. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. According to S. John 20. 22, Jesus " breathed on them, and saith unto them, Re- ceive ye the Holy Ghost." These three passages seem to be referred to in Sim. ix. 25: "And from the eighth mountain, where were the many springs, and the whole creation of the Lord was watered by the springs, they that believed are of this sort : apostles and teachers who preached to all the world and who taught reverendly and purely the word of die Lord, and kept back nothing at all for evil desire, but always walked in righteousness and truth, as they also re- ceived the Holy Ghost." With All power is given unto me &c. (Matt. 28. 18), and with the saying, that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (Matt. 9. 6), and other like passages, compare in Mand. iv., And concerning his former sin, there is one that can give healing ; for He it is that hath the
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 53
power over all things (i. 11). Unto me is given the power over this repentance (3. 5).
The commission to preach to the whole creation (Mark 16. 15), followed by the requirement of baptism, suggests an explanation of one of the most singular sections in the Shepherd, the account in Sim. ix. of the apostles' preaching to and baptizing the men of former ages from the beginning of the world. Why did the foundation stones of the tower come up from the deep, wearing the spirits of the virgins ? Because they must needs have come up through water, that they might be made alive. The stones of the fourth row were the apostles and teachers who preached the Son of God. These, having fallen asleep in the power and faith of the Son of God, went down and preached also to them that had fallen asleep aforetime (TrpoKefcoi/r^eVois), and themselves gave them the seal of the preaching (16. i — 5). Hermas goes on to speak of the twelve mountains, representing the nations of all the world, to which the Son of God was preached (17. i). Observing the reference in " preached to all the world," to S. Mark 16. 15, we may from the same verse account for the preachers' ministry in Hades as follows.
First there is a tacit allusion to the descent of
54 HERMAS AND
Christ to "the heart of the earth" (Matt. 12. 40), or Sheol, which is typified by the belly of the fish in Jonah 2. 2, and His preaching to the spirits in prison (i Pet. 3. 19). After this S. Mark's form of the Lord's last words is a sufficient hint to Hermas to make the disciples do as He had done ; and so, because they had to preach to the whole creation, and did accordingly preach everywhere, he makes them preach, not only upon earth, but in Sheol, and not only to living men, but to all the bygone generations from the beginning of the creation.
The notion of Hermas that Christ must have been preached to the four ages of the world may have suggested to Irenaeus (n. 33. 2) that He must have lived long enough upon earth to sanctify the four ages of man, by being an infant to infants, a child to children, a youth to youth, an elder to elders'". We find in Irenaeus the apocryphal citation, The holy Lord remembered his dead who fell asleep aforetime (iv. 55. 3), and descended to them to preach the Gospel of his salvation, that he might save them (in. 22. i). This was known to Justin Martyr (Trypho 72), and
* This illustrates the principle that the Gospel as preached to the four generations or ages of the world must have had "four faces," each age desiderating a Gospel conformed to itself.
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 55
may have been known to Hermas. The very rare compound fell-asleep-aforetime, which is not found in Justin, may have been borrowed by Irenaeus (prae- dormiermii} from Hermas.
1 1 . The baptismal formula.
The full baptismal formula (Matt. 28. 19) is not found in the Shepherd, but a special search reveals hidden traces of it therein. The short form from the Acts of the Apostles occurs in Vis. iii., These are they that heard the word, and were willing to be baptized into the name of the Lord (7. 3).
S. Luke 3. 22 suggests the representation of the Spirit " in a bodily shape." The Hebrew for spirit being feminine, the Spirit was sometimes represented as a woman. Hermas goes a step further, and re- solves the one woman into seven women in Vis. iii., and into twelve virgins in Sim. ix. These by their plurality represent the distributions of the Holy Ghost (Heb. 2. 4) ; but their personalities are everywhere inseparable, and their oneness''* and their significance are carefully indicated by the form of expression, " clad in the Holy Spirit of these virgins" (24. 2).
* Those clad in these spirits become one spirit (13. 5).
56 HERMAS AND
The virgins then represent the Holy Ghost. Now in Sim. ix. we read, that the tower is the Church, and that no man can be found in the kingdom of God, unless the virgins have clothed him with their gar- ment (Matt. 22. n); for if thou receive the Name only, and receive not the garment from these, it pro- fiteth thee nothing. For these virgins are powers of the Son of God. The names themselves are their raiment. Whosoever wears the name of the Son of God should wear their names also; for the Son himself wears the names of these virgins (13. i — 3). To be baptized into Christ is to put on Christ (Gal. 3. 27). To be baptized into His name is to put it on and wear it as a garment : "They that wear soft raiment are in kings' houses" (Matt. n. 8): " As we have worn the image of the earthy, we shall also wear the image of the heavenly" (i Cor. 15. 49). He who would enter into the kingdom of heaven must be baptized into the name of the Son and into the name of the Holy Ghost ; or, as Hermas expresses it, he must wear the name of the Son of God and the names of the virgins. The Son himself wears their names, for He was baptized, and the Spirit descended upon Him. But the virgins are also powers of the Son of God : that is to say, the Spirit proceeds from
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 57
the Son. The identification of the twelve virgins with the Holy Ghost is confirmed by the way in which it works out in the various contexts which make mention of the virgins.
12. The ending of S. Mark's Gospel.
The last twelve verses of the Gospel according to S. Mark (16. 9 — 20) have been said to be no integral part of it ; but to have been appended in more or less primitive times to the original or what remained of it, according as it was conjectured that the Evan- gelist's work was left unfinished, or that its last section was soon lost. The question has been debated at great length, and much learning has been brought to bear upon it. Here it would be out of place to do much more than seek for possible traces of the disputed section in the Shepherd, which we accord- ingly proceed to do, giving the verses themselves as rendered by the revisers of 1881.
9 — TI] Now when he was risen early on the first
day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene,
from who m he had cast out seven devils. She went
and told them that had been with him, as they mourned
T. H. 8
58 HERMAS AND
and wept. And they, when they heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, disbelieved.
12 — 13] And after these things he was manifested in another form unto two of them, as they walked, on their way into the country. And they went aivay and told it unto the rest : neither believed they them. The expression "manifested" is to be noticed, and the manner and the occasion of the manifestation. Hermas, as if imitating S. Mark, writes in Sim. ii. i, As / walked into the country... the Shepherd is manifested unto me, and saith &c. In Vis. i. i and again in Vis. ii. i he is walking when the Spirit carries him away : in Vis. iii. i he is summoned into the country that the Church may appear to him : in Vis. iv. i he is walkin*g...into the country when he encounters the great beast. The idea of change of form is illus- trated by the different forms of the Church. In Vis. v. 4 Hermas fails to recognise the Shepherd (Luke 24. 1 6), until his aspect is changed.
14] And afterward he was manifested unto the eleven themselves as they sat at meat ; and he up- braided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. A salient feature of the section is its censure of unbelief (&ruma), and its requirement
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 5$
of faith for salvation (ver. 16). All this is found in the Shepherd, where, not to speak of the repeated denunciation of doublemindedness, one of the oppo- sites of faith (Maud, xi.), there is an express contrast of Faith and Unfaith (aTrioTta) ; the former in Sim. ix. being the first of the twelve virgins, whose ways lead to the house of God (14. i), and the latter the first of the twelve women in black, who slay their votaries (20. 4). Faith is also the first of the seven holy women who bear up the tower in Vis. Hi., and through her the elect of God are saved (8. 3). The word hardness of 'heart .is found in Matt. 19. 8 and Mark 10. 5; and is used in Vis. iii. 7. 6, "they are not saved because of their hardness of heart."
15 — 16] And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to the whole creation. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned. Here only do we find the command to preach the Gospel to the whole creation : in Col. i. 23 it is narrated that it was so preached. S. Mark in two places has the phrase from the beginning of the creation, and he alone of the Evangelists has the words creation and create (10. 6; 13. 19), which are used so frequently by Hermas. The building of the tower is an obvious allegory
6O HERMAS AND
of the preaching of the Gospel of Christ ; and if this was to be preached to all the world, it was natural (if not necessary) that the tower should be made able to contain " the whole world." A stronger expression is "the whole creation;" and Hermas, as we have seen, spiritualises the cosmogony, and identifies his tower with the creation (p. 7). He does this as nearly as may be in express terms, making the Church reply to Hermas in Vis. iii., that the builders of the tower were the first created holy angels, to whom the Lord delivered His whole creation, to increase, and to build, and to rule over the whole creation (4. i). Thus the tower is built by the builders of the creation : its building is the effectual preaching of Christ : and therefore the command, Go ye and edify (i. 7), is the command in S. Mark 16. 15 to preach the Gospel to the whole creation : and the necessity of baptism (ver. 1 6) is symbolised in Vis. iii. by the foundation of the tower upon the waters (p. 7). We have seen that these verses explain why the preachers preached to the men of the past, as in Sim. ix. 1 6, and we have found another allusion to them in Sim. ix. 25, where the watering from the many springs is a symbol of the baptism of " the whole creation of the Lord " (p. 52). Add that in Sim. viii. the great willow
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 6 1
is the law of God given to the whole world, which law is the Son of God preached to the ends of the earth, and given into the heart of believers (3. 2 — 3) ; and that the dry rods are baptized, in the hope that most of them may come to life again (2. 9).
17 — 1 8] And these signs shall follow them that believe : in my name shall they cast out devils ; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. That true believers can work wonders is a leading doctrine of the Shepherd. On account of his faith (2. 4) Hermas is not harmed at all by the beast in Vis. iv. He who believes is able to cast off all wickedness (Mand. L), and drive away the devil (xii. 5. 4). Hermas, slightly varying the word for deadly, speaks in Mand. xii. of deadly hists, daughters of the devil (2. 2 — 3) ; and in Sim. ix. of deadly reptiles, living on the dry mountain, that destroy men (T. 9). Poison, with him, is carried not in boxes, but in the heart ( Vis. iii. 9) ; or means harmful words (Sim. ix. 26). Sin is a sickness, which will be healed if men believe (Mand. xii. 6. 2). Some- what in this way he would have used the above verses, if he had known them and thought fit to use them.
62 HERMAS AND
19 — 20] So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen. To be received up is a word used of the Ascension here, and in Acts i, and in i Tim. 3. 1 6 only in the New Testament. Rhoda in Vis. i., looking down from heaven, says / was received up &c. (i. 5). When it is said in Vis. iii. that the Church seated herself upon the right hand (2. 4), this is a figurative rendering of the statement of S. Mark, which is unique in the Gospels, that "the Lord Jesus... sat down at the right hand of God." Seated at the right hand upon the bench, the fourfold Gospel, the Church raises a bright rod, and says, " Seest thou a great thing," the building of the tower ? The idea of the rod is from Ps. no, "Sit thou at my right hand... The Lord shall send forth the rod of thy strength." Thus in the Shepherd we see in a figure the Lord's session at the right hand of God, ac- companied by a sign of the confirmation of the word ; the universal preaching of which is symbolised by the building of a world-wide tower, whose base goes down to the roots of the creation. The waving of a wand is
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 63
the natural precursor of a "sign," for which " great thing" is a synonym, as in Iren. in. 26. 2.
If we had known beforehand that Hermas knew the last twelve verses of S. Mark, we should not have expected him to use them more largely ; for, not to speak of turns of expression which they may have suggested to him, they underlie his parables of the Great Willow and the Tower. The inference from the Shepherd itself that he knew them is confirmed by the comparison of other writings, as below.
In searching for signs of acquaintance with the Gospels in early Church writers, we must make allowance for their tendency to express the New Testament in terms of the Old. Thus in Epist. Barn. 1 1 we read, " Let us enquire whether the Lord was minded to manifest beforehand concerning the Water and the Cross. Concerning the water it is written of Israel how that they would not receive the baptism that brings remission of sins, but would build for themselves. For the prophet saith (Jer. 2. 13)... they abandoned me the spring of life, and they digged for themselves a pit of death... And again he saith in another prophet (Ps. i. 3 sq.), And he that doeth these things shall be as the tree that is planted at the partings of the waters &c" From the bare mention of the
64 HERMAS AND
Cross and Baptism we gather that Barnabas had knowledge of some sort of written or oral Gospel ; but he tells us little or nothing of its form, his one anxiety being to make out that the substance of it was manifested beforehand in the Prophets and the Psalms. He finds the Water and the Cross again in the river and the trees of Ezek. 47. i — 12, ending his quotation with a seeming reminiscence of S. John 6. 51, And whosoever shall eat of them shall live for ever. In like manner Irenaeus, who cites Mark 1 6. 19 as S. Mark's, interweaves allusions to the Old and New Testaments as follows (in. n. 6), " Where- fore also Mark, the interpreter and follower of Peter, begins his Gospel thus, The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way. The voice of one crying in the desert, Prepare ye the way of the Lord : make straight paths before our God (Mark i. i sq.) ; mani- festly saying that the voices of the holy prophets were the beginning of the Gospel, and pointing to Him whom they confessed to be Lord and God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also promised to send him His angel before his face : which angel was John, crying in the spirit and power of Elias
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 65
(Luke i. 17) in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight paths before our God... Now at the end of his Gospel Mark sayeth, So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken unto them, was re- ceived up into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God (Mark 16. 19), confirming what was said [ver. 20] by the prophet (Ps. no. i), The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool." Thus Irenaeus not only quotes the received ending of S. Mark's Gospel, but declares it to be entirely consonant with the beginning. In another place (iv. 56. 3 — 4) he alludes cursorily to the words, And they went forth and preached everywhere (Mark 16. 20), thus: First he quotes Isaiah 2. 3 — 4, For from Sion shall go forth a law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem &c. Then he continues, " Now if the law of liberty, that is the word of God proclaimed to all the earth by the Apostles, who went forth from Jerusalem, had such effect as to change swords and spears into implements of peace... so that men now know not how to fight, but when smitten turn the other cheek (Matt. 5. 39) ; the prophets spake these things not of some other man (Acts 8. 34), but of our Lord who did these
things." Thus he says that the apostles, in pursuance T. H. 9
66 HERMAS AND
of their charge to preach to all the world, went forth from Jerusalem into all the earth ; quoting went forth from S. Mark, and adding from Jerusalem, or Sion, from the Old Testament.
Justin Martyr refers in like fashion to the last verse of S. Mark, if not to other verses also of the disputed twelve, writing in Apol. i. 45, " Now that God the Father of all would take the Christ to heaven after raising him from the dead, and keep him there until He should have smitten the demons hostile to him., .hear the things said by David the prophet, which are these : The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool. A rod of power shall the Lord send forth for thee from Jerusalem... thus making proclamation beforehand of the strong [Wisd. 18. 15] word, which his apostles went forth from Jerusalem and preached everywhere." They " went forth and preached every- where," he says, according to S. Mark ; the words from Jerusalem being interpolated from the Old Testament, as we have seen that they were by Irenaeus. The expression "strong word" sufficiently alludes to the Lord's confirming the word (ver. 20) ; and the fact of the session at the right hand of God (ver. 19) is expressed in terms of one of the
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 67
Psalms of David. The Ascension is described as a taking (dyayelv) to heaven, synonymously with S. Mark's receive up ; and the mention of the subsequent smiting of the hostile demons, as if predicted in the Psalm quoted, is accounted for by S. Mark's signs that followed (ver. 20), whereof one was, In my Name shall they cast out devils (ver. 17). From Justin's words in themselves and in relation to words of Irenaeus we may infer that the earlier writer also was familiar with the peroration of S. Mark ; and if Justin knew it, it would probably have been known to Hermas. That it was known to Hermas we have inferred from the phenomena of his own work ; and the case for his reference to it in Vis. iii. 2. 4 (p. 62), partly in terms of the Old Testament, is strengthened by the fact and the manner of Justin's allusion to it in his first Apology, and especially by the correspondence of his Messianic rod of dominion with the bright rod waved by the Church, as she sits upon the bench and shews the sign of the building of the tower.
In chapter 15 of the Apology of Aristides it is said of the Lord Jesus Christ, The fame of ivhose advent thou mayest know, O king, by reading their Evangelic Holy Scripture, as they call it. He had twelve disciples, who after his ascent to heaven went forth to the pro-
68 HERMAS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS.
vinces of the inhabited (world], and taught his majesty. Their written Gospel or Gospels must accordingly have narrated that the Lord ascended to heaven ; that He sat down at the right hand of God, sharing the majesty on high (Heb. i. 3) ; and that the disciples went forth and preached everywhere. These things are all recorded in S. Mark 16. 9 — 20, and two of them nowhere else in our Gospels. The same verses account for the addition to Acts i. 2 in Codex Bezae, And he commanded to preach the Gospel.
The Apology of Aristides is edited by Prof. J. R. Harris and Mr J. A. Robinson in the first number of the Cambridge Texts and Studies (1891). The above citation from the Apology is from the Greek (p. no), and it corresponds to words of chapter 2 in the Syriac (p. 36), and to the latter part of the little that is now extant of the Armenian (p. 30 sq.).
III.
HERMAS
AND
THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
HERMAS AND THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
In this section the chapters of the Fourth Gospel are taken in their order, and traces of them are sought in the Shepherd of Hermas.
Chap. i. i In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 3 All things were made by kirn; and without him was not anything made that was made. 9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that comet h into the world. 1 2 B^l>t as many as received him, to them gave he power to become children of God. 1 3 Which were born, not of. . .the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. 33 Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and re- maining on him, the same is he. 34 And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God. 5 1 Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God as- cending and descending ^lpon the Son of man.
72 HERMAS AND
i, 3, 14] The prologue of the Fourth Gospel enunciates the doctrine of the personal Logos or Word, who existed in the beginning, and was God : by whom all things were made : and who became flesh, and dwelt or tabernacled (eovopwcre*') among us. It might have been anticipated that the Christian teacher would sometimes vary the abstruse terminology of the doctrine, for the purpose of bringing it home to his less instructed hearers. The Logos, he would have said, means Christ : and then, working backwards from the phrase "became flesh" he could scarcely have avoided the antithesis, that He preexisted as Spirit. Taking now, for example, the homily called S. Clement of Rome's Second Epistle to the Corin- thians, we read in its prologue, Brethren, we ought
4
so to think of Jesus Christ as of God, corresponding to "the Word was God;" and a little below, For He graciously gave us the light; and in chap. 10, Let us flee ungodliness, lest evils overtake us, where there is perhaps a reminiscence of Joh. i. 5 (cf. 12. 35.../£jvf darkness overtake you). Chap. 9 of the homily runs thus, And let none of you say that this flesh is not judged, nor riseth again. Know ye, In what, but in this flesh, were ye saved ? in what did ye recover sight ? We ought therefore to guard the
THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
73
flesh as a temple of God. For like as ye were called in the flesh, in the flesh ye shall also come. If Christ the Lord, who saved us, being first Spirit, became flesh, and so called us, so we also in this flesh shall receive the reward. Let us therefore love one another &c. (i — 5). The Word, " being" from the beginning as Spirit, became flesh. Singularly like Clem. Rom. IT. 9 is the passage in Sim. v. of Hermas, The pre- existent Holy Spirit, that created all the creation, did God make to divell in flesh which He chose... For the way of this flesh was well pleasing, because it defiled not itself upon earth, having the Holy Spirit. He took counsel therefore with the Son and the glorious angels, that this flesh also, having served the Spirit blamelessly, might have some place of tabernacling (/carao-KT/z/w crews), and might not seem to have lost the reward of its service. For all flesh found un- defiled and unspotted, wherein the Holy Spirit dwelt, shall receive a reward (6. 5 — 7). Both writers seem to start from the Logos doctrine, and each varies its expression in his own way ; the one copies the phrase became flesh, while the other alludes to the complementary clause and tabernacled among its (and at the same time to Ps. 16. 9 or Acts 2. 26) by means of the rare substantive rendered "nest" in Matt. 8. 20: T. H. 10
74 HERMAS AND
both pass from the flesh of Christ to flesh generally, in which the Spirit has dwelt, and its reward : Hermas adds words to the effect that by the preexistent Holy Spirit "all things were made" (Joh. i. 3). The pas- sage from the homily seems to have further affinities with the Fourth Gospel ; and its phrases come in the flesh and let its love one another have the ring of the Epistles of S. John. If the homilist drew from the Johannine writings, this strengthens the case for the dependence of the Shepherd upon them.
Hermas in Sim. ix. 12 uses the rock, which was old, and the gate, which was new, as symbols of Christ preexistent and Christ incarnate respectively. How (asks Hermas) can both rock and gate represent the Son of God, if the one is old and the other new ? Hermas is without understanding. The Son of God was begotten before the whole creation, and became the Father's counsellor in His creation : therefore, as symbolised by the rock, He is old. And why was the gate new ? Because in the last days of the consummation He became manifest "in the flesh" (i Tim. 3. 1 6). Therefore was the gate new, that such as were to be saved might enter through it into the kingdom of God (12. i — 3). A link between Sim. ix. 12 and the Gospel doctrine of the Logos
THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
75
is chap. 1 1 of the Epistle to Diognetus^ which speaks expressly of the Word as He which was from the beginning (i Joh. i. i), who appeared as new and was old. The writer of chapters n — 12, which do not properly belong to the Epistle, but have been run on to it by a clerical error, was probably acquainted with the Shepherd of Hermas, with which he agrees also in spiritualising the cosmogony, making them that love God a Paradise of Delight. It is somewhat strange to speak of Christ as new and old, in the sense of the Epistle ; but it was natural in Hermas to identify the Son of God figuratively with a thing new and a thing old ; and the later writer may have alluded briefly to this, transferring the epithets of the symbols to the Person signified. His use of these epithets, as descriptive of the Logos, confirms the impression that the same connexion of thought was in the mind of Hermas.
9] In the glistering of the gate we found a verbal allusion to the Transfiguration as described by S. Mark, who records that His garments became glistering (p. 37) ; but something more than this must be meant by the intense intrinsic brightness of the gate, which answers so well to the description of the Son of God as the " true Light," the preternatural light of men.
76 HERMAS AND
12 — 13] For Which were born there is an alter- native reading Which was born* (ver. 13), suiting the application of the verse by Irenaeus to the nativity of Christ (p. 30), while giving the sense, that He who was born not of the will of man but of God empowered believers on His Name to become children of God (ver. 12). Such, with either reading, they are said to become, and as such they are potentially like Him (i Joh. 3. 2): as He is, so are we in this world (4. 17). He says, / am the Light of the world (Joh. 8. 12), and Ye are the light of the world (Matt. 5. 14). And so Hermas in Sim. ix. makes the gate of the tower brighter than the sun (2. 2), and the building and all its stones bright as the sun ( 1 7. 3 — 4) : the tower foursquare, and its stones foursquare : its foun- dation stones unhewn, in order that its Foundation may be unhewn (p. 31). In like manner, as we have seen in Sim. v. 6 and Clem. Rom. n. 9, the flesh of members of Christ is a temple of God, as the flesh of Christ is the temple of God (Joh. 2. 21). This principle explains some other things in the Shepherd,
* Dr Sanday, in the Expositor for December 1891 (p. 412), describes this reading as "known to several of the Latin Fathers, Irenaeus (twice), Tertullian (three times), and Ambrose and Augustine (once each), and found also in Cod. Veronensis (b] of the Old Latin." He also shews traces of it in Justin Martyr's ApoL I. 32 and Dial. 54. 63. 76.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 77
as we shall see forthwith. The use of verse 13 by Irenaeus suggests that Hermas may have had it in mind when he wrote in Sim. ix., Some stones were being added to the building by the 'men, and did not become bright (4. 6) ; for such as are born " of the will of man " cannot become " children of God."
33 — 34] The Spirit descending and remaining on Jesus was a sign to the Baptist that He was the Son of God. Now in Sim. ix. 6 the twelve virgins, on the approach of the Lord of the tower, run to him, attach themselves closely to him, and begin to walk near him round the tower. This adhesion of the virgins, if they be the Holy Ghost, to the tall man who overtops the tower ought to designate him as the Son of God ; and accordingly it is said of him in the interpretation of incident, The glorious man is the Son of God (12. 8). The like behaviour of the virgins to Hermas (n. 4) illustrates the principle just enunciated, that as He is, so (in their measure) are His members : the Spirit of truth abides with them, as with the Son of God. He abides with the Foundation and with its component parts, of which it is said, They first wore these spirits ; and they departed not at all from one another, neither the spirits from the men, nor the men from the spirits ; but the spirits remained with them till their last sleep,
78 HERMAS AND
and but for this they would not have been of use for the building of the tower (15. 6). Inseparable from the tower, which is both the Church, or Christ, and the aggregate of the children of God, are the seven women, who are the sevenfold Spirit of God, in Vis. iii., and the twelve virgins in Sim. ix., who stand round about the tower as its warders, under strict injunctions not to depart from it (5. i) ; and round the gate (4. i), which is again the Son of God.
51] The Son of man is, even to the angels of God, the way between heaven and earth, the realisa- tion of the dream of Jacob (Gen. 28. 12). The preternaturally tall man in Sim. ix. 6, who is the Son of God (12. 8), corresponds to the Evangelist's divine Son of man ; and at the same time to the Talmudic first Adam, who extended from the earth to the firmament"*, and was thus a Jacob's ladder, whose head was in heaven. The colossal man, if not a ladder to the angels, is their "gate of heaven," and thus stands in much the same relation to them as the Son of man in the Gospel. The Lord (writes Hermas) is encompassed by angels as a wall, the gate in which is the Son of God. He is the one entrance to the Lord;
* Talm. Bab. Chagigah 12 a, p. 58 ed. Streane (Camb. 1891).
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 79
and not even the most glorious angels can come itnto God except through Him (12. 6 — 8).
Chap. ii. 6 And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. 7 Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them ^tp to the brim. 8 And he saith unto them, Drazv oiit noiv, and bear unto the governor of the feast. 10 Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine... but thou hast kept the good wine until now. 19 Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 21 But he spake of the temple of his body.
6 — 10] The miracle of the Water made Wine is made a parable by Hermas. The large waterpots, at first partly empty, are filled to the brim ; and their contents are then found to be good wine. Accordingly Hermas writes in Mand. xii., For the devil tempts the servants of God, and if he find them empty, corrupts them. When a man has filled (ye/xicn?) a great abundance of jars with good wine, if there be a few half empty among them, when he comes to the jars, he does not examine the full ones, but only the empty ones ; for these soon turn sour, and the flavour of the wine is lost. So when the devil tempts the
8O HERMAS AND
servants of God, he finds no place to enter them that are full in the faith ; but he enters into the empty, and works his will with them, and they become sub- servient unto him (5. 2 — 4).
19 — 21] In Clem. Rom. n. 9 it was said, We oiight to guard t lie flesh as a temple of God, and further, that Christ, being first Spirit, became flesh (p. 73). If the writer thus associates the idea that the flesh is a temple of God with the prologue of S. John's Gospel, we may think that the word temple was suggested to him as much by the phrase the temple of his body in Joh. 2. 21 as by i Cor. 6. 19.
Chap. iii. 3 Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 5 Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. \ 2 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? 13 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilder- ness, even so must the Son of man be lifted iip. 3 1 He that cometh from above is above all : he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth.
3] As Moses merely saw the promised land from
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 8 1
Pisgah (Deut. 34. 4), and as others of old saw the promises afar off; so Hermas takes seeing literally, and plays thus upon the distinction between seeing and entering into the kingdom of God in Sim. ix., He who wears the names of the virgins and the name of the Son of God shall be able to enter into the kingdom of God. But the servant of God who wears the names of the women in black shall see the king- dom of God, but shall not enter into it (15. 2 — 3).
5] And why (asks Hermas) did the foundation stones come up from the deep wearing these spirits ? It was necessary that they should come up through water, that they might be made alive ; for they could not otherwise enter into the kingdom of God &c. Before a man wears the name of the Son of God he is dead ; but when he has received the seal, he puts off the deadness and receives back the life. Now the seal is the water: into this they go down dead, and they come up from it alive (16. i — 4). Thus water and "these spirits," the Holy Spirit of the virgins, are the means by which men must be born again.
12, 13, 31] Hermas dwells upon the distinction
between things earthly and things from above. Faith,
he says in Mand. ix. n, is from above, from the
Lord, and hath great power ; but doublemindedness is
T. H. 1 1
82 HERMAS AND
an earthly spirit and from the devil [Jas. 3. 15], and hath not power. Mand. xi. 6 describes the spirit of the false prophet as earthly, and speaking- according to the desires of men, that is "of the earth," and only when interrogated. Lower down we read, with allu- sion to i Joh. 4. i, Try the claimant to inspiration by his life and works, and believe the Spirit that comes from God and hath power. Hear this parable which I will tell thee. Throw a stone at the heaven and see if thou canst strike it ; or pump at it with a water siphon, and see if thou canst bore it. As these things are beyond men's power, so earthly spirits are without power and weak. But see the power that cometh from above. Hail is the least of granules, but when it falls upon the head of a man, how it pains him. Or take the drop (crTay^v] that falls from the roof to the ground, and bores through stone. Thou seest that the least things falling from above to the earth have great power. So too the Divine Spirit coming from above is powerful. This Spirit then believe thou, and from the other keep away (16 — 20).
That drops of water bore into hard stone was a very ancient adage, to which Hernias gives a fresh application. Water being a familiar symbol of the Spirit, he makes dropping water a symbol of the Spirit
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 83
coming from above ; with allusion as we may suppose to baptism, both here and in the dropping (crTa^avros) of righteousness upon the children of the Church in Vis. iii. 9. i. Compare the rules for baptism in chap. 7 of the Teaching. The normal form of it being by immersion in living water, if such water be not accessible, the use of other water is sanctioned. And if thou have not either, pour out water thrice upon the head, ^mto the name of Father and Son and Holy Ghost. The instruction to pour-0&/, namely from the hand or from some vessel, is very suggestive of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as in Acts 2. 17, / will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and Tit. 3. 5 — 6, By the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he poured out upon us. Thus the Didache1 by its word e^eo^ teaches implicitly that the baptismal water dropping upon the head of a man represents the Spirit descending upon him.
14] Searching the Shepherd for traces of the sign of outspreading, the sign of the Cross, in the Teaching (p. 50), I first noticed the dragon of tribulation's extension of itself upon the ground, which seemed to be a counterpart of the " sign of the truth " in heaven. This was eventually found to be confirmed by the saying on the serpent in the Fourth Gospel, and
84 HERMAS AND
further by chap. xxi. 18, which will be commented upon in its place. The encounter of Hennas with the beast, which prefigured the coming tribulation, is described in Vis. iv. He was glorifying and giving thanks to God, when a voice replied, Be not double- minded, Hermas. He went forward a little, and behold dust rising as it were to heaven. Were cattle coming? The dust thickened, and he suspected that there was something superhuman. The sun glimmered faintly, and behold a huge beast like a sort of sea- monster, with fiery locusts coming out of its mouth, a hundred feel long, and with the horned head of a cerastes. He faces it boldly in faith, as it comes on with a whirr as though it could lay a city in ruins ; and on his near approach that so great beast stretches itself out upon the ground, and it did nothing but put out its tongue till he had passed by (i. 4 — 9). This beast may be an amalgam of different animals, like the beast of Rev. 13. i sq., which had seven heads and ten horns, and was like a leopard, and had the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion, with power given him by the dragon. It may therefore allude to the " whale" of Jonah (p. 47), and to other things besides. The dust rising as it ivere to heaven, like the stone thrown at the heaven but failing to reach it,
\
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 85
in Mand. xi. 18, implies vain assumption and essential earthliness. The phrase upon the ground is also significant, as it is in Sim. ix. 14. 4, where it is asked, why the tower was built not upon the ground but upon the rock and upon the gate. The length a hundred feet gives the idea of a great serpent ; and the further thought then suggests itself that there is an allusion to the words spoken to the serpent in Gen. 3. 14, " Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." The Tracking had suggested that the beast's extension of itself was in the form of a cross. But as Moses lifted up, or impaled, or crucified, the serpent in the wilderness, even so (it is written) must the Son of man be lifted ^Lp, or crucified. This suggests that Vis. iv. alludes also to the u lifting up " of the serpent of Moses, with which it was natural to associate the serpent of Eve. Thus the Gospel and the Teaching point to the same interpretation of the gesture of the beast on the approach of Hermas. The author of the Shepherd may have referred to verse 14 merely as recording the act of Moses. The serpent of Hermas was able to destroy peoples (2. 3), as the serpents in the wilderness slew much people (Numb. 21. 6). The Teaching predicts that the world-deceiver will appear as Son of God. I n Lagarde's Hippol. quae
86 HERMAS AND
feruntur 14. 20 (1858) the assimilation is extended to all particulars, so that as the Christ gave to believers ^{,pon him the precious and vivifying Cross, the deceiver will likewise give his own Sign.
Two features of the beast call for further remark. Its head, according to the manuscripts, was like a tile, or " pottery," for which Hilgenfeld reads conjecturally, like that of a cerastes. This word means a horned serpent in Prov. 23. 32, and it is an epithet of a bullock "that hath horns" in Ps. 69. 31. It was likely, for reasons to which it would be inappropriate to digress now, that Hermas would allude to the horned beast of Dan. 7. 7 ; and this is of itself a reason for adopting the simple and sound emendation, Kcpdo-Tov for Kepdfjiov. And the length of the beast being a hundred feet, if we suppose this number to be significant, like the number of the beast in the Apoca- lypse, then, since the letter R in Greek is the figure for a hundred, we have at once an allusion to Rome, which in fact lies so near the surface that Hermas cannot have failed to notice it, and must therefore have intended it. Examples of the uniliteral acrostic abound in the Sibylline Oracles, in one place of which (xi. 114) the number a hundred designates both Romulus and Remus. The enormous bulk and brute
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 87
force of the beast, its horned head, and its prefigure- ment of persecution all point to imperial Rome.
Chap. iv. 6 Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well. 15 Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. 24 God is a Spirit : and they that worship him must ivors kip him in spirit and in truth. 34 My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. 36 And he that rcapeth receiveth wages, and gat here th fruit unto life eternal.
6, 15] In the explanation of the parable of the Vineyard in Sim. v. it is said that the Son himself cleansed the sins of the people of God, having toiled much and endured many toils (6. 2) ; where toiled may have been suggested by the fact that Jesus was physically wearied or toil-worn (ver. 6). The word for endure (ai>T\€a>) is used, but in a different sense, in this chapter and chap. ii. of S. John's Gospel.
24] God is a Spirit or God is Spirit. If " the Word was God," and " God is Spirit," the Word (or Christ) preexisted as Spirit, according to Clem. Rom. n. i, 9 and Sim. v. 6 (p. 73). When it is said, as it is often said, that Hermas confounds the Persons of the Son and the Spirit, it should be remarked that
88 HERMAS AND
he places himself in a dilemma by making the house- holder, the slave, and the son in the parable of the Vineyard play the parts of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost respectively ; for by keeping the three absolutely separate he would have fallen into an opposite heresy, and failed again to represent the " Trinity in Unity." Due allowance must be made for the necessary incompleteness of any such parable, and especially of the representation of the Spirit in a bodily, human shape. With Sim. ix. i. i compare 2 Cor. 3. 1 7, The Lord is the Spirit.
In spirit and in truth &c. Is this combination of spirit and truth traceable in Hermas ? There are sayings on truth in Mand. iii. which are allowed to be akin to sayings of or recorded by S. John : Again he saith to me, Love truth, and let all triith proceed out of thy mouth, that the Spirit which God made to dwell in this flesh may be found truthful ivith all men; and thus the Lord that dwelleth in thee shall be glorified. For the Lord is true (aX^ftW?) in every word, and with him is no lie.... Thou, saith he, tJiinkest well and truly ; for thou oughtest as a servant of God to walk in tmth, and an evil conscience aught not to dwell with the Spirit of truth (i, 4). Notice the word aA.77#u>o9, which is much used by S. John : the
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 89
form of expression "true, and no lie," comparing i Job. 2. 27: the phrase "to walk in truth," com- paring the nearly identical phrase in 2 Joh. 4 and 3 Joh. 3 : and the expression " Spirit of truth," which is found only in the Fourth Gospel and i Joh. 4. 6 in the New Testament. To all this add the requirement of truth in the spirit which God has " made to dwell in this flesh," that so the Lord which dwelleth in thee may " be glorified ; " and we have in the citation from Maud, iii., as a paraphrase of the saying of which traces were sought, The servant of God must glorify Him in spirit and in truth.
34] In the parable of the Vineyard in Sim. v., a certain man had a field and many slaves ; and part of the field he planted as a vineyard, and he put a trusty and well-pleasing slave in charge of it, with orders merely to stake it, and went on a journey. The slave did as he was bidden, and then said, / have finished this commandment of the Lord, now I will also dig the vineyard : he digged it, and plucked out the weeds, and the Master on his return rejoiced greatly at the works of the slave : and he told his beloved son and his counsellors what he had commanded, and what he had found done, and they rejoiced with the slave at the witness which the Master T. H. 12
9O HERMAS AND
witnessed unto him (Job. 5. 32). After some days the Master of the house made a supper, and sent the slave many meats (eSeoymra) from it ; and the slave kept a bare sufficiency for himself, and distributed the rest to his fellow slaves (2. i — 9). The field is this world, the weeds are the iniquities of the people of God, the slave is the Son of God, and the meats are the com- mandments which God gave through His Son (5. 2 — 3). The meat (/fyw/m) of Jesus was to do the will of the Father, and to finish His work : the meats sent to the servant who personates the Son of God in the parable, and distributed (Joh. 6. u) by him to his fellow servants, are said by the Shepherd to be the commandments which God gave tkrougk His Son, according to Joh. 10.18; 12. 49 ; 13. 34.
36] The reaper's gathering fruit unto life eternal is reproduced in Sim. iv., Do thou therefore bear fruit, that in that summer thy fruit may be known. These things therefore if thou do, thou canst bear fruit unto the world to come (5, 7).
Chap. v. 3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered. 5 And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. 6 Wilt thou be made whole ? 7 Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to cast me
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 9 1
into the pool : but while I am coming, another goeth down before me. 1 4 Behold, thou art made whole : sin no more y lest a worse thing come upon thee. 21... even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. 24 He that heareth my word... hath everlasting life. 32 There is another that beareth witness of me ; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. 39 Search the Scriptures &c. 40 And ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.
3 — 7] With these verses we have compared the Shepherds picture of the faulty stones lying round about the tower, waiting to be hewn and cast into the building (p. 45). The word whole or sound in the New Testament always implies a work of healing, except in the phrase " sound speech" in Tit. 2. 8. In Sim. viii. rt 3 sq. it is used of the Great Willow, which remained miraculously whole when so many branches had been cut from it ; and in Sim. ix. of stones healed by hewing, and so made fit to be facing stones of the tower (8. 5).
14] Sin no more comes as a surprise, after the record of a miracle of healing which seems to imply nothing more than bodily infirmity. The saying, whether here only or in a later verse also, had made an impression upon Hermas, who most strongly urges the duty which it inculcates. In Mand. iv. the
Q2 HERMAS AND
Shepherd counsels a certain tolerance in the treatment of those who have once fallen, not to encourage delin- quency, but in order that he who has sinned may sin no more. Of his former sin there is one that can give healing (i. n). Have I heard rightly (asks Hermas) that there is no repentance after that when we went down into water and received remission of our former sins ? Yes, for he who has received remission of sins must sin no more (3. i — 2). To go-down into the water is to be baptized. Compare Sim. ix. 16. 4, Into the water then they go-down dead, and tJiey come ^lp alive; Epist. Barn. n. 8, 11; and Acts 8. 38. If to go-down into the water, with or without mention of " baptism," meant to be baptized, Hermas may have taken the goings down into the pool of Bethesda in that sense. Then, applying Sin no more to those who went down (ver. 7), he would have inferred that they received remission of sins once for all. The impotent man's infirmity suggests men's infirmity against the wiliness of the devil, as in Mand. iv. 3. 4. It was to be expected that Hermas, if he noticed the cures at Bethesda, would take a hint from " Sin no more," and convert them into cases of the healing of sin. The expression has a scriptural basis, and the idea pervades the Shepherd.
The thought that sin in general is a malady to be
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 93
cured leads up to the thought of sin incurable, which is sin unto death and blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, according to S. John and the Synoptic Gospels respectively. Of such sin under its various names there are traces in the Mandates and Similitudes of Hermas. In Mand. v. we read, Sharp temper, at first merely senseless, engenders bitterness, anger, rage, fury, which becomes sin great and incurable. For when these spirits dwell in one vessel, where also the Holy Spirit dwells, it becomes over full, and the Holy Spirit departs from the man... But refrain from temper; and if thou keep this commandment, thou shalt be able to keep all the rest which I shall command thee (2. 4 — 8). In Sim. vi. it is said, of the erring sheep shepherded by the angel of luxury, For they forget the commandments of the living God, and walk in vain deceits and luxuries, and are destroyed by this angel, some to deatJi and some to corruption. In some (it is explained) there is no repentance unto life, because they added to their other sins that they blasphemed against the name of the Lord. Such men therefore are cis Odvarov, to death. But those who, however corrupted from the truth, did not blaspheme at all against the Lord, have hope of repentance whereby they may live. Corruption then hath hope
94 HERMAS AND
of some renewal, but death hath eternal destruction (2. 2 — 4). In Sim. viii. it is said of those whose rods were found dry and moth eaten, These are the apo- states and betrayers of the Church, and they that blasphemed the Lord in their sins, and furthermore were ashamed of the name of the Lord by which they were called. These therefore utterly perished unto God (6. 4). Of those whose rods were half green and half dry, many, when they heard the commandments of the angel of repentance, repented. But some of them apostatised utterly. These have no repentance ; for on account of their transactions they blasphemed the Lord and denied Him (8. i — 2). In Sim. ix. in like manner it is said, From the black mountain the believers are apostates, blasphemers against the Lord, betrayers of the servants of God. For them there is not repentance, but death (19. i). In these passages we have the idea of a sin of blasphemy, which cannot be repented of and forgiven : a sin against the Holy Ghost, whom it grieves and makes to depart from a man : a sin unto death and everlasting destruction : a sin incurable, and therefore eternal, according to S. Mark 3. 29, But whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin (R. V.). On "sin unto death"
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 95
in the First Epistle of S. John see Bp Westcott's notes, comparing with the Shepherd's " some to death and some to corruption " the words from Origen's Horn, in Ex. x. 3, " There are some sins which are ad dammtm...some ad interitum"
21, 24] The word quicken or make alive is used in Mand. iv., I was quickened on hearing these things from thee thus exactly (3. 7) ; where the turn of expression was possibly suggested by verse 24, He that heareth my words &c.> in connexion with verse 21. It is also used in Sim. ix. 16. 2 of the quickening or new birth through baptism. Whom he will is illustrated by Sim. ix. 9. 3, where it is said to the Lord of the tower, who insists that some of the fine, round stones must be made use of, If, Sir, there is necessity, why vex thyself, and not choose for the building whom (what stones) thou wilt ?
32] The noun and the verb witness are predomi- nantly Johannine in the New Testament, and their combination in this verse (cf. Rev. i. 2) would have suggested the witness -witnessed by the Master to the slave who personates the Son of God in the parable of the Vineyard in Sim. v. (p. 90).
39 — 40] Search ye (or Ye search"] the scriptures. It is against the principle of Hernias to allude plainly
96 HERMAS AND
to the Scriptures ; but in Mand. x. he writes, that men who merely believe, and have never searched and investigated concerning the truth and divine things, but give their whole minds to money making and the affairs of the world, lose the spiritual sense, and grow barren, like neglected vineyards (i. 4 — 6). Sim. x. teaches, Whosoever do his commandments shall have life. But all who keep them not flee from their life and turn away from him (2. 4) : they will not come unto him who is " the life " that they may have life. The simple phrase " have life'' without qualification, points to the Fourth Gospel.
Chap. vi. n And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the
disciples. 2 7 Work not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you : for him hath God the Father scaled. 28 Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? 29 Jesus answered and said imto tJiem, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. 44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him : and I will raise him up at the last day. 47 He that believeth on me hath
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 97
everlasting life. 48 / am the bread of life. 63 The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. 70 Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? 71 He spake of Judas...for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.
u, 27] As Jesus distributed the loaves for the feeding of the Five Thousand, so (as we have seen) the slave who represents the Son of God in the parable of the Vineyard in Sim. v. distributed the meats sent to him from the Master's table, which were the commandments of God, to his fellowservants (p. 90). The meats in the parable are interpreted ac- cording to the saying of Jesus, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work (Joh. 4. 34). In this chapter likewise, from verse 27 on- wards, He spiritualises the idea of meat or bread', which would have led Hermas to do the same in the preceding verses, and spiritualise the loaves for the feeding of the multitude. This enhances the sig- nificance of his use of the word distributed, and justifies the opinion that he took it from the account of the miracle. The meat which endureth unto ever- lasting life being the commandments of God, we see an allusion to verse 27 in Vis. ii., These things have
saved thee, if thou abide in them ; and they save all T. H. 13
98 HERMAS AND
that work such things, and walk in guilelessness and simplicity. These prevail over all wickedness, and shall endure ^mto everlasting- life (3. 2). With the sealing of the Son of man by God contrast the seal of the Son of God in Sim. ix. 31. 4.
28 — 29, 47] As in the Gospel to work the works of God is to believe on him whom He hath sent, so Hermas identifies the former duty with the operation of faith, and writes in Sim. i. 7, Work ye the works of God, remembering his commandments and the promises which He promised, and believe him that He will do them if his commandments be kept. The essence of Mand. i. is Believe (i Joh. 3. 23) ; and it is said that he who keeps it shall " live unto God." Compare Mand. xii. 3. i, Work truth, faith &c., and thou shalt live unto him ; noticing the phrase " work truth," which is but slightly varied from do the truth in chap. iii. 21 and i Joh. i. 6. See also in i Joh. 2. 25 and Vis. i. 3. 4, the promise which He promised, comparing the phrases to work works (Joh. 9. 4) and witness witness (p. 95) in S. John and Hermas.
44, 48, 63] Peculiar to S. John in the New Testament is the phrase the last day (sing.), which Hermas uses in Vis. ii., But for the Gentiles there is repentance until the last day (2. 5); and in Vis. iii.,
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 99
He expecteth nothing but the last day of his life (12. 2). The idea of the saying, / am the bread of life, may be resolved into two parts : first, the Torah or Law, the sum of the commandments of God, is the true bread ; and next the Son of God is the embodi- ment of the Law, and therefore Himself the true bread, the bread of life. The former thought has been sufficiently dwelt upon in connexion with Sim. v. As to the latter, Hermas in Sim. viii. 3. 2 sq. makes the great willow mean " the law of God given to the whole world," adding that This law is the Son of God preached to the ends of the earth ; and he speaks of such as \&& pleased (evypeo-Tycrav) the law and kept it, remembering his attribution of a divine personality to the law. The words that I speak unto you are life may have suggested in Sim. ix. 21. 2, Their words only live, but their works are dead (Heb. 6. i).
54 — 58] The word rpcJyet^, to eat, which occurs four times in these verses, is used in Sim. v. 3. 7.
70 — 71] Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, the betrayer being, as remarked by the four Evangelists, one of the twelve, Hermas peoples one of his twelve mountains, the black one, the first " which shall be last," with apostates, blasphemers of the Lord, and betrayers of the servants of God (Sim. ix. 19).
IOO HERMAS AND
Chap. vii. 28 But he that sent me is true.
In the Gospels the word aXyOivos is used once by S. Luke, of the true mammon, and nine times by S. John. It is used once in i Thess. i. 9, three or four times in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and fourteen times in the Apocalypse and First Epistle of John. Thus it is so far characteristic of S. John that its use would have been suggested by an acquaintance with his writings. Hermas (as we have seen) uses it in Maud. iii. i as an epithet of the Lord : he uses it also in Vis. iii. 7. i, where he writes, their true way, as a variation upon " the way of truth," probably under the influence of the Fourth Gospel.
Chap. viii. 3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought iinto him a woman taken in adidtery. 7 So w/ien they continued asking him, he... said imto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. 1 1 And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee : go, and sin no more. 3 2 7^he truth shall make you free. 41 Ye do the deeds of your father. 44 Ye are of your father the devil.
The Shepherd in Mand. iv. charges a man to keep purity, and not to harbour thoughts about his neigh- bour's wife, or about any act of fornication, or any evil
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. IOI
practices like to such things (i. i). I say to him, Sir, suffer me to ask thee a few things. If one that hath a wife who is faithful in the Lord find her in some adultery, doth the man sin in living with her ? It was no sin so long as he was in ignorance ; but when he has learned the fact, if she repent not, he becomes a partner in her adultery if he continues to live with her (i. 5). What then must he do? Let him put her away and abide alone. But if she repent after being put away, and desire to return to her own husband, shall she not be received ? Certainly if the husband receive her not he sinneth. He that hath sinned and repents should be received ; yet not repeatedly, for to the servants of God there is but one repentance (i. 8). The case of man and wife is said to be typical. Not only is it adultery to defile the flesh, but also to do things like the Gentiles. The Shepherd adds that he counsels condonation of a first offence, not by way of giving occasion for sin, but in order that he who has sinned may sin no more ( i . 1 1 ).
3, 7, n] The pericope of the Woman taken in Adultery supplies a basis for this teaching of Mand. iv., which supposes the case of a woman found in some adultery. Hermas, like the scribes and Pharisees, continues asking about the case ; and the Shepherd in
102
HERMAS AND
reply says in effect that he who casts the first stone, the husband who disallows the wife's repentance, is not without sin. The Shepherd, like Jesus, does not finally condemn the sinner for one sin, but would have him sin no more. He allows repentance, but once only, and he defends his lenience as the best means of securing that he who has sinned shall sin no more : he (not she\ for the reason given below.
Tertullian in De Pudicti. 21 admits that the Church has power to forgive a sin ; but he deprecates its use, lest men should sin more. Thus while, as befits a Montanist, he denounces the Shepherd of Hennas for its lack of severity, he differs from it not so much in theory, as on the question what it is expedient to allow in practice. But in judging of Hermas it is essential to notice that, after his manner, he spiritualises the special case of the woman found in adultery, and gives the sin of the adulteress a very wide connotation, making it the type of all manner of heathen living and worldliness. The conclusion of the whole matter with him is that he, TOV T?/X 01/377? Kora, the sinner generally, should sin no more. The woman that is a sinner has the same typical character in the Shepherd as in Jas. 4. 4, Ye adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God ?
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 103
To this verse, where alone in the whole New Testa- ment the word <£<Aia, friendship, occurs, Hermas alludes in Mand. x., speaking of otiose believers as blinded to the things of God by worldly business and wealth and Gentile friendships (i. 4). Adultery, the old-world symbol of idolatry, appropriated to itself those extensions of meaning which had been read into " idolatry" itself. Compare in Mark 8. 38, this adulterous and sinful generation ; and i Joh. 5. 21, Little children, keep yourselves from idols. There remains the question, which we must leave to the judgment of the reader, whether Hermas, if he knew the pericope of the Woman taken in Adultery, knew it as part of the Fourth Gospel or of some other writing*.
32 — 34] The truth shall make you free... He that doeth sin is a servant of sin. The thought of these
* In his Study of Codex Bezae (1891) in the Cambridge Texts and Studies Professor J. R. Harris, who supposes the pericope to have been expunged from copies of the Gospel through Montanist influence, finds traces of it in the Cod. Bez. text of Acts 5. 18 sq. and in the Shepherd's fj.r]K€Ti anapravfiv (p. IQ5). The Cod. Bez. text of Acts i. 2 (ib. p. 154) runs thus in the Latin (and correspondingly in the Greek), usque in eum diem quern susceptus esf, quo praecepit apostolis per Spin. Sanctum quos elegit, et praecepit praedicare evangelium; where et praecepit &>c. must have been interpolated from Mark 16. 15, 19, the sole authority for the com- bination of the statement dvf\ijfj.<l>dr] with the command Krjpv^art TO «/- ayye'Xtov. On Acts i. 2 see also Tischendorf's Nov. Test. Graece.
IO4 HERMAS AND
verses, with or without vestige of their form, should be discoverable in the Shepherd. That true freedom is independence of the lower self was a maxim of religion and philosophy. Aristotle speaks of servitude to pleasures; and Hermas in Mand. xii. writes, If thou serve (SovXeucn/s) the Good Desire and submit thyself to it, thou shalt be able to have dominion over the Evil Desire and subdue it (2. 5). Thus he says of the good principle, Cm servire regnare, "whose service is perfect freedom." Such freedom comes of serving the Spirit (Sim. v. 6. 5), which is to serve God and walk in truth (Mand. iii. 4). To swerve from the truth because of its purity is to follow evil desires ( Vis. iii. 7. 3), and " they that plan evil in their hearts draw death and captivity upon themselves " (i. i. 8). Here, for the sense, some compare these verses; to which (we may add) Iren. i. i. 6 perhaps refers by the expression lead captive (Rom. 7. 23) from the truth. The phrase to know the truth (ver. 32) is found in Vis. iii. 6. 2 (2 Joh. i). To the servant in Sim. v. it is said (2. 2, 7), Keep my commandment and thou shalt be free with me (ver. 36).
41, 44] The angel of righteousness teaches in Mand. xii. 6. 2 that by returning to God men may overmaster the works of the devil (i Joh. 3. 8).
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 1 05
Chap. ix. i And as he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. 3 Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents : but that the works of God should be manifest in him. 4 / must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day. 24 Give glory to God.
i — 3, 24] Sayings in this chapter associate sin with blindness, in a way to suggest the expression of deliverance from sin in terms of the " recovering of sight to the blind" (Luke 4. 18), as in Clem. Rom. ii. 9 (p. 72), In what but in this flesh did we recover sight? Here the homilist spiritualises miracles of recovery of sight in the flesh, and among them doubtless the case of the man blind from birth. To this he seems to allude in his first chapter also, which has points of contact with the ninth, when he writes, What praise should we give Him or reward in recom- pense for what we received ? Being mentally blind (irrjpoi) ...we recovered sight. The simple word " being" expresses being by nature and "from birth," and the word 7n?po9 may be a substitute for S. John's ru<£Xo5, blind (ver. i), as it is in some early writings quoted in Resch's Agrapha § 4, p. 24 (1889); the man that was blind from birth being called " Tnjpos from birth" in Clem. Horn. xix. 22 and Apost. Const, v. 7, while Justin Martyr uses the phrase in the plural in Apol.
T. H. 14
IO6 HERMAS AND
i. 22, and again in Dial. 69, them that were from birth and according to the flesh irrjpovs. If Clem. Rom. n. was thinking of the miracle in question, what he says of giving praise to God for opening the eyes of the mind (chaps, i, 9) would be accounted for by verse 24, Give glory to God. Hermas in Mand. v. speaks of the passionate as blinded, and of patience as glorifying the Lord at all seasons (2. 3, 7). Here and elsewhere, under the figure of spiritual darkening and its antidote (Mand. x. i ), he may have been thinking more or less of the cognate Gospel miracles ; but the former passage has closer relationship with i Joh. 2. u, He that hateth his brother is in darkness .. .the darkness hath blinded his eyes.
3 — 6] The phrases works of God and work works are Johannine, and both are used by Hermas. We may notice also that the word xa^a^ on ^te ground, is found in the New Testament only in ver. 6 and chap, xviii. 6, They went backward, and fell to the ground; and that it is an emphatic word with Hermas, who uses it of the dragon of tribulation which extends itself upon the ground, and of the tower as built upon the rock, and not upon the groimd (p. 85). Compare the parable of the house built upon the rock, and not upon the sand (Matt. 7. 24 — 26).
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 1 07
Chap. x. i He that entereth not by tke door into the sheep/old, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. 2 But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 9 / am the door : by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved. 1 1 / am the good shepherd : the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. \ 2 But he that is an hireling. . . leaveth the sheep, and fieeth : and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. 16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold &c. ; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd. 37 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. 38 But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works.
i — 9] In Sim. ix. the gate, which was newly cut out of the rock (2. 2), is the Son of God manifest in the flesh (12. i — 3). It has been argued that this cannot refer to the saying / am the door (ver. 9), the change of word from dvpa in the Gospel to 77^X77 in the similitude being thought to be an insuperable difficulty. But since Hermas systematically disguises his allusions, one of his artifices being to replace a word in its proper connexion by some synonym; it would have been quite after his manner, in working up the parable of the Good Shepherd, to write gate for door, not altogether omitting the latter word, but
IO8 HERMAS AND
using it in Vis. iii., And ye be shut out with your goods outside the door [Matt. 25. 10] of the tower (9. 6). This he might have done merely to veil his allusion ; as in Vis. iii. 1 3, seemingly for no other reason, he writes straightway forgetteth, instead of remember eth no more (p. 8). But the word gate may have been preferred as more congruous with its sur- roundings in Sim. ix., and as the resultant of allusions at once to the door, the Son of God, and to passages which use the figure of the gate. On the whole, the change of word counts for little in Hermas ; the real question being whether a connexion can be made out between the contexts of door and gate in the Fourth Gospel and the Shepherd respectively. Now in the Gospel we read, / am the door : by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved; to which corresponds very closely in Sim. ix., as Zahn has remarked, The gate was made new, that those who were to be saved might enter by it (12. 3). And not only so, but as the Gospel recognises other possible ways of entry than by the door (ver. i), Hermas accordingly makes some stones find a temporary lodgment in the tower, which have not been carried through the gate by the hands of the virgins (4. 8). Thus it appears that the gate is a transfiguration of the door.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. IOQ
2, 12, 16] Some of the various shepherds in Hermas have traits taken from passages of Holy Writ, including the section on the Good Shepherd. In Sim. vi. the angel of retribution is depicted as a great shepherd (2. 5), and he and others were called the shepherds of the sheep (i. 5), with twofold reference perhaps to the "shepherd of the sheep" in verse 2, and the "great shepherd of the sheep" in Heb. 13. 20. The Good Shepherd is also the Lord of scattered flocks, which he purposes to unite in one under one shepherd. Hermas in Sim. ix. supposes a Lord of flocks tended by a plurality of shepherds. If when he comes (i Pet. 5. 4) he should find some of the sheep scattered, woe to the shepherds ; but if the very shepherds be scattered, what shall they answer him for the flocks ? Will they say that they were worried by the flocks ? They would not be believed, for it is a thing incredible that a shepherd would be harmed by sheep : he would only be the more punished for his mendacity. And I am a Shepherd, and am under the strongest obligation to give account concerning you (31. 4 — 6). This may be accounted for as an adaptation of sayings of the Good Shepherd to the schisms of unworthy overseers (Acts 20. 28 sq.), which rend the flock; the shepherds, not the sheep
I IO HERMAS AND
as in the Teaching (chap. 16), being " turned to wolves." The phrase to feed sheep, used in Sim. vi. i . 6, occurs in the charge to S. Peter in chap. xxi. 1 7. 38] Believe the works is a unique and remarkable precept, which Hermas makes his own in Mand. vi., These then are the works of the angel of righteous- ness : him therefore believe thou and his works... The things concerning the faith this commandment sheweth, even that thou shouldest believe the works of the angel of righteousness, and do them (2. 3, 10).
Chap. xi. 9 Are there not twelve hours in the day ? If any man walk in the day, he stumble th not, because he seeth the light of this world. 10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. n Our friend Lazarus sleepeth. 13 How- beit Jesus spake of his death : but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. 40 The glory of God. 48 If we let him thus alone... the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.
9] First, taking the day to include " the evening and the morning," or leaving the night out of con- sideration, we find the formula that there are twelve hours in the day assumed in the following curious equation of a day of torment to a year in Sim. vi.,
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. Ill
The time of luxury is one hour, but an hour of tor- ment has the force of thirty days. If then a man has lived one day in luxury and deceits, and has been tormented one day, the day of torment has the effect of a whole year (4. 4) ; each of its twelve hours having the force of 30 days, and the twelve together of 360 days.
9 — 10] He who walks in the light stumbletk not : he who walks in the darkness stumbleth. Mand. vi. i teaches that the crooked way of unrighteousness has not paths, but no- ways and many things-to-st^lmble-at, and is rough and thorny ; but they who go in the straight way walk smoothly and without- stumbling. Thus the Lord's sayings on day and night, the seasons of light and darkness, are transferred to the two ways, which were well known to Hernias and to every one as the Way of Light and the Way of Darkness.
1 3] The substantive Koip/yjaris, taking rest in sleep, being found here only in the Canonical Scriptures (not including Ecclesiasticus), it is of some significance that Hermas uses it in Vis. iii. n. 3, they are expectant of nothing but their last-sleep ; and in Sim. ix. 15. 6, but the spirits remained with them till their last -sleep.
40] The glory of God is spoken of here and in verse 4, and again in chap. xii. 43, For they loved the
112 HERMAS AND
glory of men more than the glory of God. Hernias in Vis. iii. i . 5 is affrighted when he sees " these things lying, and no one in the place," but he remembers the glory of God and takes courage. In Mand. xii. 4. 2 it is said to him, Perceivest thou not the glory of God, how great and strong and wondrous it is ?
48] This mention of the Romans stands alone in the Gospels, except that a version of the inscription on the Cross is said to have been in their language. The dragon of persecution in Sim. iv. is very suggestive of imperial Rome. If its "number," the Greek R, was meant to point to Rome (p. 86) ; the question arises, Did Hermas, like Irenaeus (v. 30. 3), know of Lateinos (in Greek letters) as one of the solutions of the number of the beast in the Apocalypse ?
Chap. xii. 24 Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. 28 Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven &c. 32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. 33 This he said, signifying what death he should die. 37 But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him. ^...because that Esaias said again,
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 113
40 He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart. 41 These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him.
24] The Church in Vis. i. sits alone upon her chair (2. 2), but in Vis. iii. Hermas sits with her upon the bench (2. 4). The false prophet in Mand. xi. i sits alone upon his chair, while faithful men sit to- gether on the bench. The Church upon her chair was sick and at the point of death : her erect posture in Vis. ii. was the sign that she had risen again (p. 8) : after her resurrection she has the companionship of Hermas, himself a typical character, and she shews him a vision of the building of the tower, which is again the Church. Thus she claims for herself a countless progeny of living stones (Matt. 3. 9), answering (as stones elsewhere in the Shepherd re- place seeds) to the much fruit of the corn of wheat which falls into the ground and dies.
28] In Vis. ii. i. 2 Hermas begins to pray to the Lord and glorify His name ; and when he has made an end the Church is seen and speaks to him. In Vis. iii. 4. 3 he is told that it is not because of his great merit that he is chosen to receive revelations (Matt, ii. 25), but that the name of God may be glorified.
See also Vis. iv. i. 3 and Sim. ix. 18. 5.
T. H, 15
114 HERMAS AND
32 — 33] As the Cross lifts up Christ, or the temple of his body (Joh. 2. 21), so Ignatius makes it lift up the several stones of the spiritual temple ; writing in Ephes. 9, as rendered by Bp Lightfoot, But I have learned that certain persons passed through you from yonder, bringing evil doctrine ; whom ye suffered not to sow seed in you, for ye stopped your ears, so that ye might not receive the seed sown by them ; forasmuch as ye are stones of a temple, which were prepared before- hand for a building of God the Father, being hoisted up to the heights (ity/Ty) through the engine of Jesus Christ, which is the Cross, and using for a rope the Holy Spirit ; while your faith is your windlass, and love is the way that leadeth up to God. Very like this is the building of the tower upon the rock higher than the mountains in Sim. ix. of Hermas. But although the resemblance has been remarked upon in general terms, I do not know that it has been worked out in detail. The points to be noticed are that both writers make the Cross and the Holy Spirit instrumental in the building. Without thinking of Ignatius, and solely from a comparison of the Shepherd with the Teaching, we found an allusion to the Cross in the spreading out of the hands of the virgins to receive the stones which they were to carry up to the tower ; and we made out
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 115
that the virgins represented the Holy Ghost, who was thus seen to be instrumental in building it. Again, while Ignat. Ephes. 9 brings in Faith and Love, Hermas has a string of seven virtues from Faith to Love in Vis. iii., and of twelve in Sim. ix. ; and he concatenates the virtues in each series and makes them inseparable. Of the seven he says that they are " daughters of one another," with Faith for the mother of all ; and adds that their powers are laid hold q/ by one another and follow one another (8. 7). Thus they make an endless chain or "rope"; and they stand in a circle round the tower, which is upheld by them, by the command of the Lord (8. 2). Like them are the virgins of Sim. ix., who stand round the tower ; and they bear, not the whole tower at once, but its stones one by one. The twelve coil themselves round each stone ; four strong cardinal virtues standing at the corners, and the rest in pairs between ; and so, making themselves a chain, they carry them (4. i). But to return to the Gospel, it is said, / will draw all men unto me (ver. 32), and No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him (Joh. 6. 44). The drawing might be " with cords of a man, with bands of love" (Hos. 11.4); or it might be with the cord of the Holy Spirit, of which the holy spirit
I TO HERMAS AND
Love in Hermas is a partial manifestation. From all this it seems to follow that Hermas borrowed from Ignatius, and both from the Fourth Gospel, in their accounts of the building of the temple or tower.
In Lagarde's Hippol. R. i. 59 (p. 30) the Church is likened to a ship in a storm upon the sea of the world, having Christ for pilot and the Cross for mast, and bound about with ropes of love. It has angels for sailors, and the symbol of the Passion as a ladder that leadeth up to the height, drawing (eX/covcra) the faithful to the ascent of the heavens ; where the drawing or attraction of men upwards through the Cross is accounted for by verse 32, and the grouping of angels, ladder, heaven in part by chap. i. 5 1 . But the imagery bears the stamp of Ignatius also, who (a century before) had in the same realistic way made the Cross a mechanism for raising men up on high* ; and the pre- sumption hence arising that Hippolytus is a witness to Ignatius is strengthened by the consideration that his figure of ship, storm, pilot may owe its origin to
* Cotelier and later writers on Ignatius add words from Methodius On the Cross (Migne P. G. 18. 400) to the effect that it is a ^xai"7 f°r drawing ^foursquare stones to be fitted into the building of the Church. The epithet seemed to be from Hermas, and I found in the context the idea of Justin Martyr that a man spreading his hands is cruciform, like the virgins as they received the stones in Sim. ix. 3. 2 (p. 50). Irenaeus sees the uplifting power of the cross in 2 Kings 6. 6 (Gebh.).
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. I I 7
Ignat. Polyc. 2. 3, which it has been thought merely to illustrate. Returning to the Shepherd and searching it for some form of the word draw (ver. 32), we read in Vis. iii. 2. 6 (cf. 5. 2) of stones drawn (eX/co/xeVous) up from the deep and set in the building.
37 — 40] Hardening of heart* in the Gospels con- notes imperviousness to conviction, with respect to miracles or signs. Here it is said to have entailed incapacity for belief, though he had done so many signs before them. The expression is found again in Mark 3. 5, Being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith imto the man, Stretch forth thine hand: Mark 6. 52, For they understood not concerning the loaves, but their heart was hardened: and Mark 8. 17 — 19, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread ? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart hardened? When I brake the five loaves among the five thousand &c. Hermas addresses the Shepherd in Mand. iv., Since the Lord judged me worthy that thou shouldest dwell with me for ever, bear with me for a few words further, because / understand not at all, and my heart is hardened by my former doings (2. i). The combination of understand not with the phrase in question points plainly to the Gospels ; and
* The hardening here spoken of is
Il8 HERMAS AND
if Hermas took the latter phrase from that source, he must have been acquainted more or less with the accounts of miracles with which it is associated in the Gospels. The phrase being used twice out of three times in S. Mark with allusion to the feeding of the Five Thousand, and so as to include it with other miracles in S. John ; this makes it the more likely that Sim. v. 2 touches upon that miracle, as we had inferred on other grounds (p. 97). Hardening of heart is spoken of again in Mand. xii., Perceivest thou not the glory of God, how great and strong and marvellous it is ; in that He created the world for the sake of man, and placed all His creation in subjection to man, and gave him all power to have dominion over all things under heaven ? If then, saith he, man is Lord of the creatures of God, and hath dominion over all, the man that hath the Lord in his heart is able to have dominion over these commandments. But such as have the Lord on their lips, but have their heart hardened and are far from the Lord, to them these commandments are hard and impracticable (4. 2 — 4). This brings together widely separated sayings on the lordship of mankind or the Son of man over the creation, as Gen. i. 28 (/cara/cvpteuorare) ; Psalm 8. 6, with its applications in the New Testament ; Matt.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 119
28. 1 8, All power is given imto me &c. As this last is followed by the charge to teach "to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you," so Hermas passes from man's lordship over the material world to his power to keep the Shepherd's commandments. At the end of the passage from Mand. xii. he perhaps refers especially to S. Mark 7. 6 — %...For laying aside the commandment of God &c., in connexion with hardness of heart, and thus implicitly with the Gospel miracles, which he regards as special signs of the Son of man's lordship over nature. While, for the purposes of his allegory, the writer spiritualises the whole crea- tion and the ideal man's dominion over it, not speaking expressly of any of the miracles as such ; he gives sufficient slight indications of acquaintance with the narratives of them in the Gospels.
41] Isaiah saw " his glory," the glory of Jesus (ver. 36). On the same principle of Old Testament exegesis it is said in Epist. Barn. 12. 7, that in the elevation of the serpent of brass by Moses (Numb. 21. 9) "thou hast again the glory of Jesus!' Did Barnabas know the Fourth Gospel ?"* Chap. 21. 2 of the Epistle, as von Gebhardt notes, may be based on verse 8, "the poor always ye have with you."
* See The Gospels in the Second Century by Dr Sanday.
I2O HERMAS AND
Chap. xiii. i Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. 4 He riseth from supper, and... took a towel, and girded himself. 3 1 Now is the Son of man glorified.
i] Having loved them before, at this crisis He loved them to an extreme, to the uttermost (Westcott). This sense of the phrase occurs "most often in con- nexion with words of destruction." For an example of its use in a different connexion see Vis. iii., where the Church on her third appearance is described as of exceeding beauty and joyous ets reXos (10. 5).
4 — 5] The rare word \evnov, towel, is used by Hermas in a context which points to this Gospel, as we shall see under chap. xx. 5 sq. Gird thyself ...and serve me in Sim. viii. 4. i is suggestive of S. Luke
i7.8.
31] Here it is said that the Son of man is glorified', and the Synoptists speak of his coming in his glory. With this agrees the epithet «>8o£bs given in Sim. ix. 12. 8 to the colossal man, the Son of God, whom we identified (pp. 48, 78) with the "Son of man."
Chap. xiv. 2 In my Father s house are many mansions. 6 I am the way, the truth, and the life... no man comet h unto the Father, but by me. 16 And I
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 121
will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever ; 17 Even the Spirit of truth... for he abideth with you, and shall be in you. 20 Ye in me, and I in you.
2, 20] The words dwell, dwelling are used below for words related to otKia, which is rendered " house " in verse 2. In Iren. in. 20. 3 we read, that Christ offered the firstfruits of the resurrection in Himself (i Cor. 15. 23) ; that as the Head rose from the dead, so too might all the parts which make up the body, each member having its proper and fitting* position therein, For there are many mansions with the Father, since there are also many members in the body. The writer was thinking of the building of the body of Christ (Eph. 4. 16), to which answers in Hermas the building of the tower. The stones of the tower are fitted variously into the foundation and the walls ; and the parallel in the later writer seems to interpret their difference of position as signifying the multiplicity of mansions with the Father. With verse 3, that where I am, there ye may be also, compare in Sim. ix., And all your seed shall dwell with the Son of God (24. 4).
* Lat. aptam, which (as in Iren. v. 36) must stand for a This epithet may have been suggested to Irenaeus by the Shepherd, in which, from the nature of the subject, appofav is used frequently
T. H. 1 6
122 HERMAS AND
The setting of the stones in the tower represents in a figure, Ye in me (ver. 20). Their threefold distinction as inner and outer wall-stones and foundation stones (p. 41) agrees with the threefold difference of dwelling in Sim. viii. and Iren. v. 36.
Verse 2 is cited again by Irenaeus, in noteworthy surroundings, at the end of his fifth and last book, thus (v. 36) : " As the elders say, That then shall they that are judged worthy to have their abode in heaven go thither, and some shall enjoy the delight of paradise, and others possess the brightness of the city (Rev. 21. 23); for everywhere the Saviour shall be seen, according as they shall be worthy that see him. And that this is the difference of dwelling of them that bear the k^mdredJ and the sixty, and the thirty ; of whom the first shall be received up into heaven, and the next abide in paradise, and the last dwell in the city. And that therefore the Lord hath said, In my Father s (house] are many mansions. For that all things are of God, who giveth to all their fitting dwelling; as His Word saith, that apportionment hath been made to all by the Father, according as each is worthy, or shall be ; and that this is the guestchamber in which they shall recline that are invited and feast at the marriage. That this is the ordering (i Cor. 15. 23) and disposi-
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 123
tion of them that are saved, say the elders the disciples of the Apostles ; and that they advance by such steps, and ascend through the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father ; the Son at length yielding up his work to the Father, as saith the Apostle, For he must reign till he put all enemies under his feet &c. (i Cor. 15. 25 sq.). Diligently therefore did John fore- see the first resurrection of the just." The difference of dwelling of the saved is here connected with the many mansions (verse 2) ; and with the three degrees of success in the parable of the Sower; and with every man in his own order and other verses of i Cor. 15 ; and seemingly with Rev. 21. 23; and with Matt. 22. 8, which may have suggested " according as they shall be worthy." At any rate this phrase is to be noticed, and likewise "the brightness of the city," for comparison with the parallels in Hermas. Irenaeus rests upon a tradition of the elders, which must have been at least as old as the Shepherd. To this we ac- cordingly turn in the hope of finding traces (or further traces) of the tradition therein ; and we shall see reason to think that it was well known to Hermas, and was the leading thought of his eighth similitude.
The subject of Sim. viii. is a Great Willow, which overspreads the earth, and shelters all who have been
124 HERMAS AND
called in the name of the Lord. An Angel cuts rods from it, and gives them to the people. Afterwards he demands them back ; and they are found to fall into twelve classes, of which the last three are approved. Those of the tenth class were green, as they were first given : those of the eleventh green, and with side- shoots : those of the twelfth green, and with side- shoots, which also had a kind of fruit (i. i — 17). The holders of these last come first, and are crowned and admitted to the tower : those next before them are not crowned, but have entrance to the tower : the next preceding are likewise sent off thither (2. i — 4). This corresponds to "the first resurrection" spoken of in Iren. v. 36. Then the Angel says to the Shepherd, / go my way (Joh. 8. 21). Do thou send these others to the walls, according as any is worthy to dwell. He accordingly proposes to plant all the rods not ap- proved in the first scrutiny. The holders come in their respective orders*, and he plants their rods, and covers them up with water (as it were baptizing them), purposing to come again in a few days, and see if any were alive again, For he who created this tree would
* Tdy/xara ray/zara, the construction from S. Mark 6. 39 — 40: the word and the idea "every man in his own order" from i Cor. 15. 23, which is referred to several times in Sim. viii. 4 — 5.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 125
have all them to live that received branches from it (2. 5 — 9) ; the great tree being a figure of the Gospel preached to the whole creation (3. 2). Her- mas would know about the dwelling of all those who gave up the rods that had been planted (6. 3) ; and he is told that only those who repent live, for the re- pentance of sinners hath life and their impenitence death (6. 6) ; and that the dwelling of the saved varies with the character of their repentance (8. 3). Thus in Sim. viii. we find the "difference of dwelling" in combination with the three degrees of success in the parable of the Sower, to which Hermas alludes here and elsewhere : and likewise with every man in his own order and other verses of i Cor. 15. But Irenaeus has the same connexion of thought ; and he has the phrase according as each is worthy, cor- responding to Sim. viii. 2.5; and he mentions the brightness of the city, which corresponds to the bright- ness of the tower in Sim. ix. 17. 3. It seems to follow that Hermas and Irenaeus were referring to the same tradition of the elders, of which the nucleus was the saying, In my Fathers dwelling are many abodes; and that Hermas had this saying in mind, although he does not use the word povai, abodes (Lat. mansiones]. A later link in the tradition is Tertull. Scorp. 6, which
126
HERMAS AND
connects the many mansions with i Cor. 15. 41, and with the steps of ascent in Iren. v. 36.
In Sib. Orac. vii. 68 sq. it is said, that the Word, who had been aforetime maker of earth and starry sky for the Father, became incarnate ; and that he quickly flew to the Father's dwelling (oi/cov?) ; and that for him were founded three towers, to be the abodes of Hope, Piety, Reverence; with allusion (as we must say with Alexandre) to the Shepherd of Hermas, in which the oracle somewhere finds the threefold difference of dwelling of the just. Was there anything in Hermas that might be taken to hint at a plurality of towers ? In Vis. iii. he asks, All these stones that are rejected as not fitting into the building, have they repentance, and shall they find room in this tower ? They have repentance, quoth she, but into this tower they cannot fit ; but they shall fit into a different place much smaller (7. 5 — 6). The Sibyllist's " maker" is the avOlvr^ who is the Lord of the tower in Sim. ix. 5. 6.
6] The actual sayings / am tfie way, the truth, tfie life are not used in the Shepherd, but traces of them may be found there. For way, as Zahn suggests, Hermas uses way-in (eio-oSo?, 2 Pet. i. n) in Sim. ix., With these angels the Lord is walled about, and the gate is the Son of God. This is the one way-in to the
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 127
Lord. Otherwise shall no one come to Him but through his Son (12. 6). On the straightness of the Lord, the straight way, see p. 30. Christ, who is the true light, and the trite bread, and the true vine, may be referred to in Vis. iii. 7. i as the true way (p. 100). The influence of the saying / am the truth is per- ceptible in Mand. iii., They who lie reject the Lord (i. 2), in rejecting the truth. The peculiar phrase deny their life is a synonym for deny their Lord in Vis. ii. 2. 7 — 8. Compare in Vis. iii., When thou wast rich thou wast of no use, but now thou art of good use (tvxpyo-ros) and serviceable to the life : be ye of good use to God (6. 7). Remembering the corrup- tion of Christus to Chrestus by early heathen writers and the populace, and the ready acceptance of their form of the name as meaning useful and gracious by Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria"", we may think that Hermas alludes to " Chrestus" as the life.
1 6 — 17] On the Comforter see below under chap, xvi. 7 sq.
* See Justin ApoL \. 4, Whereas we are accused as Christians we are Xprjo-TorciToi... that the xPWT°v should be hated is not just. Clem. Strom. II. 4 (p. 438, ed. Potter). Believers on Christ both are and are called Xprja-roi : Cohort, (ib. p. 72), Ye will not taste and see, not that the Lord is xPT)<J"r°*) as m Psalm 34. 8 (i Pet. 2. 3), but that Christ is God.
128 HERMAS AND
Chap. xv. i / am the trite vine, and my Father is the husbandman. 2 Every branch that bear eth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. 5 / am the vine, ye are the branches.
The Son of God makes himself the ideal vine, with implicit allusion to parables of the Old Testament, such as Psalm 80. 8 — 10, Thou broughtest a vine out of Egypt... it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it. Hermas, after his manner, changes the form of the parable, and speaks in Sim. viii. of a great Willow covering hills and mountains (i. i). This luxuriant tree, which covers the whole earth, is the law of God given to all the world, which law is the Son of God preached to the ends of the earth (3. 2). The tree's singular vitality expresses that its Creator would have all live that have received branches from it (2. 7, 9). These branches are cut from it by an Angel and given by him to the people under its shelter, who had been called in the name of the Lord (i. 2); and the spiritual status of the re- cipients is represented by their branches or rods as they give them back, some dry, some flourishing in various degrees (6. 4 sq.). This is the writer's way of saying, Ye are the branches. To the husbandman's care for every branch of the True Vine corresponds
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. I2Q
the planting (Matt. 15. 13) and watering of all the willow rods that were withered or faulty when first given up, in the hope that they may revive (2. 6). Thus in Sim. viii. we have all the elements of the parable of the Vine and its Branches. The fruit of the true vine is " fruit of truth " (Sim. ix. 19. 2).
Chap. xvi. i These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. 5 And none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou ? 7 It is expedient for yoit, that I go away : for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come ^mto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto yoit. 8 And when he is come, he will convict the world of sin. 1 2 / have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. 13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth : for he shall not speak of himself. \ 6 A little while, and ye shall not see me : and again, a little while, and ye shall see me. 20 And ye shall be sorrowful &c. 26 And I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you. 32 And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.
i, 5, 12] The word be offended (ver. i), which would have been suggested by the Gospels, is used
in Vis. iv., And give repentance to all the servants T. H. 17
130 HERMAS AND
of God that have been offended, that His great and glorious name may be glorified (t. 3); and Mand. viii. 10, Not to cast away them that have been offended from the faith. In verse 5 the disciples are reproached for not asking a question, as elsewhere for asking. So Hermas (cf. p. 40), to whom the Shepherd says at the end of Sim. ix., Wherefore didst thou not ask me con- cerning the print of the stones placed in the building, how that we filled up the prints ? On the principle that vocabulary is an indication of an author's literary sources, and on other grounds, the conjecture may be hazarded that Hermas knew the phrase print of the nails in chap. xx. 25. The words for print... prints in the passage cited, which is extant only in Latin, are forma... formas ; but the previous passage to which it refers gives the Greek TOT)? TUTTOUS ra>v \i9a)v (10. i — 2). With verse 12, but ye cannot bear now what I have to say, compare in Vis. i. 3. 3, words which a man cannot bear (/Saoraorcu), and Sim. ix. i. 2.
7 — 8, 13] The Spirit of truth is spoken of in chap, xiv. 1 7 as dwelling and being " with you " and " in you," and so in Mand. iii. i, 4: in chap. xv. 26 as proceeding from the Father : and in i Joh. 4. 6 in contrast with the spirit of error. With the phrase convict of sin (ver. 8) compare in Vis. i., I was taken
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 131
up that I might convict thy sins unto the Lord (i. 5). Hermas, who usually presents his leading ideas under more than one aspect, makes the Shepherd, the angel of repentance, as well as the twelve virgins, cor- respond more or less to the Paraclete"", who is to " abide with you for ever" (Joh. 14. 16). This angel says in Vis. v. 2, "I am sent by the most reverend Angel to dwell with thee the remaining days of thy life." And in Sim.- ix. i. 3 he says, " Thou must from me learn all things more exactly, for to this end was I given by the glorious Angel to dwell in thine house;" where learn all things answers to "he shall teach you all things" (Joh. 14. 26). The thought of the Spirit dwelling with a man enters into the version of the Two Ways in Mand. vi., where Hermas asks how he is to know whether the two angels, of Righteousness and Wickedness, are dwelling with him (2. 2). The twelve virgins, likewise, if they denote the Holy Spirit, should satisfy the condition of being sent to dwell with the faithful ; who, without the aid of the divine Spirit cannot keep the com- mandments of God. This condition they fully satisfy,
* But there are two Paracletes. We have a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus Christ (i Joh. 2. i), who says, / will come to you (Joh. 14. 1 8), I am with you alway (Matt. 28. 20) ; and the Spirit of truth is promised as "another Paraclete" (Joh. 14. 16).
132 HERMAS AND
for in Sim. ix., before the vigil by the tower, they say to Hermas, Thou art our brother, and henceforth we shall dwell with thee (n. 3) ; and it is said that their spirits remained with and never departed from the foundation stones (15. 6). And in Sim.x. the superior Angel counsels Hermas to keep the commandments of the Shepherd, and sends him the virgins for his spiritual direction, saying, " I have sent thee these virgins to dwell with thee ; for I have seen that they are courteous unto thee. Thou hast them therefore as helpers, that thou mayest the better keep his com- mandments; for without these virgins it is not possible that they should be kept. I see that they like to be with thee ; but I will command them that they depart not at all from thy house. Only do thou cleanse thy house, for in a cleanly house they like to dwell.... When he had thus said, he gave me again in charge to the Shepherd, and called the virgins, and said unto them, Seeing that ye like to dwell in this man's house, I commend him and his house to you, that ye depart not at all from his house" (2 — 3). The similitude (and with it the whole work) ends somewhat strangely as follows, When the Angel had done speaking with me, he arose from the bed, and took the Shepherd and the virgins and departed ; saying however to me that he
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 133
would send back the Shepherd and the virgins to my house. The departure and the promise are explained by the promise (Luke 24. 49) of the Comforter, But if I depart, I will send him unto you (Joh. 16. 7). The Spirit of truth shall not speak of himself (ver. 13) : the true prophet in Mand. xi. 5 speaks all things of himself, in the sense that " whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak," unlike the deceiver who waits to be enquired of by men, that he may prophesy accord- ing to their desires.
1 6 — 19, 32] The saying A little while &c. is em- phasised by repetition and pressed upon the attention of the reader, the word piKpov, a little while, occurring seven times in ver. 16 — 19. Accordingly in Sim. ix., when the visitation of the Lord of the tower is being prepared for, the Shepherd in reply to the demand of Hermas for explanation of what had been shewn him, takes the word up and says, A little zvhile I am pre- occupied, after which I will explain all things : wait for me here till I come. I say to him, Sir, alone here what should I do ? Thou art not (saith he) alone, because these virgins are with thee (10. 5 — 6). Not alone (ver. 32), because of the invisible presence of these virgins, who are (as we have seen) the Holy Spirit. Of a piece with this is the objective rendering
134 HERMAS AND
of Men loved darkness rather than light (Job. 3. 19) in Sim. ix. 13. 8, They loved (eTreOv^o-av) the women in black [9. 5], and put on their power, and put off the raiment or power of the virgins.
20 — 22] And ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, becaiise her hour is come : but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow : but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. Hernias in Vis. iii. 13 (p. 8), " For as when to one sorrowing come good tidings he straightway forgetteth the former sorrows... so ye too have received renewal of your spirits &c.", seems to be adapting these verses to the case of the Church personified, whereof "ye" the persons ad- dressed are members. For the figure of birth in verse 21 he has new birth of the spirit. His word ayyeXia, tidings, is from i Joh. I. 5 and 3. n, the only occurrences of the word in the New Testament. He further disguises the reference to the Gospel by writing straightway forgetteth (Jas. i. 24) for " remembereth no more." On the other hand, when in Vis. i. 3. 3 the Church says to Hernias, ytvov aKpoarys, be a hearer,
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 135
and when he proves a "forgetful hearer" (Jas. i. 25), this is expressed as a not remembering, so as to disguise the allusion to S. James. Notice the play upon the "law of liberty" (Jas. i. 25) in Sim. v. 2. 2, Keep this my commandment, and thou shalt be free.
The personification of the Church in the Shepherd is of a very real and dramatic kind. On occasion indeed she betrays her corporate character, but in general her individuality is well marked and lifelike : she converses with Hermas, addresses him by name, gives him a book to read and copy : he calls her Lady, would have her seated before him (Vis. iii. i. 8), prays her by the Lord to shew him the promised vision (2. 3), mistakes her identity at first (ii. 4. i), perhaps on the suggestion of chap. xx. 14. Is she the Elect Lady of the Second Epistle of S. John ? This Lady has children; and the Church addresses her children in Vis. iii. 9. i. The " elect" of God are spoken of by Hermas in Vis. i. ii. iii. iv. only (Hilgf.). S. John prays the Lady "that we may love one another" (ver. 5); where and in verse 13 she is addressed as thee> but " in the intermediate verses the plural is used." Granted of her that, as Bp Westcott decides, " No interpretation can be accepted as satisfactory," the allegorist (who was free to choose the sense which
136 HERMAS AND
best served his purpose) has made his Lady the Church correspond in outline to the Elect Lady of S. John.
26] On pray the Father for you Bp Westcott writes, " This use of ask (Ipwrav) in connexion with prayer addressed to God is peculiar to St John." Notice its use in i Joh. 5. 16, " There is a sin unto death : I do not say that he shall pray for it ; " com- paring in Vis. iii., Hermas, cease praying always for thy sins: pray for righteousness also (i. 6). All prayer, says the Church, requires humility : fast there- fore and thou shalt receive what thou askest from the Lord (10. 6). Pray the Lord that thou mayest receive understanding &c. (Sim. ix. 2. 6).
Chap. xvii. i Father... glorify thy Son. 2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh , that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. 4 / have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. 5 Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. 8 / have given unto tJiem the words which thou gavest me. 1 2 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name : those that thou gavest me I have kept. 21 That they all may be one &c. 24 Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 137
i — 12, 24] Returning to the parable of the Vine- yard we read in Sim. v. 6. 2 — 5, God planted the vineyard, that is created the people, and gave them in charge (irapdScoKev) to His Son (ver. 12); and the Son set the angels over them to keep* them, and... having Himself cleansed their sins, shewed them the paths of life [Ps. 16. n], having given them the law which He received from His Father (ver. 8). Thou seest, saith he, that He is Lord of the people, having received all power from His Father. Now, that the Lord took counsel with His Son and the glorious angels, hearken, The preexistent Holy Spirit &c. (p. 73). The bestowal of all power [Matt. 28. 18] by the Father points to ver. i — 2 ; where moreover the purpose of the gift is said to be that the Son should give eternal life to those given to Him. His so doing is expressed above in terms of the Old Testament, except that eSeife^, shewed, may be from chap. xiv. 6 — 8f, / am the way... shew us the Father. The promise to the slave that he should be free Trap
* 2uiTT7peu>, a word of the Synoptists, for rrjpiiv (ver. 12).
t With We know not whither thou goest (xiv. 5) compare the ending of Vis. iv., and in Vis. i. 4. 3 vtrayova-a. The word virayeiv is used about 80 times in the Synoptic and Johannine writings and but once besides (Jas. 2. 16) in the New Testament. It is used in Joh. 3. 8 of the going of the irv(vfj.a, and in Vis. iii. 5. 3 and Sim. ix. 3. 3 of the going of the unhewn stones (p. 30), which are they that are " born of the Spirit."
T. H. l8
138 HERMAS AND
t, with me (2. 2), after finishing his task (2. 4), is a promise of the fellowship with the Father after finished work prayed for in verse 5, with thyself ...with thee. The thought that the Son was temporarily in the world and had charge in it of men gathered from it (ver. 6 — 13) is obliquely but definitely expressed by the placing of the slave in and in charge of the vine- yard, which was planted in a portion of the field (2. 2), which is this world (5. 2), and by his eventual trans- ference to a higher sphere. The passages of the Shepherd on the preexistence of Christ may be as- sumed to comprise a reference to His sayings, before the world was... before the foundation of the world &c. (ver. 5, 24). Notice the / am &c. of the Church ( Vis. iii. 3. 3), the beginning of the creation of God (ii. 4. i ), who as represented by the tower contains the generations (p. n) before Abraham (Joh. 8. 58).
21] The unification of believers is a distinct feature of the allegory of Hermas. In Vis. iii. he says, The stones did so cleave to one another that no join could be seen ; but the building of the tower was as if it were built of one stone (2. 6). Sim. ix. further expresses their oneness with the rock, Christ, For the tower was so built as if of one stone not having a single join in it. The stone looked as if hewn out of
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 139
the rock ; for it seemed a monolith unto me (9. 7). And again, Therefore thou seest the tower as become monolith with the rock. Thus also they that have believed upon the Lord through His Son, and that put on these spirits, shall become one spirit, one body, and their garments of one colour (13. 5).
Chap, xviii. 27 Peter denied again.
Three of the Gospels record that Peter denied again, and none uses the phrase in any other con- nexion. It is found in the remarkable passage of Vis. ii., Thou shalt say to Maximus, Behold affliction cometh. If it seem good to thee, deny again. The Lord is nigh unto them that turn to Him ; as it is written in Eldad and Modat, who prophesied in the wilderness to the people (3. 4). The name of Maximus, whether a real personage or not, would serve to mask an allusion to the chiefest of the Apostles. The writer says satirically, Deny again, if it seem good to thee, and repent when the trial is over ; trusting to the assurance of those prophets of the people that the Lord is always nigh unto them that turn to Him. Mand. iv. 3. 6 allows but one repentance, and condemns those who go on sinning and repenting. The doubleminded or doubtful repent frequently
I4O HERMAS AND
(Mand. xi. 4). "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?"
Chap. xix. i Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him. n Thou couldest have no power... except it were given thee from above. 13 Pilate... brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat. 23 Now the coat was withoiit seam, woven from the top throitghout. 24 They said therefore among themselves, Let ics not rend it.
i, n] This scourging is implied, on the same prin- ciple as the Crucifixion, by the Church's claim to sit upon the right hand (p. 51). Scourge may mean plague also, as in Mark 3. 10; and the Church in Vis. iv. says that the Almighty is able to send plagues upon the doubleminded (2. 6). The scourge of the angel of retribution (Sim. vi. 2. 5) reminds of the fiagellum [Matt. 27. 26] of chap. ii. 15 ; and for the term " house" (ii. 16) we may quote from Sim. ix., they remained in the house of God (13. ^)...they shall not enter into the house of God (14. i), comparing Matt. 12. 4 for the words of the latter saying, and Joh. 8. 35 for the idea of the former. That authority and power arc/r&w above (ver. 1 1) is illustrated by the force of dropping water and hail in Mand. xi. (p. 82).
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 141
13] Pilate sat down: or he caused Jesus to sit down, " completing in this way the scene of the ' Ecce Homo' by shewing the King on His throne." The action may not seem to fall in with the position of a Roman governor (Westcott), and New Testament analogy may favour the intransitive rendering ; but the other sense, though it be not the true one, is grammatically possible, as in Vis. iii. 2. 4, where the Church seats (/ca#i£ei) Hermas upon the bench. At- tention has been called recently""" to the apparent ac- ceptance of the transitive rendering by Justin Martyr, who relates in Apol. i. 35, as a fulfilment of prophecy, that the Jews in derision set Jesus Christ upon a judg- ment seat (tKaOicrais eVl /J^/JMITOS), and said, Judge for us [Luke 12. 14]. It may have been his policy not to implicate Pilate, but he refers to the Acts of Pilate. In the case of the woman taken in adultery (p. 100), we read in Apost. Const, n. 24 that the elders devolved the judgment upon Jesus.
23 — 24] Hermas, who lays stress upon the tower being without apparent join, would have noticed the sayings, The coat ivas without seam... Let us not rend it; and he has himself a parable of a garment in Sim. ix. 32, Amend therefore while yet the tower
* By Dr Drummond, cited by Salmon, Introd. io N. T. Lect. 6.
142 HERMAS AND
is being built. The Lord dwelleth in men that
love peace Give back to Him therefore a spirit
whole as ye received it. For if thou shouldest have given a new sound garment to a fuller, and he return it rent, wilt thou not be at once angry, and reproach him ?...And what thinkest thou the Lord will do to thee, who gave thee a spirit unimpaired, which thou hast altogether spoiled ? Some Latin Fathers make the unrent " coat " of Christ emblematic of the Church in its unity (Wordsworth). S. Cyprian in De Unit. EccL 7 (contrasting i Kings n. 30 sq.) says that it represents the close concord of such as have put on Christ, which those who rend the Church cannot do ; and it may be that Hermas was his forerunner in this comparison. He makes a mystery of the " coats" of the virgins, which they spread (Matt. 21. 8) on the ground under him in Sim. ix. n. 7. It would have been nothing strange in such a writer to teach that, as the chiton of Christ was not to be rent, so His disciples should endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (13. 5. viii. 2. 3); but what could possibly have led him to think in this connexion of a garment given to a fuller to be scoured? In one place only of the New Testament the word fuller is found, and there it is said that no " fuller" on
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 143
earth could whiten the glistering garments of Jesus (P- 37).
Chap. xx. 5 And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying ; yet went he not in. 6 Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, 7 And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes. 9 As yet they knew not the scripture.
5 — 7] Hermas, awaiting the apparition of the Church, says, " I see an ivory bench lying, and upon the bench lay a linen bolster, and over it a linen towel (Joh. 13. 4) of fine flax spread out. Seeing these lying, and no one in the place, I became affrighted (eK0a//,/3o9) &c." (Vis. iii. i. 4 — 5). The description of these things lying, and no one in the place, points to the Evangelist's impressive description of the linen clothes lying in the vacant sepulchre. The occasions also correspond, for the previous visions had pictured the death and resurrection of the Church.
9] While to Hermas in his visions there is no Scripture but what he writes down on the authority of the Church ( Vis. ii. 4. 3) or of the Shepherd (v. 6), he gives us side-glances at the Scriptures properly so called, and uses his own record of the
144 HERMAS AND
revelation to himself as a symbol of them. The Shepherd does not say to him, Search the scriptiires (P« 9S)» but instructs him to read his draft of the mandates and similitudes without intermission (v. 5). The Church lends him a booklet, written antiquely without division into words, so that he can only copy it letter for letter without understanding it (ii. i. 4); but fifteen days later, after much fasting and prayer, he has the knowledge of the writing revealed to him, and he tells us what were the things-written (2. i). This gnosis of the Scripture, which is a gift that cometh from above, is what the disciples lacked when as yet they knew not the scripture (ver. 9), which their mind was afterwards opened to understand (Luke 24. 45). In like manner, when we read in Sim. v. 3. 7 that Hermas must quite-accomplish [Mark 13. 4] the things written, this is a reminder of the saying in Luke 1 8. 31, All the things written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished,
Chap. xxi. 1 8 Thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee. 1 9 This spake he, signify- ing by what death he should glorify God. 25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 145
that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.
1 8] Tradition says that S. Peter was crucified with his head downwards, and verse 1 8 is commonly thought to point to the extension of his hands upon the Cross. Some demur to this : but it matters little for our purpose what stretch forth originally meant, if only by the time of Hermas it had come to be applied to the Apostle's crucifixion. If Hermas, as we may assume, took it in that sense, it would help to account for his making his dragon of tribulation stretch itself forth upon the ground, with allusion to the sign of the Cross. The transition from man to beast might be thought to be a difficulty. But Justin Martyr writes that the mystery of the Paschal Lamb was a type of Christ (Dial. 40), for other reasons and because it was, as it were, crucified, one spit traversing the length of its body, and the other going through it crosswise, to which the hands of the lamb were attached. Thus he sees the Crucifixion in the stretching out of what he calls the " hands of the lamb."
25] Sim. ix. 2. i shews the reverse side of this last word of the Fourth Gospel by making the rock, the Son of God, able to contain the whole world.
T. H. 19
146 HERMAS AND
The evidence adduced seems to justify the conclu- sion that the Gospel known to Hermas was (so to say) a Diatessaron, having for its elements the Four Gospels of to-day. The reader who would carry the investigation further will find a revised text and a translation of the Shepherd by Mr J. R. Harmer in the late Bishop of Durham's posthumous second work upon The Apostolic Fathers (1891).
The foregoing argument is not opposed but sup- plementary to the reasoning which has led some writers on Hermas and the Gospels to an opposite conclusion. It has scarcely been denied that there are on the one hand appearances of a use of the Gospels, and on the other hand nulla certa vestigia, no indubitable traces of them, in the Shepherd; and this has left its readers the option of inferring with more or less hesitation that the writer knew the Gospels, or affirming with greater or less assurance that there is or may be some better explanation of his apparent allusions to them. In all this no account had been taken of the saying, For the world also is compacted of four elements, which sets the seal to the revelation to Hermas in Vis. iii. But it was natural in one who wrote as Hermas wrote
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 147
to hint at the Evangelium as Good Tidings', and when this thin disguise was seen through, Irenaeus com- pleted the interpretation of the oracle, as is shewn above in the Preface and in the chapter on Hermas and the Four Gospels. The interpretation is simple and adequate, and when rightly approached obvious, and there is not, so far as I have observed, any other. The details of the "witness" of Hermas in the subsequent chapters are not meant to stand alone as proofs of his literary use of the Gospels, but to be taken with and as verifications of the antecedent gene- ral proof that he accepted them; for which we are entitled to claim validity until reason has been shewn to the contrary. Of such verifications perhaps the most convincing are some which are neither verbal nor upon the surface, as those which postulate the representation of the Holy Ghost by a catena of per- sonified fruits of the Spirit from Faith to Love. That this was intended, Hermas tells us with comparative plainness of speech ; and the identification of " these spirits " and the Spirit was gradually found to lighten one dark place after another *. I would add now that
* This identification was accepted in the first instance on the sugges- tion of words of Hermas, and was found to bear the test of application to a number of passages which were obscure without it. Some of these
148 HERMAS AND THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Hermas may have known the saying of Ignatius that Faith and Love in one are God (Eph. 14).
The Shepherd has lately engaged the attention of