Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata
Regular price
€112.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Robert D. Heaton
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Athanasius of Alexandria
Author_Robert D. Heaton
automatic-update
biblical canon
canon formation
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HRCG
Category=QRMF14
Category=QRVC
Christian apocrypha
Christian scripture
church politics
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
early church literature
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
good shepherd
Language_English
Muratorian Fragment
New Testament books
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
religion in antiquity
Roman Christianity
San Gennaro catacombs
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781666921861
- Weight: 662g
- Dimensions: 157 x 238mm
- Publication Date: 25 Apr 2023
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Composed within the first Christian century by a Roman named Hermas, the Shepherd remains a mysterious and underestimated book to scholars and laypeople alike. Robert D. Heaton argues that early Christians mainly received the Shepherd positively and accepted it unproblematically alongside texts that would ultimately be canonized, requiring decisive actions to exclude it from the late-emerging collection of texts now known as the New Testament. Freshly evaluating the evidence for its popularity in patristic treatises, manuscript recoveries, and Christian material culture, Heaton propounds an interpretation of the Shepherd of Hermas as a book meant to guide his readers toward salvation. Ultimately, Heaton depicts the loss of the Shepherd from the closed catalogue of Christian scriptures as a deliberate constrictive move by the fourth-century Alexandrian bishop Athanasius, who found it useless for his political, theological, and ecclesiological objectives and instead characterized it as a book favored by his heretical enemies. While the book’s detractors succeeded in derailing its diffusion for centuries, the survival of the Shepherd today attests that many dissented from the church’s final judgment about Hermas’s text, which portends a version of early Christianity that was definitively overridden by devotion to Christ himself, rather than principally to his virtues.
Robert D. Heaton teaches New Testament, Christian Origins, and Early Christianity at Anderson University in Indiana.
