The night was swiftly falling into place as God had previously planned it ages ago, but much more was needed than just allowing the babe to be born. The shepherds were men that had notorious reputations for pilfering and dipping into the coffers as they traveled from place to place. Society had a distinct distaste for these men due to their occupation. In the fields outside of Bethlehem were various groups of ostracized shepherds. On the night that God was going to proclaim the birth of His Son, the Savior of mankind, the Gift of Eternal Life, let us consider whom He chose to be His spokesman. I honestly think that many never even give it a second thought the events that happened outside the fields of Bethlehem. His labours on earth to save and to cleanse have gained him a co-inheritance with the Holy Spirit, God's primary Son, so that Jesus now is the second Son of God.In this awesome story, we find one of the most stunning events found in the entire bible. "The most venerable angel," "the glorious angel," "the holy angel" are titles that Hermas gives to Jesus in his allegory but it is understood that the angelic status of Jesus is not his by nature. Jesus then becomes divine through the power of God, after consultation with the Son of God, who elsewhere in The Shepherd is identified with the Holy Spirit. For all flesh shall receive the reward which shall be found without stain or spot, and in it the Holy Spirit shall have its home." This passage appears to make the "tabernacling" of the Holy Spirit in Jesus a reward for the purity of his life. The "flesh" is spoken of as a person who "walked as pleased God, because it was not polluted on earth." "God, therefore, took into counsel the Son and the angels in their glory, to the end that this flesh might furnish, as it were, a place of tabernacling (for the Spirit), and might not seem to have lost the reward of its service. Conybeare renders the passage: "God made His Holy Spirit, which pre-existed and created all creation, to enter and dwell in the flesh which He approved." In this text the Holy Spirit appears to be a divine substance. "That Holy Spirit which was created first of all, God placed in a body, in which it should dwell, in a chosen body, as it pleased him." This is Martini's translation. The Shepherd speaks of a Son of God but this Son of God is distinguished from Jesus. The theology of the Church must have been very elastic at a time when such a book could enjoy popularity and implicit, if not explicit, ecclesiastical sanction, for its Christology does not seem to square with any of the Christologies of the New Testament, or with those of contemporary theologians whose occasional documents have reached us.
The Shepherd of Hermas, a strange allegory written sometime in the second century, had a great vogue in orthodox circles and was even included in some copies of the New Testament (it is found in the Sinaitic Codex). Howell-Smith writes concerning the Shepherd of Hermas ( Jesus Not a Myth, pp. Work could have been composed by one person over aĪ. On the basis of this internal analysis multipleĪuthorship seems necessary (Giet 1963), though the This last phase must have occurred before Similitude IX was written to unify theĮntire work and to threaten those who had beenĭisloyal. Vision V - Similitude VIIIĪnd Similitude X were written perhaps by the sameĪuthor to describe reprentance to Christians who were Persecution, probably under Trajan (the Clement of 8:3Ĭould be Clement of Rome). Visions I-IV were composeed during a threatened Theĭocument was composed over a longer period of time. Written in Rome and involves the Roman church. The 3d century, says Hermas was written by the brother
Muratorian canon, a list of canonical books from about Of Hermas, was known to the early Church Fathers. The early Christian document Hermas, or Shepherd Snyder writes ( The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. Recommended Books for the Study of Early Christian Writings Information on the Shepherd of Hermas
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