Introductory Note
to
The Pastor of Hermas
[Translated by the Rev. F. Crombie, M.A.]
[ 160.] fragment known as the “Muratorian
Canon” is
the historic ground for the date I give to this author. I desired to prefix The Shepherd to the writings of Irenæus, but the limits of the volume would not permit. The Shepherd attracted my attention, even in early youth, as a specimen of primitive romance; but of course it disappointed me, and excited repugnance. As to its form, it is even now distasteful. But more and more, as I have studied it, and cleared up the difficulties which surround it, and the questions it has started, it has become to me a most interesting and suggestive relic of the primitive age. Dr. Bunsen calls it “a good but dull novel,” and reminds us of a saying of Niebuhr (Bunsen’s master), that “he pitied the Athenian Christians for being obliged to hear it read in their assemblies.” A very natural, but a truly superficial, thought, as I trust I shall be able to show.
At first sight, Hermas might seem to have little in common
with Irenæus; and, on many accounts, it would be preferable to pair
him with Barnabas. But I feel sure that chronology forbids, and that
the age of Irenæus, and of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, is the
period which called for this work, and which accounts for its popularity
and its diffusion among the churches. Its pacific spirit in dealing
with a rising heresy, which at first was a puzzle to the Latins, which Pius was disposed to meet by this gentle antidote, with which Eleutherus, in the spirit of a pacificator, tampered to his own hurt, and by which Victor was temporarily compromised, met precisely what the case seemed to demand in the judgment of Western Christians. They could not foresee the results of Montanism: it was not yet a defined heresy. And even the wise prudence of Irenæus shows anxiety not too hastily to denounce it; “seeing,” as Eusebius affirms, “there were many other wonderful powers of divine grace yet exhibited, even at that time, in different churches.”
Bunsen pronounces magisterially on the Muratorian
fragment as an ill-translated excerpt from Hegesippus, written about
165. This date may be
inaccurate, but the evidence is that of a contemporary on which we
may rely. “Very recently,” he says, “in our own times, in the city of Rome, Hermas compiled The Shepherd; his brother, Bishop Pius, then sitting in the cathedra
of the Roman Church.” With the
period thus assigned, the internal evidence agrees. It accounts for
the anti-Montanism of the whole allegory, and not less for the choice
of this non-controversial form of antidote. Montanism is not named; but it is opposed by a reminder of better “prophesyings,” and by setting the pure spirit of the apostolic age over against the frenzied and pharisaical pretensions of the fanatics. The pacific policy at first adopted by the Roman bishops, dictated, no doubt, this effort of Hermas to produce such a refutation as his brother might commend to the churches.
Let me present, in outline, the views which seem to me
necessary to a good understanding of the work; and as I am so
unfortunate as to differ with the Edinburgh editors, who are entitled, primâ facie, to be supposed correct, I shall venture to apologize for my own conceptions, by a few notes and elucidations.