eBook - ePub
The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata
From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata
From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon
About this book
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.
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Yes, you can access The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata by Robert D. Heaton in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Theology & Religion & Biblical Commentary. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- A Note About Style
- Introduction: Seeking the Lost Shepherd
- Part I: Rise of the Shepherd : A Scripture and Its Readers
- Chapter One: The Shepherd of Hermas: Text, Context, and Interpretation
- Chapter Two: Initial Christian Approval of the Shepherd : Known Figures and Anonymous Sources
- Chapter Three: The Contested Usefulness of the Shepherd in the Third and Fourth Centuries
- Chapter Four: Passing the Test?: The Shepherd, Canonical “Criteria,” and Rationales for Exclusion
- Part II: Fall of the Shepherd : A Canon and Its Discontents
- Chapter Five: Constrictive Trends Forging Fourth-Century Christianity
- Chapter Six: Athanasius of Alexandria and the Four Constrictive Trends: His Novel “Rule of Scripture” and Hermas’s Scriptura Non Grata
- Conclusion: Eight Primary Contributions of the Foregoing Study
- Bibliography
- About the Author