Moral Agency in the Shepherd of Hermas and in Second Temple Judaism

The Shepherd of Hermas is an extensive early Christian tractate which can be dated tentatively to the first half of the second century C.E. The book figures now under the (modern) category ‘Apostolic Fathers`, earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament. The text has been addressed as an ‘apocalypse` in the history of scholarship, but this categorization appears to be difficult to maintain in view of more recent attempts to define the genre for both Judaism and emerging Christianity. At least the section called ‘mandata’ can be understood more aptly as an early, in fact the earliest, handbook of Christian morality.

This perspective provokes new interest in the anthropological basis for the moral advice given. The paper presents the essentials of the moral psychology of the Shepherd, and it asks for their nearest parallels. It can be demonstrated that the text shares basic notions and images with texts from Second Temple Judaism. This insight does not only help us to understand in more depth the moral thought presented in this specific text, but it is also a strong indication for its conceptual backdrop in earlier or contemporaneous Judaism, a position otherwise not prominent in scholarship.