The most-read Christian book of the second century — nearly admitted to the New Testament — opens not in heaven but with a confession: Hermas, a freed slave, meets his former mistress Rhoda again at Rome, and helps her out of the Tiber.
The opening of Vision 1 is live as a word-depth beta: every Greek word glossed with its sense and the flowing English beside it. Hermas is sold to Rhoda at Rome, meets her again, and helps her out of the Tiber. This is a long book (Visions, Mandates, Similitudes); it grows chapter by chapter with reader demand.
❦ Read the Shepherd of Hermas now, freeA taste of the format — open the reader above to read all of The Shepherd of Hermas word by word.
The Shepherd of Hermas was read in churches for centuries and stands in the great Codex Sinaiticus beside the New Testament. Its Visions, Mandates and Similitudes are the ancient church's fullest meditation on repentance and second chances.
Reading it word by word in the original Greek, you meet the plain, urgent voice of a Roman Christian of around 140 AD — and a book that begins with a startlingly human moment by a river.
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