Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

WHEN, in a recent book,1 I was treating of the Early Church document The Shepherd of Hermas, in connection with the ancient and mysterious Book of Mxai, which, according to Epiphanius, circulated among the Essenes, Nazorenes, Ebionites, and Sampsseans, I wrote as follows :

" It is also of very great interest to notice the many intimate points of contact between the contents of the Apocalyptic Hermas and the teaching of the Early 1 Shepherd of Men ' tractate of the mystic school who looked to Hermes the Thrice-Greatest as their inspirer, that is to say, the earliest deposit of the Trismegistic literature. But that is another story which has not yet been told."

At the same time, all unknown to me, Reitzenstein must have written, or have been writing, his learned pages on " Hermas and Poimandres," coming to practically the same conclusion as I had in cruder form expressed several years earlier, when commenting on Hilgers' theory 2 that the " Shepherd of Men " was

1 Did Jesus Live 100 B.C. ? — An Enquiry into the Talmud Jesus Stories, the Toldoth Jeschu, and Some Curious Statements of Epiphanius (London, 1903), pp. 365 ff.

2 See Hilgers (J.), De Hermetis Trismegisti Poimandro Comnientatio (Bonn, 1855).

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written in opposition to the "Shepherd of Hermas," and suggesting that if there were any dependence of one on the other, it was in exactly the reverse sense to that of Hilger's assumption.1

THE HIGHER CRITICISM OF " THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS "

Like all the other extant extra-canonical documents of the Early Church, and especially the Antilegomena, as Eusebius calls them, that is to say books disputed in his day but earlier admitted by wide circles into the canon, The Shepherd of Hermas has been submitted to the most searching analysis by modern criticism. Though its unity is still strenuously defended by some scholars, the majority are convinced of its composite nature ; and I follow Hilgenfeld,2 who detects in the present form of this document three elements, or, so to say, three deposits : (i.) The Apocalyptic — Viss. i.-iv. ; (ii.) The Pastoral — Vis. v.-Sim. vii. ; (iii.) The Secondary, or appendix of the latest redactor — Simm. viii.-x. " Hermas i." and " Hermas ii." cite nothing from any of the canonical books of the New Testament, and this should be, for most scholars, a striking indication of their early date.

THE INTRODUCTION OF THE "PASTORAL HERMAS"

" Hermas ii.," the " Pastoral Hermas," begins as follows : 3

1. " Now when I had prayed in my house, and sat me

1 See The Theosophical Review, xxiv. 302, 303 (June 1899).

1 Hilgenfeld (A.), Hernia Pastor (2nd ed. : Leipzig, 1881).

3 *AiroKaA.t»iJ<is e, — the fifth revelation or vision of our composite document, which for all we know may have stood first in some earlier " source."

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down upon my couch, there entered a man of glorious appearance, in the guise of a Shepherd, clad in a white skin,1 with a wallet on his shoulders, and a staff in his hand. And he embraced me, and I embraced him.2

2. " And straightway he sat down by my side. He saith to me : I am sent by the most Sovereign Angel, that I may dwell with thee for the rest of the days of thy life.

3. "I thought that he had come to tempt me ; 3 and I say unto him : Who art thou ? For I do know (say I) into whose charge I have been given. He saith to me : Dost thou not know ? Nay — answer I. I am (saith he) the Shepherd 4 into whose charge thou hast been given.

4. " E'en as he spoke, his aspect changed, and I knew him, that it was he to whom I had been given in charge."

COMPARISON WITH OUR " PCEMANDRES "

If we now compare the Greek text of this interesting passage with that of the introductory paragraphs of the " Poemandres," it will be found impossible to refer their striking similarities merely to a common type of expression; the verbal agreements are too precise, and

1 Presumably a sheep's skin of white wool.