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

4 Erman (Agypten, 515) refers to an inscription from Sakkara, in which a mystical shepherd saya to his flock : " Your Shepherd is in the West with the fishes," — an interesting conjunction of ideas for students of archaic Christian symbolism. The idea is also Babylonian, the Star-flocks of the Gods being fed beyond the Ocean in the West.

5 Compare the dress of the Essenes, and the account of the sending forth of the disciples, Matt. x. 9 = Mark vi. 8 = Luke ix. 3. The direct contradiction of the account in Mark to the statements in Matthew and Luke, makes it exceedingly probable that not only the one robe, and staff, but also the wallet, were the typical signs of those who went forth to " raise the dead."

6 He is clad in the irtpifana, the working dress (or apron),

THE NAME "HERMAS"

But to return to Hermas. Why " Hermas " of all names in the world in this connection? We have a large literature in which " Hermes " plays the part of seer, and prophet, and revealer, and writer of sacred scriptures ; in it, moreover, he figures as the beloved disciple of the Heavenly Mind, the Shepherd of Men. But what have we in Christian tradition to explain the name " Hermas " ? Nothing, absolutely nothing, but contradictory hypotheses which try to discover a historic Hermas so as to authenticate the provenance of what is manifestly, like nearly every similar document of the time, pseudepigraphic. In my opinion, indeed, the very name Hermas betrays more clearly than anything else the " Hermes " source of the Christian writer's setting of part of his most interesting apocalyptic. " Hermas " is because of " Hermes," rather than " Hermes " in answer to "Hermas," as Hilgers would have it.

AN EARLY FORM OF THE "PCEMANDRES"

This, however, does not mean to say that " Hermas " took the setting of the introduction of his Pastoral apocalypses from precisely the same text of the " Poemandres " which now lies before us, for our present text is manifestly the redaction of an earlier form ; so that if we could recover the other form we should in all probability find some additional verbal agreement of " Hermas " with " Hermes."

in which men were said to work "naked" (nudus, yvfavis) — that is, clad in one robe. See also note on the sentence : " And naked I sought the Naked," in treating of the Gymnosophists (or Naked Philosophers), in my Apollonius of Tyana (London, 1901), p. 100.

" HERMAS " AND " HERMES " 375

That the ideas of the " Poemandres " treatise were the mystical and philosophical side of much that appears in the popular cult of the time, may be seen by an inspection of the prayers from the Magic Papyri which we have translated.1 In them the Mind, as the Shepherd of Men, and the Revealer of the Light, is clearly set forth. Keitzenstein's view (p. 32), accordingly, is that the Christian writer must have taken his description of the Shepherd from what originally was a fuller text of the " Poemandres " than the one preserved to us, and that this will account for several features which would otherwise be peculiar to " Hennas." This text was in closer verbal agreement with the general language of the popular Hermes religion as preserved to us in the Hermes-Prayers.2

THE HOLY MOUNT

But the direct points of contact between " Hermas " and the Trismegistic literature are not confined to the " Poemandres " document. As the original writer of " Hermas " was dependent on " Hermes " for the setting of the introduction to his Pastoral apocalypses, so also it is highly probable that the redactor was influenced by a lost treatise referred to in the introduction of " The Sacred Sermon on the Mountain," 0. H., xiii. (xiv.).