The Shepherd of Hermas, hereafter simply referred to as The Shepherd, is a long document that was highly prized in the early church. It gives an account of the visions and dreams that were experienced by the main character, Hermas. This gives the impression to the general reader that the text is of the genre of an apocalypse1. While Hermas 'sees' angelic figures and the visions are explained by a spiritual guide, it lacks the visions of heaven that is central to other apocalypse literature, and also, end-of-the-world catastrophic occurrences. Consequently, The Shepherd cannot be considered as apocalyptic, or even pseudo-apocalyptic. The genre of The Shepherd will be considered in a later chapter of this thesis. A description of the narrative structure is given later in this introduction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:583918 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Baker, David Ian |
| Publisher | Cardiff University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://orca.cf.ac.uk/56076/ |
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