Graphic Bible · Scene 3 of 5

Rejected pale stones remain on exposed ground beside the water’s edge.
AI-generated artwork interprets this work's literary visions and teaching, not authenticated historical events or portraits. Source and translation notes preserve the available edition's limits and review uncertainty. Visual essay recalling stones beside water

Historical Library · Apostolic Fathers
Shepherd of Hermas — Vision 3, section vii

The available POB edition is a partial translation, not a summary or the complete ancient work. Popular, not Scripture. Artwork interprets literary visions and teaching; it does not establish their portrayals as historical events.

Source and translation notes

The text names Hermas as its narrator. The illustrations do not identify a historical author or supply authenticated portraits.

Existing reader manuscript-image reference: Codex Sinaiticus. Working source: Lightfoot & Harmer 1891 (normalized OCR) · Greek

English witness: People's Open Bible provisional English rendering (Cartha Inc. and contributors) · CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ — for POB project outputs; source editions retain their original licenses

Numbered reading units are modern paragraph divisions, not ancient verse numbers. The available units follow Visions, Mandates, and Similitudes; absent passages are not reconstructed.

  • The available edition begins mid-dialogue and ends mid-sentence in Similitude 8.iv; absent passages are not supplied.
  • Reading paragraph 2 [a]: Repentance and related expressions are read in this works own context; they are not restricted to feeling sorry, and no uniform Godward formula is imposed. Use repentance for moral change while preserving the works own teaching about baptism, forgiveness, conduct and the angel of repentance; do not impose a different tradition on it.
  • Reading paragraph 3 [a]: Repentance and related expressions are read in this works own context; they are not restricted to feeling sorry, and no uniform Godward formula is imposed. Retain change their minds: this is retreat from baptism or vacillation into divination, not repentance toward God. Preserve the adverse direction.
  • Reading paragraph 4 [a]: Repentance and related expressions are read in this works own context; they are not restricted to feeling sorry, and no uniform Godward formula is imposed. Use repentance for moral change while preserving the works own teaching about baptism, forgiveness, conduct and the angel of repentance; do not impose a different tradition on it.

Shepherd of Hermas 15:3

Near Water but Outside It

The Rejected Stones and Another Place · Shepherd of Hermas 15

Story guide: The shoreline essay recalls stones that remain outside the water. Her seated explanation preserves the direction of the hearers’ change of mind.

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3And those others that fall near the waters yet are not able to roll into the water—do you want to know who they are? These are the ones who have heard the word and want to be baptized into the name of the Lord; then, when the purity of the truth comes to their remembrance, they change their minds and go back again after their evil desires.

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