Graphic Bible · Scene 1 of 2

The young man explains the first form to seated Hermas in the modest moonlit room.
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. Reported night vision

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

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.

Shepherd of Hermas 19:1

Why the First Form Was Aged

The First Form and the Chair · Shepherd of Hermas 19

Story guide: The young man connects the aged first appearance with weakened spirits, divided minds, anxieties and sorrows. The remembered form and teaching illustrations are disclosed.

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1“Listen,” he says, “about the three forms you are inquiring about. In the first vision, why did she appear to you as an old woman and seated on a chair? Because your spirit is old and already withered and has no strength because of your weaknesses and your double‑mindedness. For just as the aged, no longer having hope of being renewed, expect nothing else but their sleep, so also you, having been weakened by the affairs of life, have handed yourselves over to negligence, and you did not cast your anxieties upon the Lord; instead your mind has been shattered, and you have grown old in your sorrows.”

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