Graphic Bible · Scene 2 of 4

Illustrative comparison: an unnamed adult sits grieving quietly beside an empty table in a modest ancient courtyard.
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. Illustrative parable

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

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 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 21:2

Joy at a Good Message

The Third Form and Firm Foundation · Shepherd of Hermas 21

Story guide: The comparison describes a grieving person strengthened and renewed by joy on hearing good news. Its message is not further identified.

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2For just as when some good message comes to someone who is grieving, he immediately forgets his former sorrows and welcomes nothing else except the message that he heard, and from then on he is strengthened for what is good, and his spirit is renewed because of the joy that he received, so also you have received a renewal of your spirits by seeing these good things.

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