Graphic Bible · Scene 9 of 10

Hermas comes close as the beast begins lowering its huge body toward the ground.
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 literary vision

Historical Library · Apostolic Fathers
Shepherd of Hermas — Vision 4, section i

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 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. 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 22:9

He Passes the Motionless Beast

The Beast beside the Road · Shepherd of Hermas 22

Story guide: As Hermas comes near, the beast stretches out on the ground, thrusts out its tongue and remains still until he has passed.

Open this scene in the reader →

9I came near it, and that huge sea monster stretched itself out on the ground and did nothing except thrust out its tongue; it did not move at all until I had passed by it.

Step through the story beside the Scripture itself. About the People’s Open Bible