Graphic Bible · Scene 4 of 6

The shepherd explains the distinction between ignorance and knowingly living with persistent wrongdoing.
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 teaching

Historical Library · Apostolic Fathers
Shepherd of Hermas — Mandate 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 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.
  • Reading paragraph 5 [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 29:4

Separation, Repentance, and Reception

Chastity, Repentance, and Receiving the One Who Returns · Shepherd of Hermas 29

Story guide: The reply discusses knowledge, separation, remaining unmarried and receiving the one who repents, stating that the rule applies to woman and man.

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4“As long as he is ignorant,” he says, “he does not sin; but if the husband comes to know her sin, and the wife does not repent but persists in her fornication, and the husband lives together with her, he becomes guilty of her sin and a sharer in her adultery. "What then, sir," I say, "should the husband do, if the wife persists in this passion?" "Let him divorce her," he says, "and let the husband remain by himself; but if, after divorcing his wife, he marries another, he himself also commits adultery." "If then, sir," I say, "after the wife is divorced, she repents and wishes to return to her own husband, will she not be received?" "Indeed," he says, "if the husband does not receive her, he sins and brings a great sin upon himself; rather, the one who has sinned and is repenting must be received—but not repeatedly—for to the servants of God repentance is one. Because of repentance, then, the man ought not to marry. This rule is laid upon both woman and man.

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