Graphic Bible · Scene 5 of 6

The shepherd gives the broader warning about persistent wrongdoing, without an invented idol or worship scene.
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 29:5

The Broader Warning

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

Story guide: The teaching addresses making images as the nations do and warns against sharing persistent wrongdoing, while allowing for repentance.

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5“Not only,” he says, “is it adultery if someone defiles his flesh, but whoever makes images as the nations do is committing adultery. Therefore, even in such works, if someone persists and does not repent, keep away from him and do not live together with him; otherwise you too are a sharer in his sin. For this reason it was commanded you to remain by yourselves, whether man or woman, for in cases like these there can be repentance.

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