Graphic Bible · Scene 4 of 4

The harsh shepherd takes over sheep from the young shepherd.
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 scene

Historical Library · Apostolic Fathers
Shepherd of Hermas — Similitude 6, section ii

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 2 [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 55:4

The Thorny Place

The Harsh Shepherd and the Thorny Place · Shepherd of Hermas 55

Story guide: The harsh shepherd takes over the grazing sheep and drives them into a steep place of thorns and thistles.

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46. This shepherd, then, took over the sheep from the shepherd who was a young man—those that were living wastefully and self-indulgently, but not skipping—and he cast them into a certain steep, thorny place full of thistles, so that, because of the thorns and thistles, the sheep were unable to disentangle themselves, but [were entangled in the thorns and thistles; these, then,] being entangled, grazed among the thorns and thistles. They suffered greatly, being torn by him; he drove them here and there and gave them no rest, and those sheep were not at all steady.

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