Graphic Bible · Scene 2 of 3
Historical Library · Apostolic Fathers
Shepherd of Hermas — Similitude 6, section iii
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 56:2
Torments of This Life
The Explanation of the Punishing Shepherd · Shepherd of Hermas 56
Story guide: Hermas asks about the punishments, and the guide describes the source’s account of afflictions in this life.
Open this scene in the reader →2“I wished, Sir,” I said, “to know what these various punishments are.” He said, “Listen. The various punishments and torments are torments of this present life: for some are punished with losses, some with deprivations, some with various sicknesses, some with every kind of disorder; some are insulted by the unworthy, and suffer in many other ways. For many, being unsettled in their plans, undertake many things, and nothing at all advances for them. They say of themselves that they do not prosper in their undertakings, and it does not rise up into their heart that they have done evil, but they blame the Lord.
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