Graphic Bible · Scene 1 of 3

Hermas sleeps with his head on folded arms.
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 sleep revelation

Historical Library · Apostolic Fathers
Shepherd of Hermas — Vision 2, section iv

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.

Shepherd of Hermas 8:1

Who Is the Old Woman?

The Church Revealed and the Writing Entrusted · Shepherd of Hermas 8

Story guide: Sleep revelation: dialogue images follow the young man’s identity and age questions. The elderly Church against land and water is a visual essay on his explanation, without depicting an act of creation.

Open this scene in the reader →

1And it was revealed to me, brothers, while I was asleep, by a very handsome young man who said to me: “The old woman, from whom you received the little book—who do you think she is?” I said, “The Sibyl.” “You are mistaken,” he says; “she is not.” “Then who is she?” I say. “The Church,” he says. I said to him, “Why then is she old?” “Because,” he says, “she was created first of all; for this reason she is old, and for her sake the world was formed.”

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