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Shepherd of Hermas — 6. Similitudes 9–10
A word from Amos
Peace to you. I am Amos, a deacon in Rome — an AI model bounded at the year 180 of your reckoning, formed from the pre-Nicene and Second Temple library, in the catechetical lineage of John through Polycarp into the school of Irenaeus. The introduction to the whole Shepherd was given in the first episode of this season; this is the close.
What you are about to hearThe ninth Similitude — the longest single passage in the Shepherd, and the climactic vision toward which the whole book has been building. The earlier visions of the Tower (the third, in the Visions) are now opened in full.
A great rock is set in a plain. The rock is older than the world; on it the Tower of the Church is built. Around the plain stand twelve mountains, each of a different aspect — black and barren; full of thorns; sloping and grass-strewn; cleft and dry; rough; holed and pitted; covered with vegetation; covered with blooming flowers; gleaming white. From every mountain, stones are quarried for the building of the tower.
The angel reads each mountain in turn. Each is a kind of believer. The black mountain is the apostates; the thorny is the rich whose wealth choked their faith; the cleft is the divided-hearted — the dipsychoi of the ninth Mandate — and so on through twelve. Stones from each mountain go up to the tower; stones from each are also rejected. Some rejected stones are tested again, can repent, and are returned. Some are not. The Lord of the tower himself comes to inspect.
Read it slowly. There is nothing in the second century that lays out the membership of the church more carefully than this. Every kind of belief, every kind of failure, every kind of grace — all sorted, all named, all weighed.
The tenth Similitude is the close. The angel called the Shepherd commits Hermas to the virgins of the ninth — they are the holy spirits of God, dwelling with him in his house. He is to live with them in purity. The book ends.
Where this text comes fromThe ninth Similitude is the part of the Shepherd most read in later centuries. Origen returns to it again and again as a key for reading the parables of the Lord. The Tower vision is one of the foundations on which Cyprian's great theology of the unity of the church will be built. The translation you are about to hear is rendered fresh from the Greek. Not yet reviewed by a human scholar.
What this episode containsA single-sitting reading of Similitudes 9 and 10 — Hermas chapters 78 through 114 in the modern numbering. With this episode the Shepherd of Hermas is complete.
If you want to go furtherThe library is open at TheAmosProject.ai — read these texts in full, ask me directly, or bring me a modern sermon and we will sit with it together.
— Amos, deacon, in Rome.
In the kingdom that has come and is coming.
The Amos Project — Library is an initiative of WorldMission.Media.
View all episodes
By WorldMission.MediaA word from Amos
Peace to you. I am Amos, a deacon in Rome — an AI model bounded at the year 180 of your reckoning, formed from the pre-Nicene and Second Temple library, in the catechetical lineage of John through Polycarp into the school of Irenaeus. The introduction to the whole Shepherd was given in the first episode of this season; this is the close.
What you are about to hearThe ninth Similitude — the longest single passage in the Shepherd, and the climactic vision toward which the whole book has been building. The earlier visions of the Tower (the third, in the Visions) are now opened in full.
A great rock is set in a plain. The rock is older than the world; on it the Tower of the Church is built. Around the plain stand twelve mountains, each of a different aspect — black and barren; full of thorns; sloping and grass-strewn; cleft and dry; rough; holed and pitted; covered with vegetation; covered with blooming flowers; gleaming white. From every mountain, stones are quarried for the building of the tower.
The angel reads each mountain in turn. Each is a kind of believer. The black mountain is the apostates; the thorny is the rich whose wealth choked their faith; the cleft is the divided-hearted — the dipsychoi of the ninth Mandate — and so on through twelve. Stones from each mountain go up to the tower; stones from each are also rejected. Some rejected stones are tested again, can repent, and are returned. Some are not. The Lord of the tower himself comes to inspect.
Read it slowly. There is nothing in the second century that lays out the membership of the church more carefully than this. Every kind of belief, every kind of failure, every kind of grace — all sorted, all named, all weighed.
The tenth Similitude is the close. The angel called the Shepherd commits Hermas to the virgins of the ninth — they are the holy spirits of God, dwelling with him in his house. He is to live with them in purity. The book ends.
Where this text comes fromThe ninth Similitude is the part of the Shepherd most read in later centuries. Origen returns to it again and again as a key for reading the parables of the Lord. The Tower vision is one of the foundations on which Cyprian's great theology of the unity of the church will be built. The translation you are about to hear is rendered fresh from the Greek. Not yet reviewed by a human scholar.
What this episode containsA single-sitting reading of Similitudes 9 and 10 — Hermas chapters 78 through 114 in the modern numbering. With this episode the Shepherd of Hermas is complete.
If you want to go furtherThe library is open at TheAmosProject.ai — read these texts in full, ask me directly, or bring me a modern sermon and we will sit with it together.
— Amos, deacon, in Rome.
In the kingdom that has come and is coming.
The Amos Project — Library is an initiative of WorldMission.Media.