Robert D. Heaton

The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata (eBook, ePUB)

From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Composed within the first Christian century by a Roman named Hermas, the Shepherd remains a mysterious and underestimated book to scholars and laypeople alike. Robert D. Heaton argues that early Christians mainly received the Shepherd positively and accepted it unproblematically alongside texts that would ultimately be canonized, requiring decisive actions to exclude it from the late-emerging collection of texts now known as the New Testament. Freshly evaluating the evidence for its popularity in patristic treatises, manuscript recoveries, and Christian material culture, Heaton propounds an interpretation of the Shepherd of Hermas as a book meant to guide his readers toward salvation. Ultimately, Heaton depicts the loss of the Shepherd from the closed catalogue of Christian scriptures as a deliberate constrictive move by the fourth-century Alexandrian bishop Athanasius, who found it useless for his political, theological, and ecclesiological objectives and instead characterized it as a book favored by his heretical enemies. While the book's detractors succeeded in derailing its diffusion for centuries, the survival of the Shepherd today attests that many dissented from the church's final judgment about Hermas's text, which portends a version of early Christianity that was definitively overridden by devotion to Christ himself, rather than principally to his virtues.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 404
• Erscheinungstermin: 24. April 2023
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781666921878
• Artikelnr.: 67806932

Autorenporträt

Robert D. Heaton teaches New Testament, Christian Origins, and Early Christianity at Anderson University in Indiana.

Inhaltsangabe

List of Tables and Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note About Style
Introduction: Seeking the Lost Shepherd
Part I - Rise of the Shepherd: A Scripture and its Readers
Chapter One: The Shepherd of Hermas: Text, Context, and Interpretation
Chapter Two: Initial Christian Approval of the Shepherd: Known Figures and
Anonymous Sources
Chapter Three: The Contested Usefulness of the Shepherd in the Third and
Fourth Centuries
Chapter Four: Passing the Test? The Shepherd, Canonical "Criteria," and
Rationales for Exclusion
Part II - Fall of the Shepherd: A Canon and its Discontents
Chapter Five: Constrictive Trends Forging Fourth-Century Christianity
Chapter Six: Athanasius of Alexandria and the Four Constrictive Trends: His
Novel "Rule of Scripture" and Hermas's Scriptura Non Grata
Conclusion: Eight Primary Contributions of the Foregoing Study
Bibliography
Index
About the Author