The Shepherd of Hermas

The Shepherd of Hermas is a wild ride. I enjoy watching students try to figure out how to interpret the text when I have assigned it over the years. Its relative neglect in 21st-century scholarship is about to change next month with the publication of The Shepherd of Hermas: A Literary, Historical, and Theological Handbook by Jonathon Lookadoo (T&T Clark, April 2021), 312pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Jonathon Lookadoo guides readers through the early Christian apocalypse known as the Shepherd of Hermas, providing a clear overview of the numerous literary, historical, and theological insights that this text contains for those researching early Christianity.

Dividing his exploration into two sections, Lookadoo first introduces the Shepherd by providing an overview of the text to those with limited familiarity, while also focusing on critical issues such as authorship, date, and the Shepherd's complex manuscript tradition and reception history. He then moves to examine the interpretation of particular passages in detail, and by close exploration of theological and literary features he is able to contextualize the Shepherd alongside contemporary contexts. This volume covers the important thematic issues in the Shepherd, and also provides a fresh perspective that arises from a thoroughly textual focus; in so doing, Lookadoo enables readers to engage both with the Shepherd itself and the scholarship that surrounds the text.