Chapter 1 The Possibility of Encounter with the Pauline Legacy

1 Introduction

The Shepherd of Hermas is widely considered in modern scholarship to be of little to no value for assessing the influence, reception, or authority of the Pauline letters.1 Paul and Paulinism, so it would seem, hardly mattered to Hermas or possibly even passed him by completely.2 This book challenges that enduring and, I think, mistaken scholarly view at length. I argue that the Shepherd actually reveals extensive and significant engagement with material that was ultimately collected in the corpus Paulinum. In crafting his composite text, Hermas adopted, adapted, and synthesized Pauline literary traditions to his own ends. By preserving, expanding, and sometimes even contesting these traditions, Hermas implicitly contributed to the ongoing development of the apostle’s legacy, even though he never names Paul or formally cites a Pauline text. Consequently, the composition of Hermas’s tripartite work at Rome over

1 My analysis of secondary literature on pp. 58–87 in Chapter 2 establishes this claim fully, but here I need to only cite two books on the early development of the Pauline legacy published in the last decade or so, both of which overlooked the witness of the Shepherd in their respec- tive treatments of Pauline material in the writings of selected Apostolic Fathers: James W. Aageson, Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Early Church, LPS (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008); and Michael F. Bird and Joseph R. Dodson, eds., Paul and the Second Century, LNTS 412 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2011). The former’s treatment of “Paul and the Apostolic Fathers” in chapter five (pp. 123–56) engages the writings of the material by or attributed to Ignatius, Polycarp, and Clement, but not Hermas. Likewise, Bird and Dodson’s edited volume includes contributions on Paul and the following authors/texts: Ignatius (ch. 2), the Life and Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians (ch. 3), and the Epistle to Diognetus (ch. 4). Yet nowhere is the Shepherd mentioned. 2 Two significant exceptions, one of them recent, stand apart from this minimalist scholarly position. This first is Joseph Verheyden, “The Shepherd of Hermas and the Writings That Later Formed the New Testament,” in The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Andrew F. Gregory and Christopher M. Tuckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 322–29. The second is Clayton N. Jefford, “Missing Pauline Tradition in the Apostolic Fathers? Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, Papias, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, and the Epistle to Diognetus,” in The Apostolic Fathers and Paul, ed. Todd D. Still and David E. Wilhite, PPSD 2 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 41–60, esp. 49–52, 59. See the relevant discussion on pp. 82–85 in Chapter 2.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402584_002 2 Chapter 1 the course of the first few decades of the second century (ca. 100–40 CE) should be read as an extended episode in the apostle’s history of effects.3 Likewise, Hermas himself should be considered a Pauline interpreter. If my thesis is con- vincing, it opens a new avenue for investigating the histories of Paulinism and early Christian apocalyptic literature.4 This study explores where, how, and to what ends Hermas employs and otherwise interacts with material attested in what becomes the Pauline epis- tolary corpus. I define Hermas’s potential assemblage of letters to include Paul’s seven undisputed ones (Rom, 1–2 Cor, Gal, Phil, 1 Thess, Phlm), the three deutero-Paulines (Eph, Col, 2 Thess), the Pastoral Epistles (1–2 Tim, Tit), and Hebrews. This decision has both historical and theoretical warrant: my list mirrors the presumed contents of 픓46 (P.Beatty 2 + P.Mich. inv. 6238).5 That

3 The compositional history and attendant dating of the Shepherd will be explored more fully on pp. 10–20 below. For a brief survey of scholarly dating proposals, see Mark Grundeken, Community Building in the Shepherd of Hermas: A Critical Study of Some Key Aspects, VCSup 131 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 2–9. After describing how these range from 60 to 160 CE (2 n. 7), Grundeken ultimately concludes that the text “was probably written somewhere between the end of the first and the middle of the second century” (9). More specifically, Alexander Weiss has offered what to my knowledge is a novel argument for 110 CE as the terminus post quem for the composition of the Shepherd. He linked the reference to Christians being inves- tigated by authorities employing torture in Sim. 9.28.4 [105.4] with Pliny’s famous epistolary communication with Emperor Trajan on the same topic, arguing that the former post-dates the latter (“Hermas’ ‘Biography’: Social Upward and Downward Mobility of an Independent Freedman,” AncSoc 39 [2009]: 188–89). The lower bound of the dating range recently sug- gested by Chris L. de Wet, The Unbound God: Slavery and the Formation of Early Christian Thought, RSECW (New York: Routledge, 2018), 80 coheres with this suggestion. 4 Over the past decade, scholarship has become increasingly attuned to connections between Pauline literature and early Jewish and Christian apocalyptic. See, among others, Rita Müller- Fieberg, “Paulusrezeption in der Johannesoffenbarung? Auf der Suche nach dem Erbe des Apostels im letzten Buch des biblischen Kanons,” NTS 55 (2009): 83–103; J. P. Davies, Paul Among the Apocalypses? An Evaluation of the “Apocalyptic Paul” in the Context of Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Literature, LNTS 562 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016); Klaus Berger, Die Apokalypse des Johannes: Kommentar, 2 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 2017), 1:94–100; and Martin Karrer, Johannesoffenbarung, EKKNT 24 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 65, 70. 5 Ten leaves of 픓46 in the Chester Beatty collection were published by Frederic G. Kenyon, ed., The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri: Descriptions and Texts of Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible Fasc. III: Pauline Epistles and Revelation: Text (London: Emery Walker, 1934). An additional thirty leaves at Michigan were published by Henry A. Sanders, ed., A Third- Century Papyrus Codex of the Epistles of Paul, UMSHS 38 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1935). Sanders’ 1935 edition of the Michigan leaves was republished together with an edition of the remaining leaves of 픓46 by Frederic G. Kenyon, ed., The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri: Descriptions and Texts of Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible Fasc. III Supplement: Pauline Epistles: Text (London: Emery Walker, 1936); and Supplement: Pauline Epistles: Plates (London: Emery Walker, 1937). Although the surviving leaves of 픓46 do not