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From "Most Useful Book" To Scriptura Non Grata: Canon, Ecclesiastical Constrictiveness, And The Loss Of The Shepherd Of Hermas In Early Christianity, Robert Donald Heaton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With its roots in the first century CE and claims to special revelation from various apparitions, the Shepherd of Hermas portended an alternative Christian trajectory to the prevailing Christocentrism. But some in the second, third, and fourth centuries also deemed it compatible with the synoptic Johannine-Pauline metanarrative for Christianity, such that prominent bishops Victorinus, Eusebius, and Athanasius labored to depict it outside the scriptures of the New Testament. While their data and other early patristic writings presage the Shepherd's frequent appearance among scholarship on the biblical canon, this often manifests as little more than a curiosity, absent a proper …