Hermas

Who is Hermas?

Hermas was a well-to-do freedman who lived in Ancient Rome. He was a brother of Pius, Bishop of Rome about the middle of the 2nd century, and Hermas was an earnest Christian. Some later writers confuse him with the Hermas mentioned in Romans xvi, 14. Hermas the freedman was the character and, by some estimations, the author of the work titled The Shepherd of Hermas, which, in the early Church, was often classed among the "Scriptures," i.e., among what we call the canonical books of the New Testament.

These three are the Muratorian fragment, the Liberian catalogue of popes, in a portion which dates from 235, the poem of Pseudo-Tertullian against Marcion, of the 3rd or 4th century.

"Pastorem uero nuperrime temporibus nostris in urbe Roma Herma conscripsit, sedente cathedra urbis Romae ecclesiae Pio episcopo fratre ejus. Et ideo legi eum quidem oportet, se publicare uero in ecclesia populo neque inter prophetas completos numero, neque inter apostolos in fine temporum, potest" - "And very recently, in our own times, in the city of Rome, Herma wrote the Pastor, when his brother Pius, the bishop, sat upon the chair of the Church of the city of Rome.