Graphic Bible · Scene 3 of 4

The elderly woman reads from her open book to Hermas.
AI-generated artwork interprets this work's literary visions and teaching, not authenticated historical events or portraits. Source and translation notes preserve the available edition's limits and review uncertainty. Reported literary vision

Historical Library · Apostolic Fathers
Shepherd of Hermas — Vision 1, section iii

The available POB edition is a partial translation, not a summary or the complete ancient work. Popular, not Scripture. Artwork interprets literary visions and teaching; it does not establish their portrayals as historical events.

Source and translation notes

The text names Hermas as its narrator. The illustrations do not identify a historical author or supply authenticated portraits.

Existing reader manuscript-image reference: Codex Sinaiticus. Working source: Lightfoot & Harmer 1891 (normalized OCR) · Greek

English witness: People's Open Bible provisional English rendering (Cartha Inc. and contributors) · CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ — for POB project outputs; source editions retain their original licenses

Numbered reading units are modern paragraph divisions, not ancient verse numbers. The available units follow Visions, Mandates, and Similitudes; absent passages are not reconstructed.

  • The available edition begins mid-dialogue and ends mid-sentence in Similitude 8.iv; absent passages are not supplied.
  • Reading paragraph 2 [a]: Repentance and related expressions are read in this works own context; they are not restricted to feeling sorry, and no uniform Godward formula is imposed. Use repentance for moral change while preserving the works own teaching about baptism, forgiveness, conduct and the angel of repentance; do not impose a different tradition on it.

Shepherd of Hermas 3:3

Words Too Great to Bear

Counsel for the Household and Words of Creation · Shepherd of Hermas 3

Story guide: The woman’s reading and Hermas’s overwhelmed reaction are separate frames; unspecified words are not supplied.

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3After she had stopped these words, she says to me, “Do you wish to hear me reading?” And I say, “I do, Lady.” She says to me, “Become a hearer, and hear the glories of God.” I heard great and wondrous things which I was not able to remember; for all the words were terrifying—things a human being is not able to bear. So I remembered the last words, for they were beneficial and gentle for us:

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