Lookadoo is to be commended for this organized look at the Shepherd of Hermas. Particularly for those unfamiliar with this writing, the section-by-section overview provided by chapter one will be useful for quickly coming to terms with the whole of the writing.

The Shepherd of Hermas is usually described as one of the more popular writings of early Christianity because of the large number of extant textual witnesses known today. Evidence of its inclusion alongside the New Testament in the Codex Sinaiticus, the frequency with which papyrus scraps with its contents have been rediscovered, the complete editions known in Latin and Ethiopic, and favorable mention in several writings of early Christians — these factors and more convince modern readers that the story of Hermas was commonly known and appreciated in the ancient world.

However, the story of Hermas told in the Shepherd of Hermas is long and complicated. And we really don’t have a complete version of the writing available in the language it was composed in, Greek. Our most complete manuscript, the Codex Athos, is missing the last leaf and thus the last seven chapters or so (out of 114 chapters total), outside of any snippets known from papyri finds (which aren’t much).

So the Shepherd of Hermas is a bit of a paradox: Supposedly well known and well regarded in antiquity, but confusing (and sometimes, I must confess, boring and frustrating) to modern readers. The story is so long and in some points complex that it is difficult to get one’s head around.

It is into this situation that Jonathon Lookadoo’s The Shepherd of Hermas: A Literary, Historical, and Theological Handbook enters. Importantly, it is a Handbook, not an introduction or even a study on select aspects of the writing. His handbook is specifically designed to help the new (or even moderately seasoned) reader of the Shepherd to come to grips with the whole of the text.

Lookadoo’s Handbook is structured in two parts. The first part, “Introducing the Shepherd of Hermas,” is structured as an introduction to the Shepherd and comes in four chapters. The second part, “Studying the Shepherd of Hermas,” is a series of exegetical, literary, historical, and theological studies that delve into issues that arise within the Shepherd. These eight chapters explore specific areas of the text and specific issues within the text and provide a basis for further examination and study.

The first chapter is “An Overview of the Shepherd.” It is, quite literally, a vision-by-vision, mandate-by-mandate, similitude-by-similitude overview and summary of the entire work. For readers unfamiliar with the structure of the Shepherd, it begins as a series of visions received by Hermas that involve an elder woman; these shift to a series of commandments or mandates received from the “Shepherd,” an angel. The mandates, then, shift to a series of parables or similitudes, one of which (similitude nine) covers 32 chapters, or over 25% of the content of the entire work. Lookadoo ably summarizes each individual vision, mandate/commandment, and similitude/parable in 18 pages, providing a digested form that helps the reader to keep the major themes and progression of this long and windy text in mind. In other words, Lookadoo’s summaries help the reader get their head around the whole of the text.

Chapter two, “How Was the Shepherd Preserved?,” treats standard introductory questions involving the textual history and evidence of the Shepherd. Lookadoo identifies and describes the Greek sources, from the largest (Athos) to the smallest of fragments housed in the Oxyrhynchus and other papyrus collections. He details the major translations and their import, discussing the differences between the two major strains of Latin edition, the usefulness of the Ethiopic edition, and the idiosyncrasies of the Coptic editions with their apparent lack of witness to Visions 1-4. Then Lookadoo discusses the editions published, focusing on the major editions of the past 60 years.

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