Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.16.5 (93.5)

Greek text · Lake, LCL 25:262

Διατί, φημί, κύριε, καὶ οἱ μ λίθοι μετʼ αὐτῶν ἀνέβησαν ἐκ τοῦ βυθοῦ, ἤδη ἐσχηκότες τὴν σφραγῖδα; Ὅτι, φησίν, οὗτοι οἱ ἀπόστολοι καὶ οἱ διδάσκαλοι οἱ κηρύξαντες τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ, κοιμηθέντες ἐν δυνάμει καὶ πίστει τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκήρυξαν καὶ τοῖς προκεκοιμημένοις καὶ αὐτοὶ ἔδωκαν αὐτοῖς τὴν σφραγῖδα τοῦ κηρύγματος.

English · Claude translation

“Why, sir,” I said, “did the forty stones also come up with them from the deep, when they already had the seal?” “Because,” he said, “these apostles and teachers who preached the name of the Son of God, having fallen asleep in the power and faith of the Son of God, preached also to those who had fallen asleep before, and they themselves gave them the seal of the preaching.

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 25:262 · Kirsopp Lake, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, LCL 25 (London: Heinemann; New York: Macmillan, 1913), 138–305 · Greek text: K. Lake, The Apostolic Fathers (LCL, 1912-1913), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library and published by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Lake, LCL 25. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-26 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Lake (LCL 25, 1913), and from the ancient Latin version where Lake prints it because the Greek is lost (from Sim. 9.30.3); made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2 (1885) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)

Scripture

1 Pet 3:19 · allusion, medium confidence
1 Pet 4:6 · allusion, medium confidence

Topics

Baptism, Eschatology

Notes

Translation notes

Hermas teaches that the apostles and teachers, after their own deaths, preached to and baptized the righteous who had died before Christ. Compare 1 Pet 3:19; 4:6, and the later tradition of Christ's descent to the dead.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (digitization slip against Lake's printed text (dropped letter)): τὴν σφαγῖδα → τὴν σφραγῖδα.

Cite this passage

Herm. Sim. 9.16.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/9/16/5/).

Plain text

Herm. Sim. 9.16.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/9/16/5/).