Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.4.1 (12.1)

Greek text · Lake, LCL 25:34–36

Ἀποκριθεὶς λέγω αὐτῇ· Κυρία, μεγάλως καὶ θαυμαστῶς ἔχει τὸ πρᾶγμα τοῦτο· οἱ δὲ νεανίσκοι οἱ ἓξ οἱ οἰκοδομοῦντες, τίνες εἰσίν, κυρία; Οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ ἅγιοι ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ οἱ πρῶτοι κτισθέντες, οἷς παρέδωκεν ὁ κύριος πᾶσαν τὴν κτίσιν αὐτοῦ αὔξειν καὶ οἰκοδομεῖν καὶ δεσπόζειν τῆς κτίσεως πάσης· διὰ τούτων οὖν τελεσθήσεται ἡ οἰκοδομὴ τοῦ πύργου.

English · Claude translation

I answered her, “Lady, this thing is great and marvelous. But the six young men who are building, who are they, lady?” “These are the holy angels of God who were created first, to whom the Lord handed over all his creation to increase and build up and rule over all creation. Through them, then, the building of the tower will be completed.”

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 25:34–36 · Kirsopp Lake, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, LCL 25 (London: Heinemann; New York: Macmillan, 1913), 6–71 · 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); 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)

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (punctuation slip in the digital text): τίνες εἰσίν. κυρία; → τίνες εἰσίν, κυρία;.

Cite this passage

Herm. Vis. 3.4.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-vis/3/4/1/).

Plain text

Herm. Vis. 3.4.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-vis/3/4/1/).