For the first three centuries of Christian history, *The Shepherd of Hermas* was very nearly a part of the New Testament. Irenaeus quoted it as Scripture. Clement of Alexandria treated it as divinely inspired. The Codex Sinaiticus bound it with the canonical Gospels and Epistles. After the late fourth century the Church gradually distinguished it from the canon, but continued to read it as a deeply respected work of early Christian devotion. Hermas, a freedman of Rome in the second century, received a series of revelations from an elderly woman who turned out to be the personified Church, and then from a young man dressed as a shepherd who was an angel of repentance. From these visitors he received the Five Visions, Twelve Commandments, and Ten Similitudes that make up the book. Its central question — whether sins committed after baptism can be forgiven — gave the early Church a way to remain serious without becoming inhuman. This edition reproduces the complete Roberts–Donaldson–Crombie English translation from the *Ante-Nicene Christian Library* (1870), the standard scholarly English text for more than a century. All twenty-seven major divisions and their internal chapters are preserved, with a short editor's preface placing the book in its historical context.
