Date of Award

1-1-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

Joint Ph.D. Program in Study of Religion

First Advisor

Gregory A. Robbins, Ph.D.

Keywords

Athanasius of Alexandria, Biblical canon, Christian origins, Early christianity, New Testament, Shepherd of Hermas

Abstract

With its roots in the first century CE and claims to special revelation from various apparitions, the Shepherd of Hermas portended an alternative Christian trajectory to the prevailing Christocentrism. But some in the second, third, and fourth centuries also deemed it compatible with the synoptic Johannine-Pauline metanarrative for Christianity, such that prominent bishops Victorinus, Eusebius, and Athanasius labored to depict it outside the scriptures of the New Testament. While their data and other early patristic writings presage the Shepherd's frequent appearance among scholarship on the biblical canon, this often manifests as little more than a curiosity, absent a proper context for the book's popularity and subsequent omission from the canon.

In the first study of such length on the extracanonicity of the Shepherd, this dissertation contextualizes Hermas's book as interested not merely in the limits of repentance for grave postbaptismal sins. Hermas also prophetically propounded an alternative aretological scheme of Christian salvation - one in which the Son of God was primarily a virtuous exponent, rather than a savior. Still, certain Christians received the book as scripture, and a critical reevaluation of patristic reception reveals that occasional elite, localized, and idiosyncratic judgments against the Shepherd failed to hamper its wider approbation, particularly in Egypt, until the irruptive intervention of Athanasius.

Athanasius's 39th Festal Letter (367 CE) has long been acknowledged for its milestone New Testament, but this investigation expands the traditional focus on Athanasius from canon list to canonical designs. The Alexandrian bishop's eventual imposition of scriptural boundaries was forged deep into a divisive career struggling against alternative doctrines, forms of authority, and modes of Christian piety. Crucially, this dissertation argues that Athanasius wielded four constrictive forces under evolution since the second century - heresiology, Christology, openness to prophetic authority, and ecclesiastical organization - to isolate the Shepherd of Hermas as an incompatible and unwelcome source for Christian doctrine and unity. This focus on the ecclesiastical-political dimension of the canon, an instrument declared by fiat and accepted over time by an episcopal "gentlemen's handshake," heralds new potential for future canon research not offered by the dead ends of the so-called canonical "criteria."

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Robert Donald Heaton

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

450 p.

Discipline

Biblical studies, Religious history, Ancient languages

Download



Share

COinS