Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.15.4 (92.4)

Greek text · Lake, LCL 25:260

Οἱ λίθοι δέ, φημί, κύριε, οἱ ἐκ τοῦ βυθοῦ ἡρμοσμένοι εἰς τὴν οἰκοδομὴν τίνες εἰσίν; Οἱ μὲν πρῶτοι, φησίν, οἱ ι οἱ εἰς τὰ θεμέλια τεθειμένοι, πρώτη γενεά· οἱ δὲ κε δευτέρα γενεὰ ἀνδρῶν δικαίων· οἱ δὲ λε προφῆται τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ διάκονοι αὐτοῦ· οἱ δὲ μ ἀπόστολοι καὶ διδάσκαλοι τοῦ κηρύγματος τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ.

English · Claude translation

“And the stones, sir,” I said, “that were fitted into the building from the deep, who are they?” “The first,” he said, “the ten placed in the foundations, are the first generation; the twenty-five the second generation of righteous men; the thirty-five the prophets of God and his ministers; and the forty the apostles and teachers of the preaching of the Son of God.”

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 25:260 · 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

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.

Notes

Translation notes

“Twenty-five”: in 9.4.3 the second course was said to be twenty stones; the text is inconsistent.
“Ministers” (διάκονοι): here servants of God in general, not the church office.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (digitization slip: a Greek numeral (κε, 25) printed with an accent): οἱ δὲ κέ δευτέρα → οἱ δὲ κε δευτέρα.

Cite this passage

Herm. Sim. 9.15.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/9/15/4/).

Plain text

Herm. Sim. 9.15.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/9/15/4/).