ABSTRACT
The Apostolic Fathers reflect a variety of steps along the way. 1 and 2 Clement draw widely on the Hebrew Scriptures and presume their validity for interpretation of the present Christian situation. 1 Clement may be the best known of the Apostolic Fathers today. It was included with the New Testament in the fourth-century Codex Alexandrinus. Church historians from Eusebius on have interpreted this charge of acquiring Jewish customs as a misinterpretation of the embracing of Christianity. It has been suggested that Clement's rather hierarchical and even military notions of the exercise of authority indicate his identification with the ruling class through participation as agent, as a powerful freedman would (Jeffers 1991). The Shepherd of Hermas, a book of revelations granted to Hermas in Rome by the agency of two heavenly figures (the first an old woman and the second an angel in the form of a shepherd), was well known and highly valued in the patristic church.
