ASE 34/1(2017) 89-105 Dan Batovici The Shepherd of Hermas in Recent Scholarship on the Canon: A Review Article 89 I. IntrodUctIon While being a topic with a long standing scholarly tradition, the history of the formation of the biblical canon is still very much today a disputed subject in biblical studies, 1 especially with regard to its fringes in Early Christianity. Among early Christian second century texts, the Shepherd of Hermas seems to have enjoyed a remarkable authorita- tive reception in Late Antiquity, intriguing enough to have led to its inclusion in scholarly discussions on the biblical canon. This review article offers a critical overview of the diverse stances involved in re- cent debates on the matter, in the hope that it would contribute to better understand the treatment of other authoritative early Christian texts in scholarship on canon formation. 2 1 To mention only monograph size recent contributions: M.J. Kruger, Canon Revisited: Estab- lishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2012); M. Wallraff, Kodex und Kanon: Das Buch im frühen Christentum (HLV 12; Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2013); T. Bokedal, The Formation and Signiicance of the Christian Biblical Canon: A Study in Text, Ritual and Interpretation (London/New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014). 2 Scholarly efforts to better reine our understanding of the dynamics of the biblical canons in Late Antiquity have often resorted to proposing a distinction between a more clearly delineated canon and a more inclusive list of authoritative books. So the ‘scripture’/‘canon’ distinction in A.C. Sundberg, “Canon Muratori: A Fourth-Century List,” HTR 66/1 (1973): 1–41, at 35: “the differen- tiation between ‘scripture’ (as writings regarded as in some sense authoritative) and ‘canon’ (as a closed collection of scripture to which nothing can be added, nothing subtracted).” Or, for several other authors, the ‘canon 1’/‘canon 2’ distinction, e.g. in G.T. Sheppard, “Canon,” in Encyclope- dia of Religion 3: Second Edition (ed. L. Jones; Detroit, MI, 2005 [1987]), 1405–11, at 1407, the canon 1 category taken “to refer to a rule, standard, ideal, norm, or authoritative ofice or literature” displaying “internal signs of elevated status,” as distinguished from canon 2, used “to signify a tem- porary or perpetual ixation, standardization, enumeration, listing, chronology, register, or catalog of exemplary or normative persons, places or things.” Same terminology in L.M. McDonald, “The Integrity of the Biblical Canon in Light of Its Historical Development”, BBR 6 (1996): 95–132, esp. 101–103, and other publications. In a more functional understanding, K.W. Folkert, “The ‘Canons’ of Scripture,” in Rethinking Scripture: Essays from a Comparative Perspective (ed. M. Levering;