apocryphon · c. 140–155 · Christian literary work of the 1st or 2nd century
Five visions, twelve mandates and ten similitudes, delivered to a Roman freedman by an angel in shepherd's dress. Its subject is whether there is any repentance after baptism, and its answer — one more, once — was disputed for centuries. It was the most widely read Christian book of the second century: Irenaeus quotes it as scripture, the Codex Sinaiticus binds it in after Revelation, and the Muratorian Fragment allows it to be read privately while refusing it a place among the prophets or the apostles. It is filed here as an apocryphon in the plain sense — outside the received canon, kept and marked, never dismissed.