Refutation of All Heresies, Book 1, preface 11

Authorship disputed: The work names no author. Book 1 was long printed among Origen's works as the Philosophumena; after books 4–10 were found in a manuscript from Mount Athos (published 1851), it was assigned to Hippolytus, the usual view today, though some scholars ascribe it to another Roman writer of the same circle. Books 2 and 3 are lost, and book 4 lacks its beginning.

Summary: Hippolytus begins with the first Greek natural philosophers, from whom the heresiarchs stole their ideas.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 6–8

Ἀρξάμενοι τοίνυν ἐροῦμεν, τίνες οἱ παρʼ Ἕλλησι πρῶτον φιλοσοφίαν φυσικὴν ἐπιδείξαντες. Τούτων γὰρ μάλιστα γεγένηνται κλεψίλογοι οἱ τῶν αἱρέσεων πρωτοστατήσαντες, ὡς μετέπειτα ἐν τῇ πρὸς ἀλλήλους συμβολῇ ἐπιδείξομεν. Ἑκάστῳ δὲ τῶν προαρξαμένων τὰ ἴδια ἀποδιδόντες γυμνοὺς καὶ ἀσχήμονας τοὺς αἱρεσιάρχας παραστήσομεν.

English · Claude translation

Beginning, then, we shall say who among the Greeks first set forth natural philosophy. For it is from these above all that the founders of the heresies have become plagiarists, as we shall show afterward when we compare them with one another. And by giving back to each of those who began first what is his own, we shall present the heresiarchs naked and disgraced.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 6–8 · Ludwig Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, eds., S. Hippolyti episcopi et martyris Refutationis omnium haeresium librorum decem quae supersunt (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1859); section divisions from Paul Wendland, ed., Hippolytus Werke 3: Refutatio omnium haeresium, GCS 26 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916) · Greek text: L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, Refutationis omnium haeresium (Göttingen, 1859), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library; section divisions from P. Wendland (GCS 26, 1916), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin); both CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Duncker–Schneidewin. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Duncker–Schneidewin; made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5 (1886) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Its chapter numbers differ from the standard (Wendland) numbering used here.

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.0.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/0/11/).

The SBL abbreviation for this work has not been checked yet.

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.0.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/0/11/).