Refutation of All Heresies 1.2.15

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: A further proof: a buried bean flower was said to take human form.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 12

Σαφέστερον δὲ εἶναι καὶ ἕτερον παράδειγμα λέγει, εἰ ἀνθοῦντος τοῦ κυάμου λαβόντες τὸν κύαμον καὶ τὸ ἄνθος αὐτοῦ καὶ καταθέντες εἰς χύτραν ταύτην τε καταχρίσαντες εἰς γῆν κατορύξαιμεν καὶ μετʼ ὀλίγας ἡμέρας ἀνακαλύψαιμεν, ἴδοιμεν αὐτὸ εἶδος ἔχον τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ὡς αἰσχύνην γυναικός, μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα κατανοούμενον παιδίου κεφαλὴν συμπεφυκυῖαν.

English · Claude translation

And he says there is another, clearer example: if, when the bean is in flower, we take the bean and its flower and put them in a pot, and seal it and bury it in the earth, and after a few days uncover it, we would see that it has at first the form of a woman's private parts, and afterward, on closer view, a child's head grown with it.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 12 · 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.2.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/2/15/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.2.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/2/15/).