Refutation of All Heresies 1.2.3

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: Pythagoras made his pupils keep silent until they were judged ready to speak.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 8

Θαυμάσας δὲ τὴν διοίκησιν τῶν ὅλων ἠξίωσε τὰ πρῶτα σιγᾶν τοὺς μαθητὰς, οἱονεὶ μύστας τοῦ παντὸς εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἥκοντας· εἶτα ἐπειδὰν αὐτοῖς ἱκανῶς παιδείας τῆς τῶν λόγων δόξῃ μετεῖναι καὶ δυνατῶς περὶ ἄστρων καὶ φύσεως φιλοσοφήσωσι, καθαροὺς κρίνας τότε κελεύει φθέγγεσθαι.

English · Claude translation

Marveling at the ordering of the universe, he required his disciples at first to keep silent, as initiates of the universe who had come into the world; then, when they seemed to have had enough share in the training of discourse and could philosophize ably about the stars and nature, he judged them pure and then bade them speak.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.2.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/2/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.2.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/2/3/).