Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 10.19.3

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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: Marcion cites “a good tree cannot bear bad fruit” against the Creator and holds that Christ, son of the Good, only seemed to have flesh, birth, and suffering.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 524

ἀνάγκη γὰρ τὰ γενόμενα ὅμοια εἶναι τῷ πεποιηκότι. Διὸ καὶ ταῖς παραβολαῖς ταῖς εὐαγγελικαῖς οὕτως χρῶνται λέγοντες· Οὐ δύναται δένδρον καλὸν καρποὺς πονηροὺς ποιεῖν καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς, εἰς τοῦτο φάσκων εἰρῆσθαι τὰ ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ κακῶς νομιζόμενα. Τὸν δὲ Χριστὸν υἱὸν εἶναι τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ πεπέμφθαι ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ τῶν ψυχῶν, ὃν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον καλεῖ, ὡς ἄνθρωπον φανέντα λέγων οὐκ ὄντα ἄνθρωπον, καὶ ὡς ἔνσαρκον οὐκ ἔνσαρκον, δοκήσει πεφηνότα, οὔτε γένεσιν ὑπομείναντα οὔτε πάθος, ἀλλὰ τῷ δοκεῖν.

English · Claude translation

for what comes into being must be like the one who made it. Therefore they also use the Gospel parables thus, saying: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit,” and so on, claiming that it was said about the things he thought were badly made. And that Christ is the son of the Good and was sent by him for the salvation of souls, whom he calls the inner man, saying that he appeared as a man though he was not a man, and as in the flesh though not in the flesh, having appeared in semblance, undergoing neither birth nor passion, except in appearance.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 524 · 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.
Scripture
Topics
Heresy, Christology

Notes

Translation notes

  • The quotation is Matt 7:18.

Notes on the original text

  • Digital text corrected (wrong breathing/accent: εἶναι): εἷναι → εἶναι.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.19.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/19/3/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 10.19.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/19/3/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage