Refutation of All Heresies 10.31.4

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: Since these nations descend from Noah, the God-fearing are older than all; the Greeks come from Javan, son of Japheth.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 534

Εἰ δὲ μηδὲ τὸ οἰκεῖσθαι τὰς τούτων χώρας πρότερον ἦν, μηδὲ ἀρχὴν γένος ἀνθρώπων δείκνυται, οὗτοι δὲ υἱοὶ τοῦ Νῶε ἀνδρὸς γίνονται θεοσεβοῦς, ὃς καὶ αὐτὸς μαθητὴς γεγένηται ἀνδρῶν θεοσεβῶν, οὗ χάριν διέφυγε πολλὴν ὕδατος πρόσκαιρον ἀπειλήν· πῶς οὐ προγενέστεροι ἦσαν θεοσεβεῖς πάντων Χαλδαίων, Αἰγυπτίων, Ἑλλήνων, ὧν πατὴρ ἐκ τούτου Ἰάφεθ γεννᾶται, ὄνομα Ἰωύαν, ἐξ οὗ Ἕλληνες καὶ Ἴωνες;

English · Claude translation

But if their lands were not inhabited before, nor is a human race shown at the beginning, and these are sons of Noah, a God-fearing man, who himself became a disciple of God-fearing men, for whose sake he escaped the great temporary threat of water, how were the God-fearing not older than all Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Greeks, whose father is born from this Japheth, by name Javan, from whom come the Greeks and Ionians?

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 534 · 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

Gen 10:2 · allusion, high confidence

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.31.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/31/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.31.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/31/4/).

Refutation of All Heresies 10.31.4

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 534

English · Claude translation

About this passage

Notes

Translation notes

Cite this passage