Refutation of All Heresies 10.8.1

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 the philosophers' physics fails, Hippolytus will summarize the heresies and then set out the truth.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 502

Πεπεισμένοι τοίνυν ὅτι πᾶσι τούτοις ὁμολογουμένως ἄπορος εὑρίσκεται ὁ τῆς φυσιολογίας λόγος, αὐτοὶ περὶ τῶν τῆς ἀληθείας παραδειγμάτων ὡς ἔστι καὶ πεπιστεύκαμεν, ἀόκνως ἐροῦμεν, πλ[ὴν] καὶ τὰ τοῖς αἱρεσιάρχαις ἐπιτομῇ πρότερον ἐκθέμενοι, ἵνα καὶ διὰ τούτου εὔγνωστα τὰ πάντων δόγματα παραστήσαντες φανερὰν καὶ εὔγνωστον τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐπιδείξωμεν.

English · Claude translation

Being persuaded, then, that the account of natural philosophy is admittedly found to be unworkable for all of these, we ourselves shall speak without hesitation about the patterns of the truth, as it is and as we have believed; but first setting out in summary the teachings of the heresiarchs as well, so that, presenting the doctrines of all in an easily known form, we may show the truth plain and easy to know.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 502 · 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. 10.8.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/8/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.8.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/8/1/).