Refutation of All Heresies 10.9.1

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: Summary of the Naassenes: the first principle is Man, also Son of Man, divided into intellectual, psychic, and earthly parts.

Show

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 502

Ἀλλʼ ἐπεὶ οὕτως δοκεῖ, ἀρξώμεθα πρῶτον ἀπὸ τῶν τοῦ ὄφεως λειτουργῶν. Ναασσηνοὶ ἄνθρωπον καλοῦσι τὴν πρώτην τῶν ὅλων ἀρχήν, τὸν αὐτὸν καὶ υἱὸν ἀνθρώπου· τοῦτον δὲ τριχῆ διαιροῦσιν. Ἔστι μὲν γὰρ αὐτοῦ, φασί, τὸ μὲν νοερόν, τὸ δὲ ψυχικόν, τὸ δὲ χοϊκόν.

English · Claude translation

But since it seems right, let us begin first with the ministers of the serpent. The Naassenes call the first principle of all things Man, the same being also Son of Man; and they divide him in three. For of him, they say, one part is intellectual, another psychic, another earthly.

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.
Topics
Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

  • The Naassenes (from Hebrew nāḥāš, “serpent”) were treated in Book 5.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.9.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/9/1/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 10.9.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/9/1/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage