Refutation of All Heresies 4.14.1

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 72–74

Οἱ μὲν οὖν διὰ ψήφων τε καὶ ἀριθμῶν στοιχείων τε καὶ ὀνομάτων μαντεύεσθαι νομίζοντες ταύτην ἀρχὴν ἐπιχειρήσεως τοῦ κατʼ αὐτοὺς λόγου ποιοῦνται, φάσκοντες πυθμένα εἶναι ἑκάστου τῶν ἀριθμῶν, ἐπὶ μὲν τῶν χιλιάδων τοσαύτας μονάδας, ὅσαι ἂν ὦσι χιλιάδες, οἷον τῶν ἑξακισχιλίων ὁ πυθμὴν μονάδες ἔξ, τῶν ἑπτακισχιλίων μονάδες ἑπτά, τῶν ὀκτακισχιλίων μονάδες ὀκτώ, καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ὁμοίως κατὰ τὰ αὐτά,

English · Claude translation

Those, then, who think they divine by means of reckonings and numbers, letters and names, make this the starting point of their system: they say that each number has a root. For the thousands, the root is as many units as there are thousands: of six thousand the root is six units, of seven thousand seven units, of eight thousand eight units, and similarly for the rest in the same way;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 72–74 · 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.

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (missing accent in the digital text): κατὰ τα αὐτά → κατὰ τὰ αὐτά.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.14.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/14/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.14.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/14/1/).