Refutation of All Heresies 4.14.12

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, 76

Ὅταν μέντοι ψηφίζῃ τὰ ὀνόματα καὶ εὑρίσκῃ δὶς τὸ αὐτὸ γράμμα, ἅπαξ αὐτὸ ψηφίζει, οἷον τὸ Πάτροκλος ὄνομα καὶ τὸ (??) ᾱ δὶς ἔχει καὶ τὸ (??) δίς, ἅπαξ οὖν τὸ ᾱ ψηφίζουσι καὶ ἅπαξ τὸ (??). Κατὰ τοῦτο οὖν πυθμένες ἔσονται (??), ᾱ, (??), ᾱ, (??), καὶ συντεθέντες ποιοῦσι μονάδας (??), καὶ ἔσται πυθμὴν τοῦ ὀνόματος κατὰ μὲν τὸν ἐννεαδικὸν αὐτὸς ὁ ἐννέα, κατὰ δὲ τὸν ἑβδοματικὸν ἕξ.

English · Claude translation

When he reckons names and finds the same letter twice, he reckons it once: for example, the name Patroclus has alpha twice and … twice; so they reckon alpha once and … once. Accordingly the roots will be …, 1, …, 1, …, and added together they make … units; and the root of the name will be nine itself by the rule of nine, and six by the rule of seven.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 76 · 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

Translation notes

The digital text misspells Patroclus as Πάτρολος. Letters and numbers that could not be read (marked (??) in the digital text) are shown as "…"; the example appears muddled in transmission.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (missing letter in the digital text; wrong accent in the digital text): Πάτρολος → Πάτροκλος; Κατὰ τοῦτο οὗν → Κατὰ τοῦτο οὖν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.14.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/14/12/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.14.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/14/12/).