Refutation of All Heresies 4.28.12

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.

Summary: The answer is revealed in water; frightening effects are made with salt hidden in incense.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 92

Εἶτα λεκάνην πληρώσας ὕδατος ὡς ἄγραφον τὸν χάρτην καθίησι συνεμβαλὼν χάλκανθον. οὕτως γὰρ ἀνατέλλει τὴν ἀπόκρισιν φέρων ὁ γραφεὶς χάρτης. Τῷ μὲν δὴ παιδίῳ καὶ φαντασίαι φοβεραὶ γίνονται πολλάκις· καὶ γὰρ πληγὰς ἐμβάλλει εὐπόρως ἐκφοβῶν. Λίβανον γὰρ εἰς πῦρ ἐμβαλὼν πάλιν ποιεῖ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον. Βῶλον τῶν λεγομένων ὀρυκτῶν ἁλῶν κηρῷ Τυρρηνικῷ περισκεπάσας καὶ αὐτὸν δὲ λιβάνου βῶλον διχοτομήσας ἐντίθησι τοῦ ἅλατος χόνδρον, καὶ πάλιν συγκολλήσας ἐπὶ ἀνθράκων καιομένων τιθεὶς ἐᾷ.

English · Claude translation

Then, filling a basin with water, he lets down the paper as if unwritten, throwing copper sulfate in with it; for so the written paper rises bearing the answer. Frightening apparitions also often come to the boy; for he readily strikes blows to terrify him. Throwing frankincense into the fire, he again does it this way: covering a lump of what is called rock salt with Etruscan wax, and splitting a lump of frankincense itself in two, he puts in a grain of salt, glues it together again, puts it on burning coals, and leaves it.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 92 · 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. 4.28.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/28/12/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.28.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/28/12/).