Refutation of All Heresies 4.44.1

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: Names with odd values are counted lucky, even ones unlucky.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 112

Τῇ οὖν μονάδι ἀγαθοποιῷ οὔσῃ εἰς τὸν ἀπερίζυγον ἀριθμὸν λήγοντα ὀνόματα ἀνωφερῆ ἀγαθοποιὰ εἶναι παρατηρούμενοι λέγουσι· τὰ δὲ εἰς τὸν ἄρτιον ἀριθμὸν λήγοντα κατωφερῆ τε καὶ θηλυκὰ καὶ κακοποιὰ εἶναι νενόμισται. Τὴν γὰρ φύσιν ἐξ ἐναντίων συνισταμένην λέγουσιν ἔκ τε καλοῦ καὶ κακοῦ, ὥσπερ δεξιὸν καὶ ἀριστερόν, φῶς καὶ σκότος, νὺξ καὶ ἡμέρα, ζωὴ καὶ θάνατος.

English · Claude translation

So, since the monad is beneficent, they say, from observation, that names ending in the odd number are upward-tending and beneficent; and those ending in the even number are held to be downward-tending, feminine, and maleficent. For they say nature is composed of opposites, of good and bad, like right and left, light and darkness, night and day, life and death.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 112 · 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. 4.44.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/44/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.44.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/44/1/).