Refutation of All Heresies 4.46.1

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: Hippolytus turns to the heresies themselves, hoping to bring their followers back to the truth.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 114

Ἱκανῶς οὖν τὰ δόξαντα ἐκθέμενοι λοιπὸν ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ προκειμένου πραγματείαν χωρήσωμεν, ὅπως ὃ τετάγμεθα περὶ τῶν αἱρέσεων ἐπιδείξαντες ἑκάστοις τε τὰ ἴδια ἀποδοῦναι ἀναγκάσαντες γυμνοὺς τοὺς αἱρεσιάρχας φανερώσομεν, καὶ ἀφροσύνην τῶν πειθομένων κατηγορήσαντες πείσομεν παλινδρομεῖν ἐπὶ τὸν τῆς ἀληθείας εὔδιον λιμένα.

English · Claude translation

Having sufficiently set out these opinions, let us now proceed to the treatise before us, so that, showing what we have undertaken concerning the heresies, and compelling them to give each his own, we may expose the heresiarchs naked, and, convicting the folly of those who are persuaded by them, persuade them to run back to the calm harbor of the truth.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 114 · 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

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.46.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/46/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.46.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/46/1/).