Refutation of All Heresies 4.47.2

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, 116

Εἱλεῖσθαι δὲ κατὰ τὰς ἄρκτους αὐτὰς λέγει οἷόν τι ποταμοῖ ῥεῦμα μέγα θαῦμα Δράκοντος πελώρου, καὶ τοῦτʼ εἶναι ὅ, φησίν, ἐν τῷ Ἰὼβ πρὸς θεὸν διάβολος ἔφη· ἐμπεριπατήσας τὴν ὑπʼ οὐρανὸν καὶ περιελθών, τουτέστι περιστραφεὶς καὶ περισκοπήσας τὰ γινόμενα· τετάχθαι γὰρ νομίζουσι κατὰ τὸν ἀρκτικὸν πόλον τὸν Δράκοντα, τὸν ὄφιν, ἀπὸ τοῦ ὑψηλοτάτου πόλου πάντα ἐπιβλέποντα καὶ πάντα ἐφορῶντα, ἵνα μηδὲν τῶν πραττομένων αὐτὸν λάθῃ·

English · Claude translation

He says that there winds among the Bears themselves, like the stream of a river, a great wonder, the monstrous Dragon; and this, he says, is what the devil said to God in Job: "Having walked about under heaven and gone around," that is, having turned round and surveyed what is happening. For they think that the Dragon, the serpent, is set at the arctic pole, looking down on all things from the highest pole and overseeing all, so that nothing done may escape him;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 116 · 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.

Scripture

Job 1:7 · quotation, high confidence

Extrabiblical texts

Aratus, Phaen. 45–46 (Aratus, Phaenomena) · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

The allusions are Aratus, Phaenomena 45–46, and Job 1:7 (cf. 2:2). The reporting "he says" (φησί) refers to the unnamed allegorizers.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.47.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/47/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.47.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/47/2/).