Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 4.49.3

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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 Swan, which sings at death, symbolizes the divine Spirit.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 122

Ἔστι δὲ καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ὁ ὄρνις ὁ κύκνος παρὰ τὰς ἄρκτους, [μουσι]κὸν ζῷον, τοῦ θείου σύμβολον πνεύματος· ὅτι πρὸς αὐτοῖς ἤδη τοῖς τέρμασι γενόμενον τοῦ βίου μόνον ᾄδειν πέφυκε, μετὰ ἀγαθῆς ἐλπίδος τῆς κτίσεως τῆς πονηρᾶς ἀπαλλασσόμενον ὕμνους ἀναπέμπον τῷ θεῷ.

English · Claude translation

And the spirit in the world is the bird, the swan, near the Bears, a [musical] creature, a symbol of the divine Spirit; because, when it has already come to the very end of its life, it alone by nature sings, departing from the evil creation with good hope and sending up hymns to God.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 122 · 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

Notes

Translation notes

  • The square brackets are the editor's.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.49.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/49/3/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 4.49.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/49/3/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage