Refutation of All Heresies 4.50.2

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.

Summary: The star names are human inventions, much later than the stars, and prove nothing.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 124

Οὐδὲν γὰρ ἄστρα ταῦτα δηλοῖ, ἀλλὰ ἰδίως οἱ ἄνθρωποι πρὸς ἐπισημείωσίν τινων ἄστρων ὀνόματα οὕτως ἐπεκάλεσαν, ἵνα αὐτοῖς ἐπίσημα ᾖ. Τί γὰρ ἄρκτου ἢ λέοντος ἢ ἐρίφων ἢ ὑδροχόου ἢ Κηφέως ἢ Ἀνδρομέδας ἢ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου ὀνομαζομένων εἰδώλων ὅμοιον ἔχουσιν ἀστέρες διεσπαρμένοι κατὰ τὸν οὐρανόν, πολὺ μεταγενεστέρων γεγενημένων τούτων τῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων ἢ τῶν ἀνθρώπων συνέστηκε γέννησις· ἵνα καὶ οἱ αἱρετικοὶ καταπλαγέντες τὸ θαῦμα οὕτως ἐξεργάσωνται διὰ τοιῶνδε λόγων τὰ ἴδια δόγματα συνιστᾶν;

English · Claude translation

For the stars show nothing of this; rather men of their own accord gave certain stars these names for marking them, so that they might be conspicuous to them. For what likeness to a bear or a lion or kids or a water-carrier or Cepheus or Andromeda or the images named in Hades have the stars scattered across the heaven, since these men and names came into being much later than the stars, when the birth of men took place? So that the heretics too, astonished at the marvel, should work out their own doctrines by such arguments?

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 124 · 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. 4.50.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/50/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.50.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/50/2/).