Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.11

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, 128

Ὁ γὰρ ἐγκέφαλος κύριον μέρος ὢν τοῦ παντὸς σώματος ἐπίκειται ἀτρεμὴς καὶ ἀκίνητος, ἐντὸς ἑαυτοῦ ἔχων τὸ πνεῦμα. Ἔστι μὲν οὖν ἡ τοιαύτη ἱστορία οὐκ ἀπίθανος, μακρὰν δὲ τῆς τούτων ἐπιχειρήσεως. Ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἐγκέφαλος ἀνατμηθεὶς ἔνδον ἔχει τὸ καλούμενον καμάριον, οὗ ἑκατέρωθεν ὑμένες εἰσὶ λεπτοί, οὓς πτερύγια προσαγορεύουσιν, ἠρέμα ὑπὸ τοῦ πνεύματος κινούμενα καὶ πάλιν ἀπελαύνοντα τὸ πνεῦμα ἐπὶ τὴν παρεγκεφαλίδα·

English · Claude translation

For the brain, being the ruling part of the whole body, lies at rest and unmoved, holding the spirit within itself. Such an account, then, is not implausible, but it is far from their undertaking. For the brain, when dissected, has inside it what is called the vault, on either side of which are thin membranes, which they call little wings, gently moved by the spirit and in turn driving the spirit on to the cerebellum;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 128 · 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.

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): Ἔστι μὲν οὗν → Ἔστι μὲν οὖν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.51.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/51/11/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.51.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/51/11/).