Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.12

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

ὃ διατρέχον διά τινος ἀγγείου καλάμῳ ἐοικότος ἐπὶ τὸ κωνάριον χωρεῖ, ᾧ πρόσκειται τὸ στόμιον τῆς παρεγκεφαλίδος ἐκδεχόμενον τὸ διατρέχον πνεῦμα καὶ ἀναδιδὸν ἐπὶ τὸν νωτιαῖον λεγόμενον μυελόν, ὅθεν πᾶν τὸ σῶμα μεταλαμβάνει τὸ πνευματικὸν πασῶν τῶν ἀρτηριῶν δίκην κλάδου ἐκ τούτου τοῦ ἀγγείου ἠρτημένων, οὗ τὸ πέρας ἐπὶ τὰ γεννητικὰ ἀγγεῖα τερματίζεται· ὅθεν καὶ τὰ σπέρματα ἐξ ἐγκεφάλου διὰ τῆς ὀσφύος χωροῦντα ἐκκρίνεται.

English · Claude translation

which, running through a certain vessel like a reed, goes to the pineal gland, to which the mouth of the cerebellum is attached, receiving the spirit that runs through and passing it on to what is called the spinal marrow; from which the whole body receives the spiritual element, all the arteries being attached like a branch to this vessel, whose end terminates at the generative vessels; whence also the seeds, going from the brain through the loins, are secreted.

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): ἐπὶ τό κωνάριον → ἐπὶ τὸ κωνάριον.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.51.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/51/12/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.51.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/51/12/).