Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.14

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: With the four books on pagan thought complete, Hippolytus turns to the heretics who copied it.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 128

Καὶ περὶ τούτου δὲ πολὺς ὁ λόγος, ὅθεν καὶ Σίμων καὶ Οὐαλεντῖνος εὑρεθήσονται καὶ ἐντεῦθεν ἀφορμὰς εἰληφότες, καὶ εἰ μὴ ὁμολογοῖεν, ὄντες πρῶτον ψεῦσται, εἶτα αἱρετικοί. Ἐπεὶ οὖν καὶ ταῦτα δοκεῖ ἱκανῶς ἡμᾶς ἐκτεθεῖσθαι, πάντα δὲ τὰ δοκοῦντα εἶναι τῆς ἐπιγείου φιλοσοφίας δόγματα περιείληπται ἐν τέσσαρσι βιβλίοις, δοκεῖ ἐπὶ τοὺς τούτων χωρεῖν μαθητάς, μᾶλλον δὲ κλεψιλόγους.

English · Claude translation

And about this too there is much talk, from which Simon and Valentinus will be found to have taken their starting points, and, if they do not admit it, to be first liars and then heretics. Since, then, these things too seem to have been sufficiently set out by us, and all that seem to be the doctrines of earthly philosophy have been comprised in four books, it seems best to proceed to their disciples, or rather their plagiarists.

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.

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.51.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/51/14/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.51.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/51/14/).