Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.11

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 perfect serpent is Nimrod the hunter and the serpent Moses lifted up, as John 3:14 says.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 192

Περὶ τούτου, φησί, γέγραπται, ὡς Νεβρὼδ γίγας κυνηγὸς ἔναντι κυρίου. Εἰσὶ δέ, φησί, τούτου ἀντίμιμοι πολλοί, τοσοῦτοι ὅσοι ὤφθησαν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ τοῖς υἱοῖς Ἰσραὴλ δάκνοντες, ἀφʼ ὧν ἐρρύσατο τοὺς δακνομένους ὁ τέλειος ἐκεῖνος, ὃν ἔστησε Μωϋσῆς. Τοῦτο ἐστί, φησί, τὸ εἰρημένον· καὶ ὃν τρόπον ὕψωσε Μωϋσῆς τὸν ὄφιν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, οὕτως ὑψωθῆναι δεῖ τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.

English · Claude translation

“Of him,” he says, “it is written that Nimrod was a giant hunter before the Lord. And there are,” he says, “many counterfeits of him, as many as appeared biting the children of Israel in the wilderness, from whom that perfect one whom Moses set up delivered those who were bitten. This is,” he says, “what was said: ‘And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.’”

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 192 · 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.
Scripture
Topics
Heresy, Christology

Notes

Notes on the original text

  • Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): τρὸπον → τρόπον.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.16.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/16/11/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 5.16.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/16/11/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage