Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.7

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, 190–192

Δακνομένοις οὖν, φησίν, ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ τοῖς υἱοῖς Ἰσραὴλ ἐπέδειξε Μωϋσῆς τὸν ἀληθινὸν ὄφιν τὸν τέλειον, εἰς ὃν οἱ πιστεύοντες οὐκ ἐδάκνοντο ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, τουτέστιν ὑπὸ τῶν δυνάμεων. Οὐδεὶς οὖν, φησίν, ὁ δυνάμενος σῶσαι καὶ ῥύσασθαι τοὺς ἐκπορευομένους ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου, τουτέστιν ἐκ σώματος καὶ ἐκ τοῦδε τοῦ κόσμου, εἰ μὴ μόνος ὁ τέλειος, ὁ πλήρης τῶν πληρῶν ὄφις.

English · Claude translation

“So to the children of Israel,” he says, “when they were bitten in the wilderness, Moses showed the true, perfect serpent; those who believed in it were not bitten in the wilderness, that is, by the powers. No one, then,” he says, “is able to save and deliver those who come out of the land of Egypt, that is, out of the body and out of this world, except only the perfect one, the serpent full of the full.”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 190–192 · 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

Num 21:8–9 · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy, Christology

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (misread article in the digital text; misread letter in the digital text): καὶ δύσασθαι → καὶ ῥύσασθαι; μόνος δ τέλειος → μόνος ὁ τέλειος.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.16.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/16/7/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.16.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/16/7/).