Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.10

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, 198

καμμοῦσιν ὀφθαλμοῦ βλεφάρου, ὥσπερ ὁ νάφθας τὸ πῦρ πανταχόθεν εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἐπισπώμενος, μᾶλλον δὲ ὥσπερ ἡ ἡρακλεία λίθος τὸν σίδηρον, ἄλλο [δὲ] οὐδέν, ἢ ὥσπερ ἡ τοῦ θαλασσίου ἱέρακος κερκὶς τὸ χρυσίον, ἕτερον δὲ οὐδὲν· ἢ ὥσπερ ἄγεται ὑπὸ τοῦ ἠλέκτρου τὸ ἄχυρον, οὕτω, φησίν, ὑπὸ τοῦ ὄφεως ἄγεται πάλιν ἀπὸ τοῦ κόσμου τὸ ἐξεικονισμένον τέλειον γένος ὁμοούσιον, ἄλλο δὲ οὐδέν, καθὼς ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ κατεπέμφθη.

English · Claude translation

… to those who close the eyelid of the eye, as naphtha draws fire to itself from every side, or rather as the Heraclean stone draws iron and nothing else, or as the spine of the sea-hawk draws gold and nothing else, or as chaff is drawn by amber: so,” he says, “the perfect race, formed in the image and of one substance, is drawn back from the world by the serpent, and nothing else, just as it was sent down by him.”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 198 · 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

Notes

Translation notes

The beginning is lost. The “Heraclean stone” is the magnet; the sea-hawk's attraction of gold is a piece of ancient lore.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.17.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/17/10/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.17.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/17/10/).