Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.4

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: Powers flow from the Son into Matter like the colors onto Jacob's flocks, producing corruptible and incorruptible births.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 196

Ὁμοίως δʼ αὖ καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ υἱοῦ ἐπὶ τὴν ὕλην ῥερευκέναι τὰς δυνάμεις κατὰ τὸ ἐγκίσσημα τῆς δυνάμεως τῆς ἀπὸ τῶν ῥάβδων ἐπὶ τὰ ἐγκεκισσημένα· ἡ δὲ διαφορὰ τῶν χρωμάτων καὶ ἡ ἀνομοιότης ῥεύσασα ἀπὸ τῶν ῥάβδων διὰ τῶν ὑδάτων ἐπὶ τὰ πρόβατα διαφορὰ, φησί, γενέσεώς ἐστι φθαρτῆς καὶ ἀφθάρτου·

English · Claude translation

Likewise, again, the powers flowed from the Son onto Matter, after the manner of the conceiving caused by the power of the rods in the ewes that conceived; and the difference of the colors and the unlikeness that flowed from the rods through the waters onto the sheep is,” he says, “the difference between corruptible and incorruptible generation;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 196 · 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

Gen 30:37–39 · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.17.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/17/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.17.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/17/4/).