Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.12

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: Countless further meetings of powers produced countless womb-shaped seals and so all living creatures.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 202

γέγονε δὲ οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς τὸ σχῆμα τοιοῦτον οἱονεὶ μήτρᾳ παραπλήσιον κατὰ τὴν πρώτην συνδρομήν. Ἐν δʼ αὖ τῷ μέσῳ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ τῆς γῆς γεγόνασιν ἄπειροι δυνάμεων συνδρομαί. Καὶ ἑκάστη συνδρομὴ οὐκ ἄλλο τι εἰργάσατο καὶ ἐξετύπωσεν ἢ σφραγῖδα οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς παραπλήσιον μήτρᾳ. Ἐν αὖ γῇ δὲ ἀνέφυσαν ἐκ τῶν ἀπείρων σφραγίδων διαφόρων ζῴων ἄπειρα πλήθη.

English · Claude translation

and the shape of heaven and earth came to be of this kind, like a womb, at the first concourse. And again, in the middle between heaven and earth there came to be infinite concourses of powers; and each concourse wrought and stamped nothing other than a seal of heaven and earth like a womb. And in the earth, again, from the infinite seals there sprang up infinite multitudes of various living creatures.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 202 · 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. 5.19.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/19/12/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.19.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/19/12/).