Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.20

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 Sethians say the Word took the serpent's likeness and entered a virgin's womb to free the imprisoned mind.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 206

Ὁμοιωθεὶς οὖν ὁ ἄνωθεν τοῦ φωτὸς τέλειος λόγος τῷ θηρίῳ τῷ ὄφει, εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὴν ἀκάθαρτον μήτραν, ἐξαπατήσας αὐτὴν τοῦ θηρίου τῷ ὁμοιώματι, ἵνα λύσῃ τὰ δεσμὰ τὰ περικείμενα τῷ τελείῳ νοῒ τῷ γεννωμένῳ ἐν ἀκαθαρσίᾳ μήτρας ὑπὸ τοῦ πρωτοτόκου τοῦ ὕδατος, ὄφεως, ἀνέμου. Θηρίου αὕτη, φησίν, ἐστὶν ἡ τοῦ δούλου μορφή, καὶ αὕτη ἡ ἀνάγκη τοῦ κατελθεῖν τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ εἰς μήτραν παρθένου.

English · Claude translation

The perfect Word of the light from above, then, having made himself like the beast, the serpent, entered into the unclean womb, deceiving it by the likeness of the beast, in order to loose the bonds lying about the perfect mind begotten in the uncleanness of the womb by the firstborn of the water, the serpent, the wind. “This,” he says, “is the form of the slave, and this is the necessity for the Word of God to come down into the womb of a virgin.”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 206 · 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

Phil 2:7 · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy, Christology

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.19.20 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/19/20/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.19.20 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/19/20/).