Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.7

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, 210

Ἐπιγέγραπται δὲ ἐπὶ τοῦ πρεσβύτου· φάος ῥυέντης, ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς γυναικός· περεηφικόλα. Ἔοικε δὲ εἶναι κατὰ τὸν Σηθιανῶν λόγον ὁ φάος ῥυέντης τὸ φῶς, τὸ δὲ σκοτεινὸν ὕδωρ ἡ φικόλα, τὸ δὲ ἐν μέσῳ τούτων διάστημα ἁρμονία πνεύματος μεταξὺ τεταγμένου. Τὸ δὲ ὄνομα τοῦ φάος ῥυέντου τὴν ῥύσιν ἄνωθεν τοῦ φωτὸς, ὡς λέγουσι, δηλοῖ κάτω.

English · Claude translation

Over the old man is written “phaos rhyentes” and over the woman “pereēphikola.” According to the Sethian doctrine, the phaos rhyentes seems to be the light, the phikola the dark water, and the interval between them the harmony of the spirit placed between. The name phaos rhyentes indicates, as they say, the flowing of the light from above downward.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 210 · 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 inscriptions are obscure; “phaos rhyentes” is read as “light flowing” (φάος, ῥέω); “pereēphikola” is unexplained.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.20.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/20/7/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.20.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/20/7/).