Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.20

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: In Justin's myth, the abandoned Eden has Babel (Aphrodite) cause adultery and the breakup of marriages to torment Elohim's spirit in humans.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 224

Ὡς δὲ κρατηθεὶς τῷ ἀγαθῷ ὁ Ἐλωεὶμ οὐκέτι κατῆλθε πρὸς τὴν Ἐδέμ, προσέταξεν ἡ Ἐδὲμ τῇ Βάβελ, ἥτις ἐστὶν Ἀφροδίτη, μοιχείας καὶ χωρισμοὺς γάμων κατασκευάσαι ἐν ἀνθρώποις, ἵνα ὡς αὐτὴ κεχώρισται ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἐλωείμ, οὕτω καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ Ἐλωεὶμ τὸ ὄν ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τοῖς χωρισμοῖς τοῖς τοιούτοις βασανίζηται λυπούμενον, καὶ πάσχῃ τὰ αὐτὰ ὁποῖα καὶ ἡ Ἐδὲμ καταλελειμμένη.

English · Claude translation

But when Elohim, held fast by the Good one, no longer came down to Eden, Eden commanded Babel, who is Aphrodite, to bring about adulteries and separations of marriages among human beings, so that, as she herself had been separated from Elohim, so too the spirit of Elohim that is in human beings might be tormented and grieved by such separations, and suffer the same things as Eden, abandoned.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 224 · 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. 5.26.20 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/26/20/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.26.20 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/26/20/).