Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.15

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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 Naassenes forbid marital intercourse, reading Attis's castration as passage to a sexless new creation.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 138

Κατὰ τοῦτον οὖν αὐτοῖς τὸν λόγον πάνυ πονηρὸν καὶ κεκωλυμένον κατὰ τὴν διδασκαλίαν ἡ γυναικὸς πρὸς ἄνδρα δεδειγμένη καθέστηκεν ὁμιλία, Ἀπεκόπη γὰρ, φησίν, ὁ Ἄττις, τουτέστιν ἀπὸ τῶν χοϊκῶν τῆς κτίσεως κάτωθεν μερῶν, καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν αἰωνίαν ἄνω μετελήλυθεν οὐσίαν, ὅπου, φησίν, οὐκ ἔστιν οὔτε θῆλυ οὔτε ἄρσεν, ἀλλὰ καινὴ κτίσις, καινὸς ἄνθρωπος, ὅς ἐστιν ἀρσενόθηλυς. Ποῦ δὲ ἄνω λέγουσι, κατὰ τὸν οἰκεῖον ἐλθὼν δείξω τόπον.

English · Claude translation

According to this account, then, intercourse of woman with man has been shown in their teaching to be very wicked and forbidden. For Attis, he says, was castrated, that is, cut off from the earthly parts of creation below, and passed over to the eternal substance above, where, he says, there is neither female nor male, but a new creation, a new man, who is male-female. Where they say "above" is, I shall show when I come to the proper place.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 138 · 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
Topics
Heresy, Marriage

Notes

Translation notes

  • The allusions are Gal 3:28, 2 Cor 5:17, and Eph 2:15.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/15/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/15/).

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