Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.1

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 treat Homer as their prophet and teach that all things come from three.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 150

Τούτοις καὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις ἑπόμενοι οἱ θαυμασιώτατοι γνωστικοί, ἐφευρεταὶ καινῆς τέχνης γραμματικῆς, τὸν ἑαυτῶν προφήτην Ὅμηρον ταῦτα προφαίνοντα ἀρρήτως δοξάζουσι καὶ τοὺς ἀμυήτους τὰς ἁγίας γραφὰς εἰς τοιαύτας ἐννοίας συνάγοντες ἐνυβρίζουσι. Λέγουσι δέ· ὁ λέγων τὰ πάντα ἐξ ἑνὸς συνεστάναι, πλανᾶται· ὁ λέγων ἐκ τριῶν, ἀληθεύει καὶ περὶ τῶν ὅλων τὴν ἀπόδειξιν δώσει.

English · Claude translation

Following these and similar things, the most marvelous Gnostics, inventors of a new art of grammar, glorify their own prophet Homer as foreshowing these things in secret, and they outrage the uninitiated by drawing the holy Scriptures into such notions. They say: "Whoever says that all things are composed from one is in error; whoever says from three speaks the truth and will give the demonstration concerning all things."

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 150 · 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, Scripture and canon

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.8.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/8/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.8.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/8/1/).