Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.19

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, 156

Πόλεμον δὲ λέγει τὸν ἐν σώματι, ὅτι ἐκ μαχίμων στοιχείων πέπλασται τὸ πλάσμα, καθὼς γέγραπται, φησί, Μνήσθητι πόλεμον τὸν γινόμενον ἐν σώματι. Ταύτην, φησί, τὴν εἴσοδον καὶ ταύτην τὴν πύλην εἶδεν εἰς Μεσοποταμίαν πορευόμενος ὁ Ἰακώβ, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἀπὸ τοῦ παιδὸς ἔφηβος ἤδη γινόμενος καὶ ἀνήρ, τουτέστιν ἐγνωρίσθη τῷ εἰς Μεσοποταμίαν πορευομένῳ· (Μεσοποταμία δέ, φησίν,

English · Claude translation

By war he means the war in the body, because the molded body is formed of warring elements, as it is written, he says: "Remember the war that takes place in the body." This entrance and this gate, he says, Jacob saw as he went to Mesopotamia, that is, as he was already becoming a youth and a man from a child; that is, it was made known to him as he went to Mesopotamia. (Mesopotamia, he says,

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 156 · 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

Job 41:8 (40:32 LXX) · quotation, medium confidence
Gen 28:12 · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

The quotation adapts Job 41:8 (40:32 LXX), where the Septuagint reads "remembering the war that takes place in his body"; the Hebrew has no "body". The allusion is Gen 28:10–17.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.8.19 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/8/19/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.8.19 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/8/19/).