Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.7

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, 244

Πῶς οὖν καὶ τίνα τρόπον, φησί, πλάσσει τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὁ θεός; Ἐν παραδείσῳ, οὕτως γὰρ αὐτῷ δοκεῖ. Ἔστω, φησί, παράδεισος ἡ μήτρα, καὶ ὅτι τοῦτό ἐστιν ἀληθὲς ἡ γραφὴ διδάξει ὅτε λέγει· Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ πλάσσων σε ἐν μήτρᾳ μητρός σου. Καὶ τοῦτο γὰρ οὕτω θέλει γεγράφθαι. Τὸν παράδεισον, φησίν, ἀλληγορῶν ὁ Μωσῆς τὴν μήτραν εἴρηκεν, εἴπερ δεῖ τῷ λόγῳ πιστεύειν.

English · Claude translation

“How, then, and in what way,” he says, “does God form man? In paradise”; for so he thinks. “Let paradise,” he says, “be the womb; and that this is true Scripture will teach when it says: ‘I am the one who forms you in your mother's womb’”; for he wants this too to be written so. “Moses,” he says, “speaking allegorically, called the womb paradise, if one must believe the word.”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 244 · 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

Jer 1:5 · allusion, medium confidence
Isa 44:2 · allusion, medium confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

The quotation freely combines Jer 1:5 and Isa 44:2.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (repeated syllable in the digital text): Μωσῆς σῆς → Μωσῆς.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.14.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/14/7/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.14.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/14/7/).