Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 6.15.3

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: Exodus stands for hearing: after birth through the “Red Sea” of blood, the child tastes the bitter water of life.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 246

Ἔδει γὰρ τὸ γεννηθέν, τὴν Ἐρυθρὰν διοδεῦσαν θάλασσαν, ἐλθεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν ἔρημον (Ἐρυθρὰν δὲ λέγει, φασί, τὸ αἷμα), καὶ γεύσασθαι πικρὸν ὕδωρ. Πικρὸν γὰρ, φησίν, ἐστὶ τὸ ὕδωρ τὸ μετὰ τὴν Ἐρυθρὰν θάλασσαν, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ὁδὸς τῆς κατὰ τὸν βίον γνώσεως τῶν ἐπιπόνων ὁδευομένη καὶ πικρῶν.

English · Claude translation

For what was born had to travel through the Red Sea and come into the wilderness (by “Red,” they say, he means the blood) and taste bitter water. “For bitter,” he says, “is the water after the Red Sea, which is the road of knowledge in life, travelled through toils and bitter things.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 246 · 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

Notes

Notes on the original text

  • Digital text corrected (missing space in the digital text; wrong accent in the digital text): ἐπί τὴν ἔρημον → ἐπὶ τὴν ἔρημον; δελέγει → δὲ λέγει.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.15.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/15/3/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 6.15.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/15/3/).

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