Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 6.21.3

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: Pythagoras and Plato took their teaching from Egypt; Valentinus borrowed it from them, renamed it, and made a Greek heresy foreign to Christ.

Textual problem in this passage: the printed text is uncertain or disputed here. See the notes.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 258

Αἰγυπτίων ταῦτα παραλαβόντων καὶ εἰς Ἕλληνας μεταδιδαξάντων, τοῦ δὲ παρὰ τούτων, ὅτι δὲ παρʼ αὐτῶν, διαψευσαμένου ἰδίαν τε δόξαν συστῆσαι πεπειραμένου,... σπαράξαντα μὲν τὰ ἐκείνων ὀνόμασι καὶ ἀριθμοῖς, ἰδίως δὲ καλέσαντα καὶ μέτροις διορίσαντα, ὅπως αἵρεσιν Ἑλληνικὴν ποικίλην μέν, ἀσύστατον δὲ καὶ οὐκ ἀνήκουσαν Χριστῷ συστήσῃ.

English · Claude translation

Egyptians and taught them to the Greeks, while he, having received them from these men, lied that they were his own and tried to establish a doctrine of his own, … tearing theirs apart with names and numbers, calling them by terms of his own and marking them off by measures, so as to establish a Greek heresy, varied indeed, but incoherent and not belonging to Christ.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 258 · 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; the problem in this passage is discussed in the notes.
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

Notes

Translation notes

  • There is a gap in the text; the sense of the damaged clause is uncertain.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.21.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/21/3/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 6.21.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/21/3/).

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