Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 6.23.1

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 made the unbegotten monad the father and the begotten dyad the mother of all numbers.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 260

Πυθαγόρας τοίνυν ἀρχὴν τῶν ὅλων ἀγέννητον ἀπεφήνατο τὴν μονάδα, γεννητὴν δὲ τὴν δυάδα καὶ πάντας τοὺς ἄλλους ἀριθμούς. Καὶ τῆς μὲν δυάδος πατέρα φησὶν εἶναι τὴν μονάδα, πάντων δὲ τῶν γεννωμένων μητέρα δυάδα, γεννητὴν γεννητῶν.

English · Claude translation

Pythagoras, then, declared that the unbegotten principle of all things is the monad, and that the dyad and all the other numbers are begotten. And he says that the monad is the father of the dyad, and the dyad the mother of all begotten things, a begotten mother of begotten things.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 260 · 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.23.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/23/1/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 6.23.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/23/1/).

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