Refutation of All Heresies 6.26.3

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, 266

Δεῖ γὰρ, φησί, τὰς φιληδόνους ψυχάς, ὡς ὁ Πλάτων λέγει, ἐὰν ἐν ἀνθρώπου πάθει γενόμεναι μὴ φιλοσοφήσωσι, διὰ πάντων ζῴων ἐλθεῖν καὶ φυτῶν πάλιν εἰς ἀνθρώπινον σῶμα, καὶ ἐὰν μὲν φιλοσοφήσῃ κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ τρίς, εἰς τὴν τοῦ συννόμου ἄστρου φύσιν ἀνελθεῖν, ἐὰν δὲ μὴ φιλοσοφήσῃ, πάλιν ἐπὶ τὰ αὐτά. Δύνασθαι οὖν φησὶ ποτὲ τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ θνητὴν γενέσθαι, ἐὰν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἐριννύων κρατῆται, τουτέστι τῶν παθῶν, καὶ ἀθάνατον, ἐὰν τὰς Ἐριννῦς ἐκφύγῃ, ἅ ἐστι πάθη.

English · Claude translation

“For pleasure-loving souls,” he says, “as Plato says, if they come into the passion of a man and do not practice philosophy, must pass through all animals and plants back into a human body; and if a soul practices philosophy three times in the same way, it goes up to the nature of its kindred star; but if it does not practice philosophy, back again to the same things. The soul, then,” he says, “can sometimes become mortal, if it is mastered by the Furies, that is, the passions, and immortal, if it escapes the Furies, which are passions.”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 266 · 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.

Extrabiblical texts

Plato, Phaedr. 248e–249a (Plato (works)) · allusion, medium confidence

Notes

Translation notes

Compare Plato, Phaedrus 248e–249a and Timaeus 42b–c.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): Δύνασθαι οὗν → Δύνασθαι οὖν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.26.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/26/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.26.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/26/3/).