Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.8

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: Ten is the perfect number offered to the perfect Father, who alone produced all roots through Mind and Truth.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 272

Τούτου γὰρ, φησί, τελειότερον ἀριθμοῦ ὁ νοῦς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια τῷ πατρὶ προσενεγκεῖν οὐκ ἠδυνήθησαν. Ἔδει γὰρ τέλειον ὄντα τὸν πατέρα ἀριθμῷ δοξάζεσθαι τελείῳ, τέλειος δέ ἐστιν ὁ δέκα, ὅτι πρῶτος τῶν κατὰ πλῆθος γενομένων οὗτος ἐστὶ τέλειος. Τελειότερος δὲ ὁ πατήρ, ὅτι ἀγέννητος ὢν μόνος διὰ πρώτης τῆς μιᾶς συζυγίας τοῦ νοῦ καὶ τῆς ἀληθείας πάσας τὰς τῶν γενομένων προβαλεῖν εὐπόρησε ῥίζας.

English · Claude translation

“For Mind and Truth,” he says, “could not offer the Father a more perfect number than this. For the Father, being perfect, had to be glorified by a perfect number; and ten is perfect, because it is the first of the numbers formed by multitude that is perfect. But the Father is more perfect, because, being alone unbegotten, through the first single pair, Mind and Truth, he was able to put forth all the roots of the things that have come to be.”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 272 · 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.

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.29.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/29/8/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.29.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/29/8/).