Refutation of All Heresies 6.38.5

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: The Valentinians disagree about Depth; Ptolemy's followers give him two consorts, Thought and Will.

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Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 294

Πολλαὶ δὲ περὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ βυθοῦ καὶ διάφοροι γνῶμαι. Οἱ μὲν αὐτὸν ἄζυγον λέγουσι, μήτε ἄρρενα μήτε θῆλυν, ἄλλοι δὲ τὴν σιγὴν θήλειαν αὐτῷ συμπαρεῖναι καὶ εἶναι ταύτην πρώτην συζυγίαν. Οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Πτολεμαῖον δύο συζύγους αὐτὸν ἔχειν λέγουσιν, ἃς καὶ διαθέσεις καλοῦσιν, ἔννοιαν καὶ θέλησιν· πρῶτον γὰρ (??)οήθη τι προβαλεῖν, ὥς φασιν, ἔπειτα ἠθέλησε.

English · Claude translation

There are many and differing opinions about Depth himself. Some say that he is without consort, neither male nor female; others that Silence, a female, is with him and that this is the first pair. Those around Ptolemy say that he has two consorts, which they also call dispositions, Thought and Will; for first he thought of emitting something, as they say, and then he willed it.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 294 · 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

Notes

Translation notes

  • A few letters of the verb “thought” are unreadable in the digital text.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.38.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/38/5/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 6.38.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/38/5/).

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