Refutation of All Heresies 6.42.2

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: Like Valentinus, who claimed to have seen the Word as a newborn child, Marcus invented a vision.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 300–302

Ἀλλʼ οὐδὲ τὸ ἄρρητον αὐτῶν ἔλαθεν ἡμᾶς. Ταῦτα δὲ συγκεχωρήσθω Οὐαλεντίνῳ καὶ τῇ αὐτοῦ σχολῇ. Ὁ δὲ Μάρκος μιμούμενος τὸν διδάσκαλον καὶ αὐτὸς ἀναπλάσσει ὅραμα, νομίζων οὕτως δοξασθήσεσθαι. Καὶ γὰρ Οὐαλεντῖνος φάσκει ἑαυτὸν ἑωρακέναι παῖδα νήπιον ἀρτιγέννητον, οὗ πυθόμενος ἐπιζητεῖ τίς ἂν εἴη, ὁ δὲ ἀπεκρίνατο λέγων, ἑαυτὸν εἶναι τὸν λόγον· ἔπειτα προσθεὶς τραγικόν τινα μῦθον ἐκ τούτου συνιστᾶν βούλεται τὴν ἐπικεχειρημένην αὐτῷ αἵρεσιν.

English · Claude translation

But not even their secret escaped us. Let these things, however, be conceded to Valentinus and his school. But Marcus, imitating his teacher, himself also fabricates a vision, thinking to be glorified in this way. For Valentinus claims that he saw a newborn infant, and asked it who it might be; and it answered, saying that it was the Word. Then, adding some tragic myth, he wishes to build from this the heresy he had undertaken.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 300–302 · 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. 6.42.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/42/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.42.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/42/2/).