Refutation of All Heresies 6.44.2

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 310

Ὅρα οὖν κεφαλήν, φησίν, ἄνω τὸ πρῶτον ἄλφα (??), τράχηλον τὸ δὲ (??), ὤμους [ἅμα χερσὶ](??), στήθη δέλτα (??), [δια]φράγμα (??), κοιλίαν (??), αἰδοῖα (??), μηροὺς (??), γόνατα (??), κνήμας (??), σφυρὰ (??), πόδας (??). Τουτέστι τὸ σῶμα τῆς κατὰ τὸν Μάρκον ἀληθείας, τοῦτο τὸ σχῆμα τοῦ στοιχείου, οὗτος ὁ χαρακτὴρ τοῦ γράμματος.

English · Claude translation

See, then,” she says, “her head above, the first, alpha [and omega]; her neck, [beta and psi]; her shoulders [with hands], [gamma and chi]; her breast, delta [and phi]; her diaphragm, [epsilon and upsilon]; her belly, [zeta and tau]; her private parts, [eta and sigma]; her thighs, [theta and rho]; her knees, [iota and pi]; her shins, [kappa and omicron]; her ankles, [lambda and xi]; her feet, [mu and nu].” This is the body of Truth according to Marcus, this the shape of the element, this the character of the letter.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 310 · 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

Apart from alpha and delta, the letters are unreadable in the digital text; those in brackets are supplied from the parallel in Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.14.3. “With hands” is the editor's supplement.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.44.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/44/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.44.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/44/2/).