Refutation of All Heresies 6.46.2

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: The nine mute consonants belong to Father and Truth, the eight semivowels to Word and Life, the seven vowels to Man and Church.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 314

Τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἄφωνα γράμματα ἐννέα νόμισον εἶναι τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τῆς ἀληθείας διὰ τὸ ἀφώνους αὐτοὺς εἶναι, τουτέστιν ἀρρήτους καὶ ἀνεκλαλήτους· τὰ δὲ ἡμίφωνα, ὀκτὼ ὄντα, τοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς ζωῆς, διὰ τὸ μέσα ὥσπερ ὑπάρχειν τῶν τε ἀφώνων καὶ τῶν φωνηέντων, καὶ ἀναδεδέχθαι τῶν μὲν ὕπερθεν τὴν ἀπόρροιαν, τῶν δὲ ὑπʼ αὐτὰ τὴν ἀναφοράν· τὰ δὲ φωνήεντα, καὶ αὐτὰ ἑπτὰ ὄντα, τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ τῆς ἐκκλησίας, ἐπεὶ διὰ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἡ φωνὴ προελθοῦσα ἐμόρφωσε τὰ ὅλα· ὁ γὰρ ἦχος τῆς φωνῆς μορφὴν αὐτοῖς περιεποίησεν.

English · Claude translation

Consider the nine mute letters to belong to the Father and Truth, because they are voiceless, that is, ineffable and unspeakable; the semivowels, being eight, to Word and Life, because they are as it were in the middle between the mutes and the vowels, and have received the outflow from those above and the ascent of those below; and the vowels, themselves seven, to Man and Church, since through Man the voice came forth and gave form to all things; for the sound of the voice clothed them with form.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 314 · 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. 6.46.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/46/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.46.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/46/2/).