Refutation of All Heresies 6.49.1

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: Marcus derives the twenty-four letters from the first powers by addition and multiplication.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 322

Καὶ περὶ τούτων μὲν οὕτως. Περὶ δὲ τῆς τῶν εἰκοσιτεσσάρων στοιχείων γενέσεως οὕτως λέγει· Τῇ μονότητι συνυπάρχειν ἑνότητα, ἐξ ὧν δύο προβολαί, μονάς τε καὶ τὸ ἕν, δὶς δύο οὖσαι τέσσαρες ἐγένοντο· δὶς γὰρ δύο τέσσαρες. Καὶ πάλιν αἱ δύο καὶ τέσσαρες εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συντεθεῖσαι τὸν τῶν ἓξ ἐφανέρωσαν ἀριθμόν, οὗτοι δὲ οἱ ἓξ τετραπλασιασθέντες τὰς εἰκοσιτέσσαρας.

English · Claude translation

So much about these things. And about the generation of the twenty-four letters he speaks thus: “With Oneness coexists Unity, from which come two emissions, the Monad and the One, which, being twice two, became four; for twice two is four. And again the two and the four, put together, revealed the number six; and these six, multiplied four times, made the twenty-four.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 322 · 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. 6.49.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/49/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.49.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/49/1/).