Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.3

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: Simon misread Moses' “God is a consuming fire” to make fire the principle of all things, borrowing from Heraclitus.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 236

Λέγει δὲ ὁ Σίμων μεταφράζων τὸν νόμον Μωϋσέως ἀνοήτως τε καὶ κακοτέχνως· Μωσέως γὰρ λέγοντος, ὅτι ὁ θεὸς πῦρ φλέγον ἐστὶ καὶ καταναλίσκον, δεξάμενος τὸ λεχθὲν ὑπὸ Μωσέως οὐκ ὀρθῶς, πῦρ εἶναι τῶν ὅλων λέγει τὴν ἀρχήν, οὐ νοήσας τὸ εἰρημένον, ὅτι θεὸς οὐ πῦρ, ἀλλὰ πῦρ φλέγον καὶ καταναλίσκον, οὐκ αὐτὸν διασπῶν μόνον τὸν νόμον Μωσέως, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν σκοτεινὸν Ἡράκλειτον συλαγωγῶν.

English · Claude translation

Simon, paraphrasing the law of Moses senselessly and with bad craft, says this: since Moses says that God is a burning and consuming fire, Simon, taking what Moses said wrongly, says that fire is the principle of all things. He did not understand what was said, that God is not fire, but a burning and consuming fire; and so he not only tears apart the law of Moses itself but also plunders Heraclitus the Obscure.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 236 · 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.

Scripture

Deut 4:24 · allusion, high confidence

Extrabiblical texts

Heraclitus (Heraclitus (fragments)) · allusion, medium confidence

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.9.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/9/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.9.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/9/3/).