Refutation of All Heresies 7.18.1

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: When a member of the species “human” is picked out by a name such as Socrates, it is an individual substance.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 350

Ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἐστὶν ἡ οὐσία τριχῆ [διῃρημένη], ὡς ἔφην, γένος, εἶδος, ἄτομον, καὶ ἐθέμεθα τὸ γένος εἶναι ζῷον, τὸν δὲ ἄνθρωπον εἶδος τῶν πολλῶν ζῴων ἤδη κεχωρισμένον, συγκεχυμένον δὲ ὅμως ἔτι καὶ μήπω μεμορφωμένον εἰς εἶδος οὐσίας ὑποστατικῆς, ὀνόματι μορφώσας τὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ γένους ληφθέντα ἄνθρωπον ὀνομάζων Σωκράτην, ἢ Διογένην, ἤ τι τῶν πολλῶν ὀνομάτων ἕν, καὶ ἐπειδὰν ὀνόματι καταλάβω τὸν ἄνθρωπον εἶδος γένους γεγενημένον, ἄτομον καλῶ τὴν τοιαύτην οὐσίαν.

English · Claude translation

Since substance is [divided] threefold, as I said, into genus, species, and individual, and we have set down that the genus is animal, and that the human being is a species already separated from the many animals, but still confused and not yet shaped into a species of subsisting substance: when I give shape by a name to the human being taken from the genus, calling him Socrates or Diogenes or some one of the many names, and when I grasp by a name the human being who has become a species of the genus, I call such a substance an individual.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 350 · 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.18.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/18/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.18.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/18/1/).