Refutation of All Heresies 7.20.4

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, 356

Οὐδὲ γὰρ τῷ κόσμῳ, φησίν, ἐξαρκεῖ τὰ ὀνόματα, οὕτως ἐστὶ πολυσχιδής, ἀλλὰ ἐπιλέλοιπε· καὶ οὐ δέχομαι, φησί, κατὰ πάντων εὑρεῖν κυρίως ὀνόματα, ἀλλὰ δεῖ τῇ διανοίᾳ αὐτοῖς ὀνόματα τῶν ὀνομαζομένων τὰς ἰδιότητας ἀρρήτως ἐκλαμβάνειν. Ἡ γὰρ ὁμωνυμία ταραχὴν ἐμπεποίηκε καὶ πλάνην τῶν πραγμάτων τοῖς ἀκροωμένοις.

English · Claude translation

For not even for the world, he says, are the names sufficient, so manifold is it; they fall short. And I do not accept, he says, that one can find proper names for all things, but one must grasp with the mind, in an unspeakable way, the properties of the things named, and not by their names. For sameness of names has caused confusion and error about things among hearers.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 356 · 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

The Greek of the second sentence is awkward (αὐτοῖς ὀνόματα); the sense is that properties must be grasped by thought rather than by names.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.20.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/20/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.20.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/20/4/).