Refutation of All Heresies 7.23.2

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: Basilides divides reality into the world and what is above it, with the Holy Spirit as the boundary between.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 364

διῄρηται γὰρ ὑπὸ Βασιλείδου τὰ ὄντα εἰς δύο τὰς προεχεῖς καὶ πρώτας διαιρέσεις, καὶ καλεῖται κατʼ αὐτὸν τὸ μέν τι κόσμος, τὸ δέ τι ὑπερκόσμια, τὸ δὲ μεταξὺ τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τῶν ὑπερκοσμίων μεθόριον πνεῦμα τοῦτο, ὅπερ ἐστὶ καὶ ἅγιον καὶ τῆς υἱότητος ἔχει μένουσαν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν ὀσμήν —

English · Claude translation

for the things that exist are divided by Basilides into two chief and first divisions, and according to him one is called the world, the other the supramundane things; and the boundary between the world and the supramundane things is this Spirit, which is also holy and has the scent of the Sonship remaining in itself —

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 364 · 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. 7.23.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/23/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.23.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/23/2/).