Refutation of All Heresies 7.23.4

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.

Summary: The great Archon rose to the firmament and, thinking nothing lay beyond, took himself for the highest, not knowing the third Sonship was greater.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 366

Ἀρρήτων γάρ, φησίν, ἐστὶν ἀρρητότερος καὶ δυνατῶν δυνατώτερος καὶ σοφῶν σοφώτερος, καὶ ὅ, τι ἂν εἴπῃς πάντων τῶν καλῶν κρείττων· οὗτος γεννηθεὶς ἐπῆρεν ἑαυτὸν καὶ μετεώρισε καὶ ἠνέχθη ὅλος ἄνω μέχρι τοῦ στερεώματος, τῆς δὲ ἀναδρομῆς καὶ τοῦ ὑψώματος τὸ στερέωμα τέλος εἶναι νομίσας, καὶ μηδὲ εἶναι μετὰ ταῦτα ὅλως μηδὲν ἐπινοήσας, ἐγένετο μὲν ὑποκειμένων πάντων, ὅσα ἦν λοιπὸν κοσμικά, σοφώτερος, δυνατώτερος, ἐκπρεπέστερος, φωτεινότερος, πᾶν ὅ, τι ἂν εἴπῃς καλὸν διαφέρον χωρὶς μόνης τῆς ὑπολελειμμένης υἱότητος ἔτι ἐν τῇ πανσπερμίᾳ· ἠγνόει γὰρ ὅτι ἐστὶν αὐτοῦ σοφωτέρα καὶ δυνατωτέρα καὶ κρείττων.

English · Claude translation

For he is, he says, more unspeakable than the unspeakable, more powerful than the powerful, wiser than the wise, and better than whatever beautiful things you might name. When he was born he lifted himself up and raised himself aloft and was carried whole upward as far as the firmament; and thinking the firmament to be the end of the ascent and height, and supposing that after it there was nothing at all, he became wiser, more powerful, more splendid, more luminous than all the things beneath, whatever was left that belonged to the world, surpassing in whatever beauty you might name, except only the Sonship still left behind in the seed-mass; for he did not know that it was wiser and more powerful and better than he.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 366 · 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. 7.23.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/23/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.23.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/23/4/).