Refutation of All Heresies 7.32.3

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: Carpocratians claim that anyone who despises the world-rulers as Jesus did gets the same power, and some think themselves superior even to the apostles.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 400

Τὴν οὖν ὁμοίως ἐκείνῃ τῇ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ψυχῇ δυναμένην καταφρονῆσαι τῶν κοσμοποιῶν ἀρχόντων ὁμοίως λαμβάνειν δύναμιν πρὸς τὸ πρᾶξαι τὰ ὅμοια. Διὸ καὶ εἰς τοῦτο τὸ τῦφος κατεληλύθασιν, ὥστε τοὺς μὲν ὁμοίους αὐτῷ εἶναι λέγουσι τῷ Ἰησοῦ, τοὺς δὲ καὶ ἔτι κατά τι δυνατωτέρους τινάς, ὄντας δὲ καὶ διαφορωτέρους τῶν ἐκείνου μαθητῶν, οἷον Πέτρου καὶ Παύλου καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ἀποστόλων,

English · Claude translation

So the soul that, like that soul of Christ, is able to despise the world-making rulers likewise receives power to do the same things. Therefore they have come to such a pitch of conceit that they say some are like Jesus himself, and others even more powerful in some respect, being even superior to his disciples, such as Peter and Paul and the rest of the apostles,

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 400 · 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. 7.32.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/32/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.32.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/32/3/).