Refutation of All Heresies 7.38.1

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: Apelles taught a good God, a just creator, a fiery God who spoke to Moses, and a fourth cause of evil, called angels.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 410

Ἀπελλῆς δὲ ἐκ τούτων γενόμενος οὕτως λέγει· Εἶναι τινὰ θεὸν ἀγαθόν, καθὼς καὶ Μαρκίων ὑπέθετο, τὸν δὲ πάντα κτίσαντα εἶναι δίκαιον, ὃς τὰ γενόμενα ἐδημιούργησε, καὶ τρίτον τὸν Μωσεῖ λαλήσαντα, πύρινον δὲ τοῦτον εἶναι, εἶναι δὲ καὶ τέταρτον ἕτερον, κακῶν αἴτιον· τούτους δὲ ἀγγέλους ὀνομάζει.

English · Claude translation

Apelles, who came from these, says the following: that there is a certain good God, as Marcion too supposed, and that the one who created all things is just, who fashioned the things that have come into being; and a third, who spoke to Moses, and that this one is fiery; and that there is also a fourth, the cause of evils. And these he calls angels.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 410 · 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. 7.38.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/38/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.38.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/38/1/).