Refutation of All Heresies 8.11.1

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 424

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν αὐτάρκη νομίζω εἶναι τοῖς εὖ πεφρονηκόσι πρὸς ἐπίγνωσιν τῆς τῶν Δοκητῶν πολυπλόκου καὶ ἀσυστάτου αἱρέσεως, οἳ περὶ ὕλης μὲν ἀβάτου καὶ ἀκαταλήπτου λόγους ἐπικεχειρημένους ποιήσαντες, Δοκητὰς ἑαυτοὺς προσηγόρευσαν, ὧν οὐ τὸ δοκεῖν εἶναι τινὰς κατανοοῦμεν ματαΐζοντας, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐκ τοσαύτης ὕλης δοκὸν ἐν ὀφθαλμῷ φερομένην διελέγχομεν εἴ πως διαβλέψαι δυνηθῶσιν, εἰ δʼ οὐ, κἂν τὸ μὴ ἑτέρους τυφλῶσαι,

English · Claude translation

These things, then, I think are sufficient for right-minded people to recognize the tangled and incoherent heresy of the Docetae. Having composed labored discourses about impassable and incomprehensible matter, they called themselves Docetae. We perceive that it is not that they seem (dokein) to be someone that makes them foolish; rather, we are exposing the beam (dokos) from so much material that they carry in their eye, to see whether they can somehow see clearly; and if not, at least so that they may not blind others;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 424 · 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.

Scripture

Matt 7:3–5 · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

The Greek plays on δοκεῖν, Δοκηταί, and δοκός (Matt 7:3–5); ὕλη means both “matter” and “timber.” The sentence is difficult and the rendering tentative.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.11.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/11/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.11.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/11/1/).