Refutation of All Heresies 9.18.1

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, 470

Ἰουδαίων μὲν ἀρχῆθεν ἓν ἦν ἔθος· εἷς γὰρ ὁ τούτοις δοθεὶς παρὰ θεοῦ διδάσκαλος Μωσῆς, καὶ εἷς ὁ διὰ τούτου νόμος, μία δὲ ἔρημος χώρα, καὶ ἓν ὄρος τὸ Σινᾶ· εἷς γὰρ ὁ τούτοις νομοθετήσας θεός. Αὖθις δὲ διαβάντες τὸν Ἰορδάνην ποταμὸν καὶ τὴν δορύκτητον γῆν κληρονομήσαντες διαφόρως τὸν τοῦ θεοῦ νόμον διέσπασαν, ἄλλος ἄλλως ἐπινοῶν τὰ εἰρημένα, καὶ οὕτως διδασκάλους ἑαυτοῖς ἐπεγείραντες, δόξας αἱρέσεων ἐφευρόντες εἰς μερισμὸν ἐχώρησαν, ὧν τὴν διαφορὰν ἐκθήσομαι.

English · Claude translation

Among the Jews there was from the beginning one custom; for one was the teacher given to them by God, Moses, and one the law through him, one the desert country, and one the mountain, Sinai; for one was the God who gave them the law. But again, having crossed the river Jordan and inherited the land won by the spear, they tore apart God's law in different ways, each thinking differently about what was said; and so, raising up teachers for themselves and inventing opinions of sects, they went on to division, whose differences I shall set out.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 470 · 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.

Notes

Translation notes

αἵρεσις here is rendered “sect” in a neutral sense.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent: Αὖθις): Αὗθις → Αὖθις.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.18.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/18/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.18.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/18/1/).