Refutation of All Heresies 9.6.1

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: Hippolytus now faces the greatest task: refuting the heresies of his own day, which have troubled the church everywhere.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 440

Πολλοῦ τοίνυν τοῦ περὶ πασῶν αἱρέσεων γενομένου ἡμῖν ἀγῶνος μηθέν γε ἀνεξέλεγκτον καταλιποῦσι, περιλείπεται νῦν ὁ μέγιστος ἀγών, ἐκδιηγήσασθαι καὶ διελέγξαι τὰς ἐφʼ ἡμῖν ἐπαναστάσας αἱρέσεις, διʼ ὧν τινες ἀμαθεῖς καὶ τολμηροὶ διασκεδαννύειν ἐπεχείρησαν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, μέγιστον τάραχον κατὰ πάντα τὸν κόσμον ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς πιστοῖς ἐμβάλλοντες. Δοκεῖ γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν ἀρχηγὸν τῶν κακῶν γενομένην γνώμην ὁρμήσαντας διελέγξαι, τίνες αἱ ταύτης ἀρχαί, ὅπως εὔγνωστοι αἱ ἐκφυάδες αὐτῆς ἅπασι γενόμεναι καταφρονηθῶσι.

English · Claude translation

Since, then, our struggle concerning all the heresies has been great, and we have left nothing unrefuted, there now remains the greatest struggle: to narrate and refute the heresies that have risen up in our own time, through which certain ignorant and reckless men have attempted to scatter the church, casting the greatest disturbance among all the faithful throughout the whole world. For it seems right to attack the opinion that has become the leader of the evils and refute it, showing what its origins are, so that its offshoots, becoming well known to all, may be despised.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 440 · 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. 9.6.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/6/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.6.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/6/1/).