Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.8

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, 32

Οἱ δὲ καὶ ὡρισμένους, ὅταν λέγῃ, ὁ μὲν δὴ μέγας ἐν οὐρανῷ Ζεὺς πτηνὸν ἄρμα ἐλαύνων, καὶ ὅταν γενεαλογῇ τοὺς Οὐρανοῦ παῖδας καὶ Γῆς. Οἱ δὲ συστήσασθαι μὲν αὐτὸν θεούς γενητούς, καὶ διὰ μὲν τὸ γεγενῆσθαι πάντως αὐτοὺς φθαρῆναι ἀνάγκην ἔχειν, διὰ δὲ τὴν βούλησιν τοῦ θεοῦ ἀθανάτους εἶναι, ἐν ᾧ προσθεὶς λέγει· θεὸς θεῶν, ὧν ἐγὼ δημιουργός τε καὶ πατήρ, ἄλυτα ἐμοῦ γε θέλοντος, ὡς ἄν εἰ λυθῆναι αὐτὰ θέλει, ῥᾳδίως λυθησόμενα.

English · Claude translation

Others say a definite number, when he says, "Great Zeus in heaven, driving his winged chariot," and when he gives the genealogy of the children of Heaven and Earth. Others say he made the gods generated, and because they were generated they must necessarily perish, but by the will of God they are immortal, in the passage where he adds: "Gods of gods, of whom I am the maker and father, indissoluble so long as I will it"; so that if he wished them dissolved, they would easily be dissolved.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 32 · 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.

Extrabiblical texts

Plato, Phaedr. 246e (Plato (works)) · quotation, high confidence
Plato, Tim. 41a (Plato (works)) · quotation, high confidence

Notes

Translation notes

The quotations are Plato, Phaedrus 246e, and Timaeus 41a; the genealogy is Timaeus 40e.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (misread letter in the digital text): πιηνὸν → πτηνὸν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.19.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/19/8/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.19.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/19/8/).