Refutation of All Heresies 1.2.9

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, 10

Ταύτην ὁ Πυθαγόρας ἔφη ἱερὰν τετρακτύν, πηγὴν ἀεννάου φύσεως ῥιζώματα ἔχουσαν ἐν ἑαυτῇ, καὶ ἐκ τούτου τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ πάντας ἔχειν τοὺς ἀριθμοὺς τὴν ἀρχήν. ὁ γὰρ ἕνδεκα καὶ ὁ δώδεκα καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ εἶναι ἐκ τοῦ δέκα μετέχουσι. Ταύτης τῆς δεκάδος, τοῦ τελείου ἀριθμοῦ, τὰ τέσσαρα καλεῖται μέρη ἀριθμός, μονάς, δύναμις, κύβος.

English · Claude translation

This Pythagoras called the sacred tetractys, "source of ever-flowing nature, having roots within itself," and from this number all numbers have their beginning. For eleven and twelve and the rest take the beginning of their being from ten. Of this decad, the perfect number, the four parts are called number, monad, power, cube.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 10 · 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

The phrase about the tetractys is from the Pythagorean oath, known from several ancient sources.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): τοῦ εἷναι → τοῦ εἶναι.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.2.9 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/2/9/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.2.9 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/2/9/).