Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 1.20.4

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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: Aristotle held that the soul survives only for a time and then vanishes into the fifth element.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 38

Ὁ μὲν γὰρ Πλάτων ἀθάνατον, ὁ δὲ Ἀριστοτέλης ἐπιδιαμένειν καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα καὶ ταύτην ἐναφανίζεσθαι τῷ πέμπτῳ σώματι, ὃ ὑποτίθεται εἶναι μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων τεσσάρων, τοῦ τε πυρὸς καὶ τῆς γῆς καὶ τοῦ ὕδατος καὶ τοῦ ἀέρος λεπτότερον, οἷον πνεῦμα.

English · Claude translation

For Plato calls it immortal, while Aristotle says it survives for a time and after this it too vanishes into the fifth body, which he supposes to exist along with the other four, fire, earth, water, and air, being finer than they, like breath.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 38 · 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.20.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/20/4/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 1.20.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/20/4/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage