Refutation of All Heresies 1.20.6

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 placed evil below the moon and held only the world soul immortal.

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Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 38–40

Τὰ δὲ κακά φησι καὶ οὗτος κατʼ ἐναντίωσιν τῶν ἀγαθῶν γενέσθαι, καὶ εἶναι ὑπὸ τὸν περὶ σελήνην τόπον, ὑπὲρ δὲ σελήνην μηκέτι. Τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν τὴν μὲν ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου ἀθάνατον εἶναι, καὶ αὐτὸν τὸν κόσμον ἀΐδιον, τὴν δὲ καθʼ ἕκαστον, ὡς προείπομεν, ἀφανίζεσθαι.

English · Claude translation

He too says that evils arise by opposition to goods, and that they exist below the region of the moon, but no longer above the moon. The soul of the whole world is immortal, and the world itself everlasting; but the individual soul, as we said, vanishes.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 38–40 · 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. 1.20.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/20/6/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 1.20.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/20/6/).

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