Refutation of All Heresies 1.8.12

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: Anaxagoras explained earthquakes, the origin of living things, and the sex of offspring.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 22

Σεισμοὺς δὲ γίνεσθαι τοῦ ἄνωθεν ἀέρος εἰς τὸν ὑπὸ γῆν ἐμπίπτοντος· τούτου γὰρ κινουμένου καὶ τὴν ὀχουμένην γῆν ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ σαλεύεσθαι. Ζῶα δὲ τὴν μὲν ἀρχὴν ἐν ὑγρῷ γενέσθαι, μετὰ ταῦτα δὲ ἐξ ἀλλήλων, καὶ ἄρρενας μὲν γίνεσθαι, ὅταν ἀπὸ τῶν δεξιῶν μερῶν ἀποκριθὲν τὸ σπέρμα τοῖς δεξιοῖς μέρεσι τῆς μήτρας κολληθῇ, τὰ δὲ θήλεα κατὰ τοὐναντίον.

English · Claude translation

Earthquakes occur when the air above falls into the air beneath the earth; for when this is moved, the earth riding on it is shaken by it. Living things came into being at first in moisture, and afterward from one another; males are produced when the seed separated from the right-hand parts sticks to the right-hand parts of the womb, and females the opposite way.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 22 · 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. 1.8.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/8/12/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.8.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/8/12/).