Refutation of All Heresies 1.9.4

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: Archelaus argued the earth is hollow, since the sun does not rise and set for all at once.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 24

Ἐπικλιθῆναι δὲ τὸν οὐρανόν φησι, καὶ οὕτως τὸν ἥλιον ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ποιῆσαι φῶς καὶ τόν τε ἀέρα ποιῆσαι διαφανῆ καὶ τὴν γῆν ξηράν. Λίμνην γὰρ εἶναι τὸ πρῶτον, ἅτε κύκλῳ μὲν οὔσαν ὑψηλήν, μέσον δὲ κοίλην. Σημεῖον δὲ φέρει τῆς κοιλότητος, ὅτι ὁ ἥλιος οὐχ ἅμα ἀνατέλλει τε καὶ δύεται πᾶσιν, ὅπερ ἔδει συμβαίνειν, εἴπερ ἦν ὁμαλή.

English · Claude translation

He says that the heaven was tilted, and so the sun made light upon the earth, made the air transparent and the earth dry. For at first it was a lake, being high around its circle and hollow in the middle. As a sign of the hollowness he offers the fact that the sun does not rise and set for all at the same time, which would have to happen if it were level.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 24 · 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. 1.9.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/9/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.9.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/9/4/).