Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.2

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: The Sethians' principles are light above, darkness below, and between them Spirit, like a subtle fragrance.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 506

Αἱ δὲ τῶν ἀρχῶν, φασίν, οὐσίαι εἰσὶ φῶς καὶ σκότος· τούτων δέ ἐστιν ἐν μέσῳ πνεῦμα ἀκέραιον· τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα τὸ τεταγμένον ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ σκότους, ὅπερ ἐστὶ κάτω, καὶ τοῦ φωτός, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἄνω, λέγουσιν, οὐκ ἔστι πνεῦμα ὡς ἀνέμου ῥιπὴ ἢ λεπτή τις αὖρα νοηθῆναι δυναμένη, ἀλλʼ οἱονεί τις ὀσμὴ μύρου ἢ θυμιάματος ἐκ συνθέσεως κατασκευαζομένου λεπτή, διοδεύουσα δύναμις ἀνεπινοήτῳ τινὶ καὶ κρείττονι λόγου φορᾷ εὐωδίας.

English · Claude translation

And the substances of the principles, they say, are light and darkness; and between these is pure Spirit. And the Spirit set between the darkness, which is below, and the light, which is above, they say, is not spirit as a gust of wind or some slight breeze that can be conceived, but like a subtle scent of ointment or of incense prepared by compounding, a power passing through with an inconceivable movement of fragrance, better than words.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 506 · 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.

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.11.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/11/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.11.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/11/2/).