Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.3

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: Light shines down into darkness and the Spirit's fragrance spreads between, so that light and Spirit are both caught in the darkness below.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 506

Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν ἐστὶν ἄνω τὸ φῶς καὶ κάτω τὸ σκότος καὶ τούτων μέσον τὸ πνεῦμα, τὸ δὲ φῶς [ὡς] ἀκτὶς ἡλίου ἄνωθεν ἐλλάμπουσα εἰς τὸ ὑποκείμενον σκότος, ἡ δὲ τοῦ πνεύματος εὐωδία φέρεται μέσην ἔχουσα τάξιν καὶ ἐξικνεῖται, ὥσπερ ἡ τῶν θυμιαμάτων ὀσμὴ ἐπὶ τῷ πυρὶ φέρεται, τοιαύτης δὲ οὔσης τῆς δυνάμεως τῶν διῃρημένων τριχῶς, τοῦ πνεύματος καὶ τοῦ φωτὸς ὁμοῦ ἐστι κάτω ἡ δύναμις ἐν τῷ σκότει τῷ ὑποτεταγμένῳ.

English · Claude translation

Since, then, the light is above and the darkness below and the Spirit between them, and the light, [like] a ray of the sun, shines from above into the underlying darkness, and the fragrance of the Spirit, holding the middle rank, is borne along and reaches out, as the scent of incense is borne up on the fire; the power of the things divided in three being such, the power of the Spirit and of the light together is below in the darkness set beneath.

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. 10.11.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/11/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.11.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/11/3/).