Refutation of All Heresies 10.12.1

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 510

Ὁ δὲ πάνσοφος Σίμων οὕτως λέγει· ἀπέραντον εἶναι δύναμιν, ταύτην ῥίζωμα τῶν ὅλων εἶναι. Ἔστι δὲ, φησίν, ἡ ἀπέραντος δύναμις, τὸ πῦρ, κατʼ αὐτὸν οὐδὲν ἁπλοῦν, καθάπερ οἱ πολλοὶ ἁπλᾶ λέγοντες εἶναι τὰ [δὲ] τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα καὶ τὸ πῦρ ἁπλοῦν εἶναι νενομίκασιν, ἀλλʼ εἶναι τοῦ πυρὸς τὴν φύσιν διπλῆν, καὶ τῆς διπλῆς ταύτης καλεῖ τὸ μέν τι κρυπτόν, τὸ δὲ φανερόν· κεκρύφθαι δὲ τὰ κρυπτὰ ἐν τοῖς φανεροῖς τοῦ πυρός, καὶ τὰ φανερὰ τοῦ πυρὸς ὑπὸ τῶν κρυπτῶν γεγονέναι.

English · Claude translation

The all-wise Simon speaks thus: that there is an infinite power, and that this is the root of all things. And the infinite power, he says, is fire, according to him nothing simple, as the many, saying that the four elements are simple, have also supposed fire to be simple; but the nature of fire is double, and of this double nature he calls one part hidden and the other manifest; and the hidden things are hidden in the manifest things of the fire, and the manifest things of the fire have come to be from the hidden.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 510 · 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

Notes

Translation notes

“All-wise” is ironic. Simon was treated in Book 6.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (misread letter: ἡ): ᾑ ἀπέραντος → ἡ ἀπέραντος.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.12.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/12/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.12.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/12/1/).