Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 10.16.1

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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: Summary of the Docetae: God is like a fig seed from which came three Aeons and then countless others.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 518–520

Οἱ δὲ Δοκηταὶ τοιαῦτα λέγουσιν· εἶναι τὸν πρῶτον θεὸν ὡς σπέρμα συκῆς, ἐκ δὲ τούτου ἐληλυθέναι τρεῖς αἰῶνας, ὡς τὸ πρέμνον καὶ τὰ φύλλα καὶ τὸν καρπόν· τούτους δὲ προβεβληκέναι (??) αἰῶνας, ἕκαστον (??)· ἡνῶσθαι δὲ αὐτοὺς κατὰ δέκα πάντας, μόνον δὲ διαθέσεσι διαφέρειν τινὰς τινῶν πρώτους. Προβεβλῆσθαι δὲ ἀπειράκις ἀπείρους αἰῶνας, καὶ εἶναι τοὺς πάντας ἀρρενοθήλεας.

English · Claude translation

The Docetae say things like this: that the first God is like a fig seed, and from it came three Aeons, like the trunk, the leaves, and the fruit; and that these projected … Aeons, each …; and that they are all united by tens, and differ from one another only in their dispositions, some being first. And infinitely infinite Aeons were projected, and all are male-female.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 518–520 · 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

  • See 8.8–11. Numerals are unreadable in the digital text (probably thirty and ten).

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.16.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/16/1/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 10.16.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/16/1/).

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