Refutation of All Heresies 10.31.5

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: If the philosophical nations are later than the God-fearing, all other nations are too.

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Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 534–536

Εἰ δὲ τὰ περὶ φιλοσοφίας ἐναποσχοληθέντα ἔθνη πολλῷ μεταγενέστερα τοῦ τῶν θεοσεβῶν γένους καὶ κατακλυσμοῦ πάντως δείκνυται, πῶς οὐχὶ καὶ βάρβαρα καὶ ὅσα ἐν κόσμῳ γνωστά τε καὶ ἄγνωστα νεώτερα τούτων φανήσεται;

English · Claude translation

And if the nations occupied with philosophy are shown to be much later than the race of the God-fearing and the flood, how will not the barbarians too, and all the nations in the world, known and unknown, appear younger than these?

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 534–536 · 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. 10.31.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/31/5/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 10.31.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/31/5/).

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