Refutation of All Heresies 10.6.2

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: Natural philosophers derived everything from one principle (with or without quality: fire, air, water, earth) or from many.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 496

Καὶ οἱ μὲν τὴν φυσικὴν οὗτοι γεγένηνται, οὕτως δὲ διηγήσαντο· οἱ μὲν ἐξ ἑνὸς τὰ πάντα, οἱ δὲ ἐκ πλειόνων· καὶ τῶν ἐξ ἑνὸς οἱ μὲν ἐξ ἀποίου, οἱ δὲ ἐκ [τοῦ] ποιοῦ· καὶ τῶν ἐκ ποιοῦ οἱ μὲν ἐκ πυρός, οἱ δὲ ἐξ ἀέρος, οἱ δὲ ἐξ ὕδατος, ἄλλοι δὲ ἐκ γῆς·

English · Claude translation

And these are the ones who became natural philosophers, and they gave an account thus: some said all things are from one, others from more than one; and of those from one, some from what is without quality, others from what has quality; and of those from what has quality, some from fire, others from air, others from water, others from earth;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 496 · 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. 10.6.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/6/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.6.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/6/2/).