Refutation of All Heresies 4.10.1

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.

Summary: Hippolytus prefers Plato's double and triple ratios to the astronomers' conflicting figures.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 68

Περὶ σελήνης δὲ ἐλέχθη τὸ πρότερον. Τὰ μὲν οὖν ἀποστήματα καὶ βάθη τῶν σφαιρῶν οὕτως Ἀρχιμήδης ἀποδίδωσιν, ἑτέρως δὲ ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν Ἱππάρχῳ εἴρηται καὶ ἑτέρως Ἀπολλωνίῳ τῷ μαθηματικῷ. Ἡμῖν δὲ ἐξαρκεῖ τῇ Πλατωνικῇ δόξῃ ἑπομένοις διπλάσια μὲν καὶ τριπλάσια οἴεσθαι τῶν πλανωμένων τὰ ἀπʼ ἀλλήλων διαστήματα· σώζεται γὰρ οὕτως ὁ λόγος τοῦ καθʼ ἁρμονίαν συγκεῖσθαι τὸ πᾶν ἐν λόγοις συμφώνοις κατὰ ταῦτα τὰ ἀποστήματα.

English · Claude translation

Concerning the moon it was said before. So Archimedes gives the distances and depths of the spheres thus; Hipparchus has spoken otherwise about them, and otherwise Apollonius the mathematician. For us, following the Platonic view, it is enough to think that the distances of the planets from one another are double and triple; for in this way the principle is preserved that the universe is composed in harmony, in concordant ratios according to these distances.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 68 · 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. 4.10.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/10/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.10.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/10/1/).