Refutation of All Heresies 4.14.19

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: Some diviners count only vowels or treat classes of letters separately.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 78–80

Τινὲς δὲ κατὰ τὸν ἑβδοματικὸν μόνοις τοῖς φωνήεσι χρῶνται, ἄλλοι δὲ διαστέλλουσιν ἰδίᾳ μὲν τὰ φωνήεντα, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τὰ ἡμίφωνα, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τὰ ἄφωνα, καὶ τρεῖς τάξεις ποιήσαντες λαμβάνουσι τοὺς πυθμένας ἰδίᾳ μὲν τῶν φωνηέντων, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τῶν ἡμιφώνων, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τῶν ἀφώνων, καὶ συγκρίνουσι χωρὶς ἕκαστον.

English · Claude translation

Some, by the rule of seven, use only the vowels; others distinguish vowels by themselves, semivowels by themselves, and mutes by themselves, and making three classes take the roots of the vowels by themselves, of the semivowels by themselves, and of the mutes by themselves, and compare each separately.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 78–80 · 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. 4.14.19 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/14/19/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.14.19 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/14/19/).