Refutation of All Heresies 4.2.3

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: Because the Peratae rely on astrology, Hippolytus first refutes astrology itself.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 52

Οἱ ταύτην τὴν μάθησιν ἠσκηκότες Χαλδαίων γενόμενοι ὁμιληταὶ ὡς ξένα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις καὶ θαυμάσια μεταδιδόντες μυστήρια τοῖς ὀνόμασιν ἐναλλάξαντες αἵρεσιν ἔνθεν συνεστήσαντο· ἀλλʼ ἐπεὶ τὴν τῶν ἀστρολόγων τέχνην ὡς δυνατὴν νομίσαντες ταῖς τε παρʼ αὐτῶν μαρτυρίαις χρώμενοι τὰ ἐπιχειρούμενα διʼ αὐτῶν πιστεύεσθαι θέλουσι, τανῦν καθὼς ἔδοξε τὴν ἀστρολογικὴν ἐπιδείξομεν ἀσύστατον, αὖθις μέλλοντες καὶ τὴν Περατικὴν ἀκυροῦν ὡς κλάδον ἐκ ῥίζης ἀσυστάτου πεφυκυῖαν.

English · Claude translation

Those who practiced this learning, having become disciples of the Chaldeans, passing on to men mysteries as though strange and marvelous, changing the names, put together a heresy from there. But since, thinking the art of the astrologers valid and using their testimonies, they want their undertakings to be believed on that basis, we shall now, as we decided, show astrology to be incoherent, intending afterward also to invalidate the Peratic heresy as a branch grown from an incoherent root.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 52 · 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

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.2.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/2/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.2.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/2/3/).