Refutation of All Heresies 4.28.10

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: A leather tube or a rolled book can serve the same purpose.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 92

Εἰ δὲ καὶ σκύτος τις ῥάβδῳ περιθεὶς ὑγρὸν ξηράνας καὶ συναγαγὼν προσαρμόσῃ καὶ ἀποσπάσας τὴν ῥάβδον αὐλίσκου δίκην τὸ σκύτος ἐργάσηται, τὸ ὅμοιον ποιεῖ. Εἰ δέ τι τούτων μὴ παρῇ, βίβλον λαβὼν ἐπισπασάμενος ἔνδοθεν ὅσον χρῄζει ἐπὶ μῆκος ἐκτείνας, τὰ ὅμοια ἐνεργεῖ.

English · Claude translation

And if one wraps a moist hide around a rod, dries it, draws it together and fits it, and, pulling out the rod, makes the hide into a pipe, it does the same. If none of these is at hand, taking a book roll and drawing out from inside as much as he needs, stretching it to length, he produces the same effect.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 92 · 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. 4.28.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/28/10/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.28.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/28/10/).