Refutation of All Heresies 4.3.1

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: All astrological prediction rests on fixing the horoscope, the rising sign.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 52

Ἀρχὴ μὲν οὖν καὶ ὥσπερ θεμέλιός ἐστι στῆσαι τὸν ὡροσκόπον. Ἀπὸ τούτου γὰρ τὰ λοιπὰ τῶν κέντρων λαμβάνεται τά τε ἀποκλίματα καὶ αἱ ἐπαναφοραὶ τά τε τρίγωνα καὶ τὰ τετράγωνα καὶ οἱ κατʼ αὐτὰ σχηματισμοὶ τῶν ἀστέρων, ἀπὸ δὲ πάντων τούτων αἱ προαγορεύσεις.

English · Claude translation

The beginning, then, and as it were the foundation, is to fix the horoscope. For from this the rest of the cardinal points are taken, and the declinations and the succeeding places, and the trines and squares and the configurations of the stars according to them; and from all these come the predictions.

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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.3.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/3/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.3.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/3/1/).