Refutation of All Heresies 4.3.2

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: Without the horoscope the whole Chaldean method collapses.

Show

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 52

ὅθεν ἀναιρεθέντος τοῦ ὡροσκόπου κατὰ ἀνάγκην οὐδὲ τὸ μεσουρανοῦν [ἢ δῦνον ἢ ἀντιμεσουρανοῦν] ἐστὶ γνώριμον, ἀκαταληπτουμένων δὲ τούτων συναφανίζεται πᾶσα [ἡ] Χαλδαϊκὴ μέθοδος. Ὅτι δὲ ἀνεύρετον αὐτοῖς ἐστὶ τὸ ὡροσκοποῦν ζώδιον, ποικίλως ἔστι διδάσκειν.

English · Claude translation

So if the horoscope is removed, necessarily neither the midheaven [nor the setting nor the anti-midheaven] is known, and when these cannot be grasped, the whole Chaldean method vanishes with them. That the sign in the horoscope cannot be discovered by them can be shown in various ways.

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.

Notes

Translation notes

  • The square brackets are the editor's.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.3.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/3/2/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 4.3.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/3/2/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage