Refutation of All Heresies 4.43.11

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: The elements' number values are reduced by nines, since the circle of 360 degrees is made of nines.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 110

καὶ αὐτὰ δὲ τὰ στοιχεῖα ψηφιζόμενα καὶ ἀναλυόμενα καθʼ ὑφαίρεσιν ἐννεάδων λήγει οἰκείως, ἃ μὲν εἰς τὸν ἀρρενικὸν ἀριθμὸν, ἃ δὲ εἰς τὸν θηλυκόν· ὑφαιρεῖται δὲ πάλιν ἡ ἐννὰς διὰ ταύτην τὴν αἰτίαν, διὰ τὸ τὰς τριακοσίας ἑξήκοντα τοῦ ὅλου μοίρας ἐξ ἐννεάδων συνίστασθαι καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὰ τέτταρα πλινθία τοῦ κόσμου ἐνενήκοντα μοιρῶν περιγεγράφθαι τελείων·

English · Claude translation

and the elements themselves, reckoned and reduced by subtracting nines, end fittingly, some in the male number and some in the female. The nine, again, is subtracted for this reason, that the three hundred and sixty degrees of the whole are composed of nines, and for this reason the four quarters of the world are marked out by ninety complete degrees;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 110 · 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. 4.43.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/43/11/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.43.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/43/11/).