Refutation of All Heresies 4.43.13

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: Names reckoned by number reduce to male or female values.

Show

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 112

Διὸ πᾶν γεννώμενον ἐν τοῖς ἀρσενικοῖς ἀριθμοῖς ἀγαθοποιόν ἐστι, τὸ δὲ ἐν τοῖς θηλυκοῖς κακοποιόν ἐστιν, οἷον ψηφίζουσι· μονάς, ἵνα ἀπʼ αὐτῆς ἀρξώμεθα, γίνεται (??), ἃ λήγει εἰς μονάδα τῆς ἐννεάδος ὑφαιρεθείσης. Ὁμοίως ψήφισον· δυὰς γίνεται (??), ὕφελε τὰς ἐννεάδας, λήγει εἰς δυάδα, καὶ ἀποκαθίσταται ἕκαστον εἰς τὸ ἴδιον.

English · Claude translation

Therefore everything born under the male numbers is beneficent, and what is under the female is maleficent. For example, they reckon thus: monad, to begin from it, becomes …, which ends in a monad when the nine is subtracted. Likewise reckon: dyad becomes …; subtract the nines, it ends in a dyad; and each is restored to its own.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 112 · 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 numbers could not be read by the digitizers (marked (??) in the digital text).

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.43.13 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/43/13/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 4.43.13 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/43/13/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage