Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.13

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: The Dragon lies between the two creations, keeping people from passing to the new one.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 122

Διὰ τὴν τοιαύτην οὖν αἰτίαν ἡ δευτέρα κτίσις, Κυνόσουρα, λογικῆς κτίσεως εἰκὼν ἕστηκεν ἐν οὐρανῷ· μέσος δὲ ὁ Δράκων τῶν δύο κτίσεων ὑποτείνεται, τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς μεγάλης κτίσεως κωλύων ἐπὶ τὴν μικρὰν κτίσιν μετελθεῖν, τά τε ἐν τῇ κτίσει καθεστηκότα, καθάπερ τὸν Ἐν γόνασι, παραφυλάσσων, τηρῶν πῶς καὶ τίνα τρόπον ἕκαστον ἐν τῇ μικρᾷ κτίσει καθέστηκε.

English · Claude translation

For this reason, then, the second creation, Cynosura, stands in heaven as an image of the rational creation; and the Dragon stretches between the two creations, preventing those from the great creation from passing over to the small creation, and watching over those established in the creation, like the Kneeler, observing how and in what way each one is established in the small creation.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 122 · 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.

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.48.13 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/48/13/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.48.13 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/48/13/).