Refutation of All Heresies 4.5.1

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: If experts cannot fix the moment of birth, a layman cannot supply it either.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 58

Οὕτως ἀσύστατος δειχθήσεται ἡ κατὰ Χαλδαίους τέχνη. Εἰ δὲ ἐξ ἐπερωτήσεων φάσκοι τις σκοπεῖσθαι τοῦ πυνθανομένου τὴν γένεσιν ἢ περὶ οὗ ἐπερωτάτω, μηδὲ κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον δύνασθαι ἐφικνεῖσθαι ἐπὶ τὸ ἀκριβές. Εἰ γὰρ τοσαύτη τις ἐπιμέλεια ἱστόρηται κατʼ αὐτοὺς περὶ τὴν τέχνην καὶ μηδʼ αὐτοὶ ἐφικνοῦνται ἐπὶ τὸ ἀκριβές, καθὼς ἐπεδείξαμεν, πῶς ὁ ἰδιώτης κατείληφε τῆς ἀποτέξεως τὸν χρόνον ἀκριβῶς, ἵνα παρὰ τούτου μαθὼν ὁ Χαλδαῖος στήσῃ τὸν ὡροσκόπον ἀληθῶς;

English · Claude translation

Thus the art of the Chaldeans will be shown to be incoherent. And if someone should claim to examine the birth of an inquirer from his answers to questions, or the matter he is asking about, not even in this way can he reach precision. For if so much care is recorded among them concerning the art, and even they do not reach precision, as we have shown, how has the layman precisely grasped the time of delivery, so that the Chaldean, learning from him, may truly fix the horoscope?

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 58 · 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. 4.5.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/5/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.5.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/5/1/).