Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.1

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 124

Ἀλλʼ ἐπεὶ σχεδὸν πᾶσα αἵρεσις διὰ τῆς ἀριθμητικῆς τέχνης ἐφεῦρεν ἑβδομάδων μέτρα καὶ αἰώνων τινὰς προβολάς, ἄλλων ἄλλως τὴν τέχνην διασπώντων καὶ τοῖς ὀνόμασι μόνον διαλλασσόντων, τούτων δὲ αὐτοῖς διδάσκαλος γίνεται Πυθαγόρας, πρῶτος εἰς Ἕλληνας ἀπʼ Αἰγύπτου τοὺς τοιούτους ἀριθμοὺς παραδούς· δοκεῖ μηδὲ τοῦτο παραλιπεῖν, ἀλλὰ διὰ συντόμου δείξαντας ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν ζητουμένων ἀπόδειξιν χωρῆσαι.

English · Claude translation

But since almost every heresy has devised, by the art of arithmetic, measures of hebdomads and certain emanations of Aeons, some tearing the art apart in one way and others in another, and differing only in names, and since Pythagoras became their teacher in this, the first to hand down such numbers to the Greeks from Egypt, it seems best not to leave this out either, but to show it briefly and then proceed to the demonstration of what is being sought.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 124 · 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

Notes

Translation notes

"Hebdomads" are groups of seven; "emanations" (προβολαί) are the successive divine beings of the Gnostic systems.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.51.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/51/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.51.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/51/1/).