Refutation of All Heresies 4.8.3

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 fixed stars move together, while the planets differ in period and distance.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 64

οἰκείᾳ ἰσχύϊ ὁμοίως καὶ ἀπὸ ἀνατολῆς ἐπὶ δύσιν ἑαυτῷ συμπεριάγειν. Μίαν δὲ καὶ ἄσχιστον εἰᾶσθαι φησὶ ταύτην τὴν φοράν, πρῶτον μὲν ἐπειδὴ πάντων τῶν ἀπλανῶν ἰσόχρονοι αἱ περιφοραὶ καὶ οὐ διῃρημέναι κατὰ πλείους καὶ ἐλάττους χρόνους· ἔπειτα ὅτι μίαν πάντες ἔχουσιν ἐπιφάνειαν τὴν τῆς ἐξωτάτω φορᾶς, οἱ δὲ πλανώμενοι καὶ εἰς χρόνους πλείονας καὶ διαφόρους τῶν κινήσεων καὶ εἰς ἀποστάσεις ἀπὸ γῆς ἀνίσους διῄρηνται·

English · Claude translation

own strength, even those that move the contrary way, the planets carried from west to east, likewise also from east to west. He says this motion was left one and undivided, first because the revolutions of all the fixed stars take equal time and are not divided into longer and shorter times; then because they all have one surface, that of the outermost motion; whereas the planets are divided both into longer and different times of their motions and into unequal distances from the earth.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 64 · 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. 4.8.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/8/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.8.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/8/3/).