Refutation of All Heresies 5.11.1

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, 176

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οἱ Ναασσηνοὶ ἐπιχειροῦσιν, ἑαυτοὺς γνωστικοὺς ὀνομάζοντες· ἀλλʼ ἐπεὶ πολυκέφαλός ἐστιν ἡ πλάνη καὶ πολυσχιδὴς ὡς ἀληθῶς ἱστορουμένη ὕδρα, κατὰ μίαν ταύτης [τὰς] κεφαλὰς πατάξαντες διὰ τοῦ ἐλέγξαι, τῇ τῆς ἀληθείας ῥάβδῳ χρησάμενοι, ἅπαν τὸ θηρίον ἀναιρήσομεν· οὐδὲ γὰρ αἱ λοιπαὶ αἱρέσεις πολὺ ταύτης ἀπεμφαίνουσι, συνεχόμεναι ἐν πλάνης πνεύματι. Ἀλλʼ ἐπειδὴ τὰ ῥήματα καὶ τὰ ὀνόματα τοῦ ὄφεως ἐνδιαλλάξαντες πολλὰς εἶναι κεφαλὰς τοῦ ὄφεως ἠθέλησαν, οὐδὲ οὕτως ἐνδεήσομεν διελέγξαι ὡς βούλονται.

English · Claude translation

These, then, are the undertakings of the Naassenes, who name themselves Gnostics. But since error is many-headed and many-branched, truly like the Hydra of the story, by striking its heads one at a time through refutation, using the rod of truth, we shall destroy the whole beast; for the other heresies too do not differ much from this one, being held together in the spirit of error. But since, by changing the words and names of the serpent, they have wished the serpent to have many heads, even so we shall not fail to refute them as they wish.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 176 · 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

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text; wrong breathing in the digital text): Ταῦτα μὲν οὗν → Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν; τοῦ ὅφεως → τοῦ ὄφεως.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.11.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/11/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.11.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/11/1/).