Refutation of All Heresies 5.12.4

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 Peratae say a threefold Christ came down in Herod's time bearing the powers of all three worlds.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 178

Ἄνωθεν δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγεννησίας καὶ τῆς πρώτης τοῦ κόσμου τομῆς, καθεστηκότος λοιπὸν τοῦ κόσμου ἐπὶ συντελείᾳ, κατεληλυθέναι διʼ αἰτίας, ἃς ὕστερον ἐροῦμεν, ἐν τοῖς Ἡρώδου χρόνοις τριφυῆ τινὰ καὶ τρισώματον καὶ τριδύναμον ἄνθρωπον καλούμενον Χριστόν, ἀπὸ τῶν τριῶν ἔχοντα τοῦ κόσμου μερῶν ἐν ἑαυτῷ πάντα τὰ συγκρίματα καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις.

English · Claude translation

From above, from the unbegottenness and the first section of the world, when the world was at last established at its consummation, there came down, for reasons we shall state later, in the times of Herod, a man of threefold nature, three bodies, and three powers, called Christ, having in himself all the compounds and powers from the three parts of the world.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 178 · 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, Christology

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.12.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/12/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.12.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/12/4/).