Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.9

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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 Sethians borrow from Homer to describe the dark water that holds the fallen light.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 210

Καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ δὲ τὸ ὑποκείμενον κάτω σκοτεινόν, ὅτι δέδυκε τὸ φῶς, καὶ ἀνακομίσασθαι καὶ λαβεῖν ἄνωθεν δεῖ τὸν κατενηνεγμένον σπινθῆρα ἀπʼ αὐτοῦ, οὕτως ἐοίκασιν οἱ πάνσοφοι Σηθιανοὶ παρʼ Ὁμήρου λαβόντες λέγειν·

English · Claude translation

And the water lying below is dark because the light has sunk into it, and the spark brought down from above must be recovered and taken back up out of it; so the all-wise Sethians seem to say, taking it from Homer:

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 210 · 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

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.20.9 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/20/9/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 5.20.9 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/20/9/).

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