Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.11

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: Eden's twelve angels form four groups, the four rivers of paradise, and rule the world.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 220–222

Κτισθέντων δὲ πάντων, ὡς γέγραπται παρὰ τῷ Μωϋσῇ, οὐρανοῦ τε καὶ γῆς καὶ τῶν ἐν αὐτῇ, εἰς τέτταρας ἀρχὰς διῃρέθησαν οἱ δώδεκα τῆς μητρὸς ἄγγελοι, καὶ καλεῖται τούτων ἕκαστον τεταρτημόριον ποταμός, Φεισὼν καὶ Γεὼν καὶ Τίγρις καὶ Εὐφράτης, ὡς, φησί, λέγει Μωϋσῆς· οὗτοι ἐμπεριέρχονται οἱ δώδεκα ἄγγελοι εἰς τέτταρα μέρη συμπεριπεπλεγμένοι καὶ διέπουσι τὸν κόσμον, σατραπικήν τινα ἔχοντες κατὰ τοῦ κόσμου παρὰ τῆς Ἐδὲμ ἐξουσίαν.

English · Claude translation

“When all things had been created, as it is written in Moses, heaven and earth and what is in it, the twelve angels of the mother were divided into four principalities, and each of these quarters is called a river, Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates, as,” he says, “Moses says. These twelve angels, intertwined in four parts, go around and govern the world, holding from Eden a kind of satrap's authority over the world.”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 220–222 · 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.

Scripture

Gen 2:10–14 · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.26.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/26/11/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.26.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/26/11/).