Refutation of All Heresies 5.6.4

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 132

Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα ἐπεκάλεσαν ἑαυτοὺς γνωστικούς, φάσκοντες μόνοι τὰ βάθη γινώσκειν· ἐξ ὧν ἀπομερισθέντες πολλοὶ πολυσχιδῆ τὴν αἵρεσιν ἐποίησαν οὖσαν μίαν, διαφόροις δόγμασι τὰ αὐτὰ διηγούμενοι, ὡς διελέγξει προβαίνων ὁ λόγος. Οὗτοι τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων παρὰ τὸν αὐτῶν λόγον τιμῶσιν ἄνθρωπον καὶ υἱὸν ἀνθρώπου.

English · Claude translation

After this they called themselves Gnostics, claiming that they alone know the depths; and many, splitting off from them, made the heresy, which is one, many-branched, describing the same things with different doctrines, as the account will prove as it proceeds. These, beyond all others, according to their own account, honor Man and the Son of Man.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 132 · 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

Rev 2:24 · echo, low confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

"Gnostics" means "those who know"; "the depths" echoes Rev 2:24.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (misread letter in the digital text): νἱὸν ἀνθρώπου → υἱὸν ἀνθρώπου.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.6.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/6/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.6.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/6/4/).