Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.22

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 Naassenes turn to the Egyptian mysteries of Isis.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 142

Οὗτος ἐστὶν ὁ ἀπόρρητος αὐτοῖς λόγος καὶ μυστικός. Λέγουσιν οὖν, ὅτι Αἰγύπτιοι, πάντων ἀνθρώπων μετὰ τοὺς Φρύγας ἀρχαιότεροι καθεστῶτες καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀνθρώποις ὁμολογουμένως τελετὰς καὶ ὄργια θεῶν πάντων ὁμοῦ μεταδόντες πρῶτοι καὶ κατηγγελκότες ἰδέας καὶ ἐνεργείας, ἱερὰ καὶ σεβάσμια καὶ ἀνεξαγόρευτα τοῖς μὴ τετελεσμένοις τὰ Ἴσιδος ἔχουσι μυστήρια·

English · Claude translation

This is their secret and mystic doctrine. They say, then, that the Egyptians, who are older than all men after the Phrygians, and who, as all other men agree, were the first to impart to them the rites and orgies of all the gods together and to proclaim their forms and activities, possess the mysteries of Isis, holy, venerable, and not to be divulged to the uninitiated;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 142 · 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. 5.7.22 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/22/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.22 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/22/).