Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.30

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, 144–146

Καὶ ὅτι οὗτος, τουτέστιν ὁ τοιοῦτος Ἑρμῆς, ψυχαγωγός, φησίν, ἐστὶ καὶ ψυχοπομπὸς καὶ ψυχῶν αἴτιος, οὐδὲ τοὺς ποιητὰς τῶν ἐθνῶν λανθάνει λέγοντας οὕτως· Ἑρμῆς δὲ ψυχὰς Κυλλήνιος ἐξεκαλεῖτο ἀνδρῶν μνηστήρων, οὐ τῶν Πηνελόπης, φησίν, ὦ κακοδαίμονες, μνηστήρων, ἀλλὰ τῶν ἐξυπνισμένων καὶ ἀνεμνησμένων, ἐξ οἵης τιμῆς [τε] καὶ [ὅσσου] μήκεος ὄλβου, τουτέστιν ἀπὸ τοῦ μακαρίου ἄνωθεν ἀνθρώπου ἢ ἀρχανθρώπου ἢ Ἀδάμαντος, ὡς ἐκείνοις δοκεῖ, κατηνέχθησαν ὧδε εἰς πλάσμα τὸ πήλινον, ἵνα δουλεύσωσι τῷ ταύτης τῆς κτίσεως δημιουργῷ Ἰαλδαβαώθ, θεῷ πυρίνῳ, ἀριθμὸν τετάρτῳ· οὕτως

English · Claude translation

And that this one, that is, such a Hermes, is the leader and escort of souls and the cause of souls, he says, does not escape even the poets of the nations, who say thus: "Cyllenian Hermes called forth the souls of the suitor men"; not of Penelope's suitors, he says, O wretches, but of those who have been awakened and have remembered "from what honor and how great a length of bliss," that is, from the blessed Man above, or Primal Man, or Adamas, as they think, they were brought down here into the clay mold, so as to serve the fashioner of this creation, Ialdabaoth, a fiery god, fourth in number; for so

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 144–146 · 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.

Extrabiblical texts

Homer, Od. 24.1–2 (Homer, Odyssey) · quotation, high confidence
Empedocles, fragment 119 (Empedocles (fragments)) · quotation, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

The quotations are Homer, Odyssey 24.1–2, and Empedocles, fragment 119 (Diels–Kranz 31 B119). The pun is on μνηστῆρες "suitors" and μιμνῄσκεσθαι "to remember". Ialdabaoth is the Gnostic name of the Demiurge, the lower maker of the material world.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.30 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/30/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.30 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/30/).