Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.10

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 attend the rites of the Great Mother and imitate her castrated priests.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 170

Διὰ τούτους καὶ τοὺς τοιούτους λόγους παρεδρεύουσιν οὗτοι τοῖς λεγομένοις Μητρὸς μεγάλης μυστηρίοις, μάλιστα καθορᾶν νομίζοντες διὰ τῶν δρωμένων ἐκεῖ τὸ ὅλον μυστήριον. Οὐδὲν γὰρ ἔχουσι πλέον οὗτοι τῶν ἐκεῖ δρωμένων, πλὴν ὅτι οὐκ εἰσὶν ἀποκεκομμένοι, μόνον τὸ ἔργον τῶν ἀποκεκομμένων ἐκτελοῦσι.

English · Claude translation

Because of these and similar words they attend the so-called mysteries of the Great Mother, thinking that through what is done there they see the whole mystery most clearly. For they have nothing more than what is done there, except that they are not castrated; they only perform the work of the castrated.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 170 · 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. 5.9.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/9/10/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.9.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/9/10/).