Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.10

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 veins feed the fetus with blood and the arteries bring it spirit through the aorta to the heart.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 244

αἱ δὲ δύο φλέβες, διʼ ὧν ῥεῖ καὶ φέρεται ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἐδὲμ τοῦ χωρίου τὸ αἷμα κατὰ τὰς καλουμένας πύλας τοῦ ἥπατος, αἵτινες τὸ γεννώμενον τρέφουσιν· αἱ δὲ ἀρτηρίαι, ἃς ἔφημεν ὀχετοὺς εἶναι πνεύματος, ἑκατέρωθεν περιλαβοῦσαι τὴν κύστιν κατὰ τὸ πλατὺ ὀστοῦν, πρὸς τὴν μεγάλην συνάπτουσιν ἀρτηρίαν, τὴν κατὰ ῥάχιν καλουμένην ἀορτήν, καὶ οὕτως διὰ τῶν παραθύρων ἐπὶ τὴν καρδίαν ὁδεῦσαν τὸ πνεῦμα κίνησιν ἐργάζεται τῶν ἐμβρύων.

English · Claude translation

and the two veins, through which the blood flows and is carried from the region Eden by the so-called gates of the liver, nourish the offspring; and the arteries, which we said are channels of spirit, embracing the bladder on either side by the broad bone, join the great artery along the spine called the aorta; and so the spirit, travelling through the side-doors to the heart, produces the movement of the embryos.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 244 · 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. 6.14.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/14/10/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.14.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/14/10/).