Refutation of All Heresies 6.15.1

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, 246

Ὁ οὖν ποταμός, φησίν, ὁ ἐκπορευόμενος ἐξ Ἐδὲμ εἰς τέσσαρας ἀφορίζεται ἀρχάς, ὀχετοὺς τέσσαρας, τουτέστιν εἰς τέσσαρας αἰσθήσεις τοῦ γεννωμένου, ὅρασιν, ἀκοήν, ὄσφρησιν, γεῦσιν καὶ ἁφήν. Ταύτας γὰρ ἔχει μόνας τὰς αἰσθήσεις ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ πλασσόμενον τὸ παιδίον. Οὗτος, φησίν, ἐστὶν ὁ νόμος, ὃν ἔθηκε Μωσῆς, καὶ πρὸς τοῦτον αὐτὸν τὸν νόμον γέγραπται τῶν βιβλίων ἕκαστον, ὡς αἱ ἐπιγραφαὶ δηλοῦσι.

English · Claude translation

“The river, then,” he says, “that goes out of Eden is divided into four principles, four channels, that is, into the senses of the offspring: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. For the child being formed in paradise has only these senses. This,” he says, “is the law that Moses laid down, and each of the books is written with reference to this very law, as the titles show.”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 246 · 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

Gen 2:10 · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

The text says “four” but lists five senses, one for each book of Moses.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): Ὁ οὗν ποταμός → Ὁ οὖν ποταμός.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.15.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/15/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.15.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/15/1/).