Refutation of All Heresies 6.17.2

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, 248

Τρεῖς γὰρ, φησίν, εἰσὶν ἑστῶτες, καὶ ἄνευ τοῦ τρεῖς εἶναι ἑστῶτας αἰῶνας οὐ κοσμεῖται ὁ γέννητος ὁ κατʼ αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ τοῦ ὕδατος φερόμενος, ὁ καθʼ ὁμοίωσιν ἀναπεπλασμένος τέλειος ἐπ[ουράνιος], κατʼ οὐδεμίαν ἐπίνοιαν ἐνδεέστερος τῆς ἀγεννήτου δυνάμεως γενόμενος, τουτέστιν ὃ λέγουσιν·

English · Claude translation

“For there are three who stand,” he says, “and unless there are three standing Aeons, the begotten one is not set in order, the one who according to them is borne upon the water, refashioned according to likeness, perfect, [heavenly], having become in no conceivable respect inferior to the unbegotten power; that is what they say:

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 248 · 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

Notes

Translation notes

The bracketed word is the editor's supplement.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text; wrong breathing in the digital text): εἰσίν ἑστῶτες → εἰσὶν ἑστῶτες; εἷναι → εἶναι.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.17.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/17/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.17.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/17/2/).