Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 6.17.3

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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 one power is all relations to itself, mother, father, consort, and child, and the root of all.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 248

ἐγὼ καὶ σὺ ἕν, πρὸ ἐμοῦ σύ, τὸ μετὰ σὲ ἐγώ. Αὕτη, φησίν, ἐστὶ δύναμις μία, διῃρημένη ἄνω, κάτω, αὐτὴν γεννῶσα, αὐτὴν αὔξουσα, αὐτὴν ζητοῦσα, αὐτὴν εὑρίσκουσα, αὐτῆς μήτηρ οὖσα, αὐτῆς πατήρ, αὐτῆς ἀδελφή, αὐτῆς σύζυγος, αὐτῆς θυγάτηρ, αὐτῆς υἱός, μήτηρ, πατήρ, ἕν, οὖσα ῥίζα τῶν ὅλων.

English · Claude translation

‘I and you are one; before me, you; what is after you, I.’ This,” he says, “is one power, divided above and below, begetting itself, increasing itself, seeking itself, finding itself, being its own mother, its own father, its own sister, its own consort, its own daughter, its own son; mother, father, one, being the root of all things.”

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

Notes on the original text

  • Digital text corrected (misspelling in the digital text): μήτρη, πατήρ → μήτηρ, πατήρ.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.17.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/17/3/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 6.17.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/17/3/).

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