Refutation of All Heresies 6.17.5

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, 250

Ἓν δὲ ὂν τὸ πῦρ τροπὰς στρέφεται δύο. Στρέφεται γὰρ, φησίν, ἐν τῷ ἀνδρὶ τὸ αἷμα, καὶ θερμὸν καὶ ξανθὸν ὡς πῦρ τυπούμενον, εἰς σπέρμα, ἐν δὲ τῇ γυναικὶ τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο αἷμα εἰς γάλα. Καὶ γίνεται ἡ τοῦ ἄρρενος τροπὴ γένεσις, ἡ δὲ τῆς θηλείας τροπὴ τροφὴ τῷ γεννωμένῳ. Αὕτη, φησίν, ἐστὶν ἡ φλογίνη ῥομφαία ἡ στρεφομένη φυλάσσειν τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ ξύλου τῆς ζωῆς.

English · Claude translation

Fire, being one, turns in two turnings. For in the man,” he says, “the blood, hot and yellow, stamped like fire, turns into seed, and in the woman this same blood turns into milk. And the male's turning becomes generation, and the female's turning nourishment for what is born. This,” he says, “is the flaming sword that turns to guard the way to the tree of life.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 250 · 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 3:24 · quotation, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text; wrong breathing in the digital text): τροπάς στρέφεται → τροπὰς στρέφεται; Αὔτη, φησίν → Αὕτη, φησίν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.17.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/17/5/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.17.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/17/5/).