Refutation of All Heresies 6.20.1

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, 256

Οἱ οὖν τούτου μαθηταὶ μαγείας ἐπιτελοῦσι καὶ ἐπαοιδάς, φίλτρα τε καὶ ἀγώγιμα καὶ τοὺς λεγομένους ὀνειροπόμπους δαίμονας ἐπιπέμπουσι πρὸς τὸ ταράσσειν οὓς βούλονται· ἀλλὰ καὶ παρέδρους τοὺς λεγομένους ἀσκοῦσιν, εἰκόνα τε τοῦ Σίμωνος ἔχουσιν εἰς Διὸς μορφὴν καὶ τῆς Ἑλένης ἐν μορφῇ Ἀθηνᾶς, καὶ ταύτας προσκυνοῦσι, τὸν μὲν καλοῦντες κύριον, τὴν δὲ κυρίαν.

English · Claude translation

His disciples, then, practice magic and incantations, and send love charms, spells of attraction, and the so-called dream-sending demons to trouble whomever they wish; they also cultivate the so-called familiar spirits. And they have an image of Simon in the form of Zeus and of Helen in the form of Athena, and they worship these, calling him Lord and her Lady.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 256 · 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 (wrong accent in the digital text): Οἱ οὗν τούτου → Οἱ οὖν τούτου.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.20.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/20/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.20.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/20/1/).