Refutation of All Heresies 6.30.7

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: Sophia tried to beget alone like the Father, not knowing that only the unbegotten can do so.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 274

Ἠθέλησε μιμήσασθαι τὸν πατέρα καὶ γεννῆσαι καθʼ ἑαυτὴν δίχα τοῦ συζύγου, ἵνα μηδὲν ᾖ ἔργον ὑποδεέστερον τοῦ πατρὸς εἰργασμένη, ἀγνοοῦσα ὅτι ὁ μὲν ἀγέννητος, ὑπάρχων ἀρχὴ τῶν ὅλων καὶ ῥίζα καὶ βάθος καὶ βυθός, δυνατῶς ἔχει γεννῆσαι μόνος, γεννητὴ δὲ οὖσα ἡ σοφία καὶ μετὰ πλείονας γενομένη, τὴν τοῦ ἀγεννήτου δύναμιν οὐ δύναται ἔχειν.

English · Claude translation

She wished to imitate the Father and to beget by herself without her consort, so that she might accomplish a work in no way inferior to the Father's, not knowing that the unbegotten one, being the principle of all things and root and depth and abyss, is able to beget alone, whereas Sophia, being begotten and having come into being after many others, cannot have the power of the unbegotten.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 274 · 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

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.30.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/30/7/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.30.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/30/7/).