Refutation of All Heresies 6.34.5

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.

Summary: The breath of Gen 2:7 is the psychic inner man, housed in a material body made from the devilish substance.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 282–284

Τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ εἰρημένον· Καὶ ἔπλασεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, χοῦν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς λαβών, καὶ ἐνεφύσησεν εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ πνοὴν ζωῆς· καὶ ἐγένετο ὁ ἄνθρωπος εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν. Οὗτός ἐστι κατʼ αὐτοὺς ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος, ὁ ψυχικός, ἐν τῷ σώματι κατοικῶν τῷ ὑλικῷ, ὅ ἐστιν ὁ ὑλικός, φθαρτός, ἀτέλειος, ἐκ τῆς διαβολικῆς οὐσίας πεπλασμένος.

English · Claude translation

This is what was said: “And God formed man, taking dust from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life; and the man became a living soul.” This, according to them, is the inner man, the psychic one, dwelling in the material body, which is the material man, corruptible, imperfect, formed from the devilish substance.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 282–284 · 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 2:7 · quotation, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.34.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/34/5/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.34.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/34/5/).