Refutation of All Heresies 6.37.8

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: Hippolytus decodes the psalm: flesh is matter, soul the Demiurge, air the outer Sophia, ether the Pleroma, and the fruits the Aeons.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 290–292

σὰρξ ἐστὶν ἡ ὕλη κατʼ αὐτούς, ἥτις κρέμαται ἐκ τῆς ψυχῆς τοῦ δημιουργοῦ. Ψυχὴ δὲ ἀέρος ἐξοχεῖται, τουτέστιν ὁ δημιουργὸς τοῦ πνεύματος ἔξω πληρώματος. Ἀὴρ δὲ αἰθέρος ἐξοχεῖται, τουτέστιν ἡ ἔξω σοφία τῆς ἐντὸς ὅρου καὶ παντὸς πληρώματος. Ἐκ δὲ βυθοῦ καρποὶ φέρονται, ἡ ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς πᾶσα προβολὴ τῶν αἰώνων γενομένη.

English · Claude translation

flesh, according to them, is matter, which hangs from the soul of the Demiurge. Soul is borne out by air, that is, the Demiurge by the spirit outside the Pleroma. Air is borne out by ether, that is, the Sophia outside by the one within the Boundary and the whole Pleroma. And fruits are borne out of the depth: the whole emission of the Aeons that came from the Father.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 290–292 · 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. 6.37.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/37/8/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.37.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/37/8/).