Refutation of All Heresies 6.41.1

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.

Summary: Marcus was thought to prophesy and taught his disciples that, belonging to the perfect power, they could sin without danger.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 300

Τοιαῦτα δὲ καὶ ἕτερα ἐπεχείρει ὁ πλάνος ποιεῖν· διὸ ὑπὸ τῶν ἀπατωμένων ἐδοξάζετο, καὶ ποτὲ αὐτὸς ἐνομίζετο προφητεύειν, ποτὲ δὲ καὶ ἑτέρους ἐποίει, ὅτε μὲν καὶ διὰ δαιμόνων ταῦτα ἐνεργῶν, ὅτε δὲ καὶ κυβεύων, ὡς προείπομεν. Πολλοὺς τοίνυν ἐξαφανίσας, καὶ πολλοὺς τοιούτους μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ γενομένους προεβίβασεν εὐκόλους μὲν εἶναι διδάξας πρὸς τὸ ἁμαρτάνειν, ἀκινδύνους δὲ διὰ τὸ εἶναι τῆς τελείας δυνάμεως καὶ μετέχειν τῆς ἀνεννοήτου ἐξουσίας·

English · Claude translation

Such things, and others, the deceiver attempted to do; therefore he was glorified by those he deceived, and sometimes he himself was thought to prophesy, and sometimes he made others do so, at times working these things through demons, at times by sleight of hand, as we said before. Having ruined many, then, he also brought forward many such people who became his disciples, teaching them to be ready to sin and free from danger, because they belonged to the perfect power and shared in the inconceivable authority;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 300 · 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, Ethics

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.41.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/41/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.41.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/41/1/).