Refutation of All Heresies 6.43.5

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: Hippolytus mocks the endless regress of letters out of which Marcus builds his Forefather.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 308

Εἰ οὖν ἡ πᾶσα ὑπόστασις τοῦ δέλτα εἰς ἄπειρον ἐκπίπτει, ἀεὶ ἄλλων ἄλλα γράμματα γεννώντων καὶ διαδεχομένων ἄλληλα, πόσῳ μᾶλλον ἐκείνου τοῦ στοιχείου μείζονʼ εἶναι τὸν πόντον τῶν γραμμάτων; καὶ εἰ τὸ ἓν γράμμα ἄπειρον οὕτως, ὁρᾶτε ὅλου τοῦ ὀνόματος τὸν βυθὸν τῶν γραμμάτων, ἐξ ὧν τὸν προπάτορα ἡ Μάρκου φιλοπονία, μᾶλλον δὲ ματαιοπονία βούλεται συνιστᾶν.

English · Claude translation

If, then, the whole substance of the delta falls into infinity, as ever other letters beget others and succeed one another, how much greater than that letter must the sea of letters be? And if the one letter is thus infinite, see the depth of the letters of the whole name, out of which the industry, or rather the futility, of Marcus wishes to compose the Forefather.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 308 · 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. 6.43.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/43/5/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.43.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/43/5/).