Refutation of All Heresies 6.46.4

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: Three groups of eight make twenty-four, which is also six times the ineffable Tetrad.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 314–316

Καὶ οὕτως ὁ τῶν ἑπτὰ τὴν τῶν ὀκτὼ ἐκομίσατο δύναμιν, καὶ ἐγένοντο οἱ τρεῖς τόποι ὅμοιοι τοῖς ἀριθμοῖς, ὀγδοάδες ὄντες· οἵτινες τρεῖς ἐφʼ ἑαυτοὺς ἐλθόντες τὸν τῶν εἰκοσιτεσσάρων ἀνέδειξαν ἀριθμόν. Τὰ μέντοι τρία στοιχεῖα ([ἅ] φησιν αὐτὸς τῶν τριῶν ἐν συζυγίᾳ δυνάμεων ὑπάρχειν, ἅ ἐστιν ἕξ, ἀφʼ ὧν ἀπερρύη τὰ εἰκοσιτέσσαρα στοιχεῖα), τετραπλασιασθέντα τῷ τῆς ἀρρήτου τετράδος λόγῳ τὸν αὐτὸν αὐτοῖς ἀριθμὸν ποιεῖ, ἅπερ φησὶ τοῦ ἀνονομάστου ὑπάρχειν.

English · Claude translation

And so the one of the seven received the power of the eight, and the three places became alike in their numbers, being ogdoads; and these three, added to one another, displayed the number twenty-four. The three elements, however (which he himself says belong to the three powers in pairs, which are six, from which the twenty-four letters flowed), multiplied four times by the ratio of the ineffable Tetrad, make the same number as they; and these, he says, belong to the Unnameable.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 314–316 · 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. 6.46.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/46/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.46.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/46/4/).