Refutation of All Heresies 6.48.2

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 320

Κέχρηται μὲν οὖν καὶ οὗτος τῷδε τῷ ἔργῳ, ὡς αὐθαιρέτως ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ γενομένῳ, τὰ δὲ διακονεῖ, μιμήματα ὄντα τῶν ἀμιμήτων, τῆς ἐνθυμήσεως τῆς μητρός. Καὶ ὁ μὲν πρῶτος οὐρανὸς φθέγγεται τὸ ἄλφα, ὁ δὲ μετὰ τοῦτον τὸ εἶ, ὁ δὲ τρίτος τὸ ἦτα, ὁ δὲ τέταρτος, ὁ καὶ μέσος τῶν ἑπτά, τὴν τοῦ ἰῶτα δύναμιν, ὁ δὲ πέμπτος τὸ οὖ, ἕκτος δὲ τὸ ῡ, ἕβδομος δὲ καὶ τέταρτος ἀπὸ τοῦ μέσου τὸ ὦ.

English · Claude translation

This one, then, uses this work as if it had come to be by him of his own choice, and the rest serve, being imitations of the inimitable, of the Mother's Reflection. And the first heaven utters alpha, the one after it epsilon, the third eta, the fourth, the middle of the seven, the power of iota, the fifth omicron, the sixth upsilon, and the seventh, fourth from the middle, omega.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 320 · 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

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (missing accent in the digital text; unread letter in the digital text; the seventh vowel is certain): τα δὲ διακονεῖ → τὰ δὲ διακονεῖ; ἀπὸ τοῦ μέσου τὸ (??) → ἀπὸ τοῦ μέσου τὸ ὦ.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.48.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/48/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.48.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/48/2/).