Refutation of All Heresies 6.48.3

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: The heavens' united praise, echoing to earth, shapes earthly things, as newborns' cries show.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 320

Αἵ τε δυνάμεις πᾶσαι εἰς ἓν συμπλακεῖσαι ἠχοῦσι καὶ δοξάζουσιν ἐκεῖνον, ὑφʼ οὗ προεβλήθησαν, ἡ δὲ δόξα τῆς ἠχήσεως ἀνεπέμφθη πρὸς τὸν προπάτορα. Ταύτης μέντοι τῆς δοξολογίας τὸν ἦχον, εἰς τὴν γῆν φερόμενον, φησὶ πλάστην γίνεσθαι καὶ γεννήτορα τῶν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς· τὴν δὲ ἀπόδειξιν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄρτι γεννωμένων βρεφῶν, ὧν ἡ ψυχὴ ἅμα τῷ ἐκ μήτρας προελθεῖν ἐπιβοᾷ ὁμοίως ἑνὸς ἑκάστου τῶν στοιχείων τούτων τὸν ἦχον.

English · Claude translation

And all the powers, woven together into one, sound and glorify him by whom they were emitted, and the glory of the sounding is sent up to the Forefather. The sound of this doxology, borne to the earth, he says, becomes the fashioner and begetter of the things on earth; and the proof is from newborn infants, whose soul, as soon as it comes out of the womb, cries out likewise the sound of each one of these elements.

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

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.48.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/48/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.48.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/48/3/).