Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.10

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, 336–338

Ὅτι δὲ τὸ λάμβδα ἑνδεκάτῳ κείμενον τόπῳ ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ ὁμοίου αὐτῷ κατῆλθε ζήτησιν, ἵνα ἀναπληρώσῃ τὸν δωδέκατον ἀριθμόν, καὶ εὑρὸν αὐτὸν ἐπληρώθη, φανερὸν εἶναι ἐξ αὐτοῦ τοῦ σχήματος τοῦ στοιχείου. Τὸ γὰρ λάμβδα ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ ὁμοίου αὐτῷ ζήτησιν παραγενόμενον, καὶ εὑρὸν καὶ ἀναρπάσαν, τὴν τοῦ δωδεκάτου ἀνεπλήρωσε χώραν τοῦ Μ στοιχείου, ἐκ δύο λάμβδα συγκειμένου. Διὸ δὴ καὶ φυγεῖν αὐτοὺς διὰ τῆς γνώσεως τὴν τῶν ἐνενηκονταεννέα χώραν, τουτέστι τὸ ὑστέρημα, τύπον ἀριστερᾶς χειρός, μεταδιώκειν δὲ τὸ ἕν, ὃ προστεθὲν τοῖς ἐνενηκονταεννέα εἰς τὴν δεξιὰν αὐτοῦ χεῖρα μετέστησε.

English · Claude translation

And that lambda, lying in the eleventh place, came down in search of its like, to complete the twelfth number, and, finding it, was filled up, is plain from the very shape of the letter. For lambda, having come as it were in search of its like, and having found it and snatched it up, filled the place of the twelfth, the letter M, which is composed of two lambdas. Therefore they too flee through knowledge the place of the ninety-nine, that is, the Deficiency, the type of the left hand, and pursue the one, which, added to the ninety-nine, transferred them to his right hand.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 336–338 · 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.

Scripture

Luke 15:4–7 · allusion, medium confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

In ancient finger-counting, numbers up to 99 were shown on the left hand and hundreds on the right.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (unread word in the digital text; certain from the rest of the section): Ὅτι δὲ τὸ (??) → Ὅτι δὲ τὸ λάμβδα.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.52.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/52/10/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.52.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/52/10/).