Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.8

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: By adding and removing units from 8, 10, and 12 they arrive at ninety-nine.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 334–336

Οὕτως ἡ ὀγδοὰς τὸν τῶν ἐνενήκοντα ἐννέα ἀπεκύησεν ἀριθμὸν ἐκ πρώτης ὀγδοάδος καὶ δεκάδος καὶ δωδεκάδος, ἧς ποτὲ μὲν εἰς ὁλόκληρον συνάγοντες τὸν ἀριθμὸν ποιοῦσι τριακοντάδα, ποτὲ δὲ τὸν δωδέκατον ὑφαιροῦντες ψηφίζουσιν ἕνδεκα· ὁμοίως καὶ τὸν δέκατον ποιοῦσιν ἐννέα· ταῦτα δὲ ἐπισυμπλέκοντες καὶ δεκαπλασιάσαντες ἀριθμὸν ἐπιτελοῦσι τῶν ἐνενήκοντα ἐννέα.

English · Claude translation

So the ogdoad brought forth the number ninety-nine from the first ogdoad, decad, and dodecad; this number they sometimes gather into a whole and make a triacontad, and sometimes, taking away the twelfth, they reckon eleven; likewise they make the tenth nine; and weaving these together and multiplying by ten they complete the number ninety-nine.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 334–336 · 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. 6.52.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/52/8/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.52.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/52/8/).