Refutation of All Heresies 6.8.2

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.

Summary: Apsethus taught parrots to say “Apsethus is a god” and set them free.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 234

Συναθροίσας γὰρ εἰς ἔνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν οἰκίσκον ὄρνιθας πλείστους ψιττακοὺς κατέκλεισεν· εἰσὶ δὲ πλεῖστοι κατὰ τὴν Λιβύην ψιττακοί, καὶ ἐναργῶς μιμούμενοι πάνυ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φωνήν. Οὗτος χρόνῳ διαθρέψας τοὺς ὄρνεις ἐδίδαξε λέγειν· Ἄψεθος θεός ἐστιν. Ὡς δὲ ἤσκησαν οἱ ὄρνιθες χρόνῳ πολλῷ καὶ τοῦτο ἔλεγον, ὅπερ ᾤετο λεχθὲν θεὸν εἶναι ποιήσειν νομίζεσθαι τὸν Ἄψεθον, τότε ἀνοίξας τὸ οἴκημα εἴασεν ἄλλον ἀλλαχόσε τοὺς ψιττακούς.

English · Claude translation

For he gathered a great many birds, parrots, and shut them up in one little house; there are very many parrots in Libya, and they imitate the human voice very clearly. Having reared the birds for some time, he taught them to say, “Apsethus is a god.” And when the birds had practiced for a long time and were saying this, which he thought, once said, would make Apsethus be thought a god, he then opened the house and let the parrots go, one here and another there.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 234 · 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.8.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/8/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.8.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/8/2/).