Refutation of All Heresies 7.14.1

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: Hippolytus will first summarize Aristotle so that readers can see Basilides' doctrines are borrowed from him.

Show

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 348

Ἐπειδὴ οὖν ἐν ταῖς πρὸ ταύτης βίβλοις ἓξ ἐκτεθείμεθα τὰ πρότερα, δοκεῖ νῦν τὰ Βασιλείδου μὴ σιωπᾷν, ὄντα Ἀριστοτέλους τοῦ Σταγειρίτου δόγματα, οὐ Χριστοῦ. Ἀλλʼ εἰ καὶ πρότερον ἔκκειται τὰ Ἀριστοτέλει δοκοῦντα, οὐδὲ νῦν ὀκνήσομεν προϋποθέσθαι ἐν συντόμῳ, πρὸς τὸ τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας διὰ τῆς τούτων ἔγγιον ἀντιπαραθέσεως συνιδεῖν εὐκόλως τὰ ὑπὸ Βασιλείδου ὄντα Ἀριστοτελικὰ σοφιστεύματα.

English · Claude translation

Since, then, in the six books before this one we have set out the earlier matters, it now seems right not to pass over in silence the doctrines of Basilides, which are the doctrines of Aristotle the Stagirite, not of Christ. And although the opinions of Aristotle have been set out previously, we shall not now hesitate to lay them down briefly beforehand, so that readers, by comparing them side by side at closer range, may easily see that the teachings of Basilides are Aristotelian sophistries.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 348 · 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

Translation notes

  • Aristotle was summarized earlier in Book 1.

Notes on the original text

  • Digital text corrected (wrong accent: οὖν): Ἐπειδὴ οὗν → Ἐπειδὴ οὖν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.14.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/14/1/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 7.14.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/14/1/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage