Refutation of All Heresies 7.16.2

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: Every particular animal takes its origin from the general “animal,” which is none of them.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 348–350

Καὶ ἔστιν ὑπόστασις τοῖς ζῴοις τοῖς γεγενημένοις ἐν εἴδεσι τοῦτο τὸ ἀνείδεον ζῷον καὶ τῶν γεγενημένων οὐδέν. Ἔστι γὰρ ἄνθρωπος ζῷον ἀπʼ ἐκείνου τοῦ ζῴου λαμβάνον τὴν ἀρχήν, καὶ ζῷον ἵππος ἀπʼ ἐκείνου τοῦ ζῴου λαμβάνον τὴν ἀρχήν. Ὁ ἵππος καὶ βοῦς καὶ κύων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ζῴων ἕκαστον ἀπὸ τοῦ ζῴου τοῦ ἁπλοῦ λαμβάνει τὴν ἀρχήν, ὅ ἐστι τούτων οὐδὲ ἕν.

English · Claude translation

And this formless animal is the subsistence for the animals that have come into being in species, and yet it is none of the things that have come into being. For a human being is an animal that takes its origin from that animal, and a horse is an animal that takes its origin from that animal. The horse and the ox and the dog and each of the other animals takes its origin from the simple animal, which is not a single one of these.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 348–350 · 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. 7.16.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/16/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.16.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/16/2/).