Refutation of All Heresies 7.19.1

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: Substance is also described as matter, form, and privation; Hippolytus now turns to Aristotle's picture of the world.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 352

Ἀλλὰ περὶ μὲν τῆς οὐσίας ἀρκέσει τὰ λεγόμενα νῦν. Οὐ μόνον δὲ ἡ οὐσία καλεῖται γένος, εἶδος, ἄτομον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὕλη καὶ εἶδος καὶ στέρησις. Διαφέρει δὲ οὐδὲν ἐν τούτοις μενούσης τῆς τομῆς. Τοιαύτης δὲ οὔσης τῆς οὐσίας, ἔστιν ἡ τοῦ κόσμου διαταγὴ γεγενημένη κατʼ αὐτὸν τοιοῦτόν τινα τρόπον.

English · Claude translation

But concerning substance what has now been said will suffice. And substance is called not only genus, species, and individual, but also matter, form, and privation. But it makes no difference among these, since the division remains. Substance being such, the arrangement of the world, according to him, came about in some such way as this.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 352 · 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. 7.19.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/19/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.19.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/19/1/).