Refutation of All Heresies 7.24.1

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 says the Archon and his son are Aristotle's body and soul under new names.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 366

Αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ κατὰ Ἀριστοτέλην σώματος φυσικοῦ ὀργανικοῦ ἐντελέχεια, ψυχὴ ἐνεργοῦσα τῷ σώματι, ἧς δίχα τὸ σῶμα ἐργάζεσθαι οὐδὲν δύναται, μεῖζον καὶ ἐπιφανέστερον καὶ δυνατώτερον καὶ σοφώτερον τοῦ σώματος. Ὃν λόγον οὖν Ἀριστοτέλης ἀποδέδωκε περὶ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τοῦ σώματος πρότερος, Βασιλείδης περὶ τοῦ μεγάλου ἄρχοντος καὶ τοῦ κατʼ αὐτὸν υἱοῦ διασαφεῖ.

English · Claude translation

This is Aristotle's actuality of a natural organic body, a soul working in the body, without which the body can do nothing, greater, more illustrious, more powerful, and wiser than the body. The account, then, that Aristotle gave earlier concerning the soul and the body, Basilides sets out concerning the great Archon and his son.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 366 · 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. 7.24.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/24/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.24.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/24/1/).