Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.1

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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: The fiery God made the world; until the Savior came, the souls, “cooled” from above, passed from body to body under his guard.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 418–420

Οὗτος οὖν ὁ πυροειδὴς θεός, ὁ πῦρ ἀπὸ φωτὸς γενόμενος, πεποίηκε τὸν κόσμον οὕτως, ὡς φησὶ Μωϋσῆς, αὐτὸς ὢν ἀνυπόστατος, σκότος ἔχων τὴν οὐσίαν, ἐνυβρίζων ἀεὶ τοῖς κατειλημμένοις ἄνωθεν κάτω τοῦ φωτὸς αἰωνίοις χαρακτῆρσι. Μέχρι μὲν οὖν τῆς τοῦ σωτῆρος φανερώσεως ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ φωτὸς τοῦ πυρώδους, τοῦ δημιουργοῦ, πολλή τις ἦν πλάνη τῶν ψυχῶν· ψυχαὶ γὰρ αἱ ἰδέαι καλοῦνται, ὅτι ἀποψυγεῖσαι τῶν ἄνω ἐν σκότει διατελοῦσι, μεταβαλλόμεναι ἐκ σωμάτων εἰς σώματα, ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ φρουρούμενα.

English · Claude translation

This fire-like God, then, who became fire from light, made the world in the way Moses says, being himself without real subsistence, having darkness as his substance, always insulting the eternal characters of the light caught from above below. Until the manifestation of the Savior, then, there was much wandering of souls under the God of the fiery light, the Demiurge; for the forms are called souls (psychai) because, having grown cold (apopsygeisai) from the things above, they continue in darkness, changed from bodies into bodies, guarded by the Demiurge.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 418–420 · 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

  • The Greek plays on ψυχή, “soul,” and ἀποψύχω, “grow cold.”

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.10.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/10/1/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 8.10.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/10/1/).

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