Refutation of All Heresies 8.12.5

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: Monoimus's Man is a monad that unites all opposites like a musical harmony, both mother and father.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 424–426

Ὁ δὲ ἄνθρωπος οὗτος μία μονὰς ἐστὶν ἀσύνθετος ἀδιαίρετος, συνθετὴ διαιρετή, πάντα φίλη, πάντα εἰρηνική, πάντα μαχίμη, πάντα πρὸς ἑαυτὴν πολέμιος, ἀνόμοιος ὁμοία, οἱονεί τις ἁρμονία μουσικὴ πάντα ἔχουσα ἐν ἑαυτῇ, ὅσα ἄν τις εἴπῃ καὶ παραλείπῃ μὴ νοήσας, πάντα ἀναδεικνύουσα, πάντα γεννῶσα. Αὕτη μήτηρ, αὕτη πατήρ, τὰ δύο ἀθάνατα ὀνόματα.

English · Claude translation

And this Man is one monad, uncompounded and indivisible, compounded and divisible, friendly to all, at peace with all, warring with all, at enmity with itself in all things, unlike and like, as it were a musical harmony having in itself everything that one might say or leave out through not thinking of it, displaying all things, begetting all things. This is mother, this is father, the two immortal names.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 424–426 · 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. 8.12.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/12/5/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.12.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/12/5/).