Refutation of All Heresies 8.14.4

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 428

Πάντα γὰρ πλησσόμενα γεννᾶται καὶ καρποφορεῖ, καθάπερ αἱ ἄμπελοι. Ἄνθρωπος ἐξ ἀνθρώπου ἐξέσσυται, φησί, καὶ ἀποσπᾶται πληγῇ τινι μεριζόμενος, ἵνα γένηται καὶ εἴπῃ νόμον, ὃν ἔθηκε Μωϋσῆς παρὰ θεοῦ λαβών. Κατὰ τὴν κεραίαν ἐκείνην ὁ νόμος ἐστὶ τὴν μίαν ἡ δεκάλογος ἀλληγοροῦσα τὰ θεῖα τῶν λόγων μυστήρια.

English · Claude translation

For all things are generated and bear fruit by being struck, like vines. “A man springs forth from a man,” he says, “and is torn away, divided by a kind of stroke,” so that he may come to be and speak the law, which Moses laid down, having received it from God. According to that one stroke, the law is the Decalogue, allegorizing the divine mysteries of the words.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 428 · 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.

Extrabiblical texts

Democritus, frag. 32 (Democritus (fragments)) · quotation, medium confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

The saying “a man springs forth from a man” is Democritus, fragment 32 (Diels–Kranz); the attribution is probable but not stated in the text. The Greek plays on πληγή, “stroke” and “plague.”

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.14.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/14/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.14.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/14/4/).