Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 8.14.6

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 Passover, chosen on the tenth day and kept on the fourteenth, is read as a number mystery of the iota.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 428–430

Τὸ δὲ ὅλον ἐστὶ, φησί, τοῖς μὴ πεπληρωμένοις παντελῶς τὴν διάνοιαν μυστήριον, καινὴ καὶ μὴ παλαιουμένη ἑορτή, νόμιμος, αἰώνιος εἰς τὰς γενεὰς ἡμῶν, κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ πάσχα, διατηρούμενον τοῖς δυναμένοις βλέπειν ἐναρχομένης τῆς δεκάτης, ἥτις ἐστὶν ἀρχὴ δεκάδος, ἀφʼ ἧς, φησίν, ἀριθμοῦσιν. Ἡ γὰρ μονὰς ἕως τῆς τεσσαρεσκαιδεκάτης ἐστὶ τὸ κεφάλαιον τῆς μιᾶς [κεραίας] τοῦ τελείου ἀριθμοῦ. Τό τε γὰρ ἕν, δύο, τρία, τέσσαρα γίνεται δέκα, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἡ μία κεραία.

English · Claude translation

And the whole, he says, is for those not wholly filled in understanding a mystery, a new feast that does not grow old, lawful, eternal for our generations, the Passover of the Lord God, kept for those able to see, beginning on the tenth day, which is the beginning of the decad, from which, he says, they count. For the monad up to the fourteenth is the sum of the one [stroke] of the perfect number. For one, two, three, four make ten, which is the one stroke.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 428–430 · 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.
Scripture
Topics
Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

  • The allusions are Exod 12:3, 6, and 14. The arithmetic (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10) is the Pythagorean tetractys.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.14.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/14/6/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 8.14.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/14/6/).

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