Refutation of All Heresies 8.17.2

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: Hermogenes said God tamed part of seething matter into the world and left the rest wild, an idea Hippolytus traces to Plato.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 434

Εἶναι δὲ τὸν θεὸν ἀεὶ κύριον καὶ ἀεὶ ποιητήν, τὴν δὲ ὕλην ἀεὶ δούλην καὶ γινομένην, οὐ πᾶσαν δέ· Ἀεὶ γὰρ ἀγρίως καὶ ἀτάκτως φερομένην ἐκόσμησε τούτῳ τῷ λόγῳ· δίκην χυτρίου ὑποκαιομένου βράζουσαν ἰδὼν ἐχώρισε κατὰ μέρος, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἐκ τοῦ παντὸς λαβὼν ἡμέρωσε, τὸ δὲ εἴασεν ἀτάκτως φέρεσθαι, καὶ τὸ ἡμερωθὲν τοῦτο εἶναι κόσμον λέγει, τὸ δὲ ἄγριον μένειν καὶ ὕλην καλεῖσθαι ἄκοσμον. Ταύτην οὐσίαν εἶναι τῶν ἁπάντων λέγει, ὡς καινὸν φέρων δόγμα τοῖς αὐτοῦ μαθηταῖς, οὐκ ἐνενόει δέ, ὅτι Σωκρατικὸς ὁ μῦθος οὗτος τυγχάνει, ὑπὸ Πλάτωνος ἐξειργασμένος βέλτιον ἢ ὑπὸ Ἑρμογένους.

English · Claude translation

And that God is always Lord and always maker, but matter always servant and coming into being, though not all of it. For he ordered it, as it was always carried along wildly and disorderly, by this reasoning: seeing it boiling like a pot heated from beneath, he separated it part by part, and taking one part from the whole he tamed it, and the other he let be carried along in disorder; and he says this tamed part is the world, while the wild part remains and is called unordered matter. This he says is the substance of all things, as if bringing a new doctrine to his disciples; but he did not perceive that this myth is Socratic, worked out better by Plato than by Hermogenes.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 434 · 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

Plato, Tim. 30a (Plato (works)) · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.17.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/17/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.17.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/17/2/).

Refutation of All Heresies 8.17.2

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 434

English · Claude translation

About this passage

Notes

Translation notes

Cite this passage