Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 9.10.7

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: Heraclitus teaches that an intelligent fire steers all things and will judge the world in a conflagration.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 446–448

Λέγει δὲ καὶ τοῦ κόσμου κρίσιν καὶ πάντων τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ διὰ πυρὸς γίνεσθαι λέγων οὕτως· Τὰ δὲ πάντα οἰακίζει κεραυνός, τουτέστι κατευθύνει· κεραυνὸν τὸ πῦρ λέγων τὸ αἰώνιον. Λέγει δὲ καὶ φρόνιμον τοῦτο εἶναι τὸ πῦρ καὶ τῆς διοικήσεως τῶν ὅλων αἴτιον· καλεῖ δὲ αὐτὸ χρησμοσύνην καὶ κόρον· χρησμοσύνη δέ ἐστιν ἡ διακόσμησις κατʼ αὐτόν, ἡ δὲ ἐκπύρωσις κόρος· Πάντα γὰρ, φησί, τὸ πῦρ ἐπελθὸν κρινεῖ καὶ καταλήψεται.

English · Claude translation

And he says that the judgment of the world and of all things in it comes about through fire, saying thus: “Thunderbolt steers all things,” that is, directs them, calling the eternal fire a thunderbolt. And he says this fire is intelligent and the cause of the government of all things; and he calls it need and satiety; need is, according to him, the ordering of the world, and the conflagration is satiety. “For fire,” he says, “coming upon all things, will judge and seize them.”

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 446–448 · 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
  • Heraclitus, frag. 64 (Heraclitus (fragments)) · quotation, high confidence
  • Heraclitus, frag. 66 (Heraclitus (fragments)) · quotation, high confidence
Topics
Eschatology

Notes

Translation notes

  • Heraclitus, fragments 64, 65, and 66.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.10.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/10/7/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 9.10.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/10/7/).

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