Refutation of All Heresies 1.13.4

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, 26–28

Τοῦ δὲ παρʼ ἡμῖν κόσμου πρότερον τὴν γῆν τῶν ἄστρων γενέσθαι, εἶναι δὲ τὴν μὲν σελήνην κάτω, ἔπειτα τὸν ἥλιον, εἶτα τοὺς ἀπλανεῖς ἀστέρας. Τοὺς δὲ πλάνητας οὐδʼ αὐτοὺς ἔχειν ἴσον ὕψος. Ἀκμάζειν δὲ κόσμον, ἕως ἂν μηκέτι δύνηται ἔξωθέν τι προσλαμβάνειν. Οὗτος ἐγέλα πάντα, ὡς γέλωτος ἀξίων πάντων τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις.

English · Claude translation

In our world the earth came into being before the stars; the moon is lowest, then the sun, then the fixed stars; and the planets themselves are not all at the same height. A world is at its peak until it can no longer take in anything from outside. He laughed at everything, as though all human affairs were worth laughter.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 26–28 · 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.

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): ἀπλανεῖς ἄστερας → ἀπλανεῖς ἀστέρας.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.13.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/13/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.13.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/13/4/).