Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.14

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: Plato distinguished opposites with and without an intermediate.

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Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 34

Φασὶ δὲ αὐτὸν τὰ μὲν ἄμεσα λέγειν, τὰ δὲ ἔμμεσα, τὰ δὲ μέσα τῶν πραγμάτων. Ἐγρήγορσιν μὲν καὶ ὕπνον ἄμεσα, καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα· ἔμμεσα δέ, οἷον ἀγαθὰ καὶ κακά· καὶ μέσα, οἷον τοῦ λευκοῦ καὶ μέλανος τὸ φαιὸν ἤ τι ἄλλο χρῶμα.

English · Claude translation

They say he speaks of some things as without a mean, others as with a mean, and others as the means between things: waking and sleep are without a mean, and the like; with a mean, such as good and bad; and means, such as grey between white and black, or some other color.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 34 · 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 breathing in the digital text): οἶον ἀγαθὰ → οἷον ἀγαθὰ.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.19.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/19/14/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 1.19.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/19/14/).

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