Refutation of All Heresies 1.9.3

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: Archelaus placed the earth at rest in the center, with the stars formed from burning.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 24

Τὴν μὲν οὖν γῆν ἠρεμεῖν καὶ γενέσθαι διὰ ταῦτα, κεῖσθαι δʼ ἐν μέσῳ οὐδὲν μέρος οὖσαν, ὡς εἰπεῖν, τοῦ παντός, ἐκδεδομένον ἐκ τῆς πυρώσεως, ἀφʼ οὗ πρῶτον ἀποκαιομένου τὴν τῶν ἀστέρων εἶναι φύσιν, ὧν μέγιστον μὲν ἥλιον, δεύτερον δὲ σελήνην, τῶν δὲ ἄλλων τὰ μὲν ἐλάττω, τὰ δὲ μείζω.

English · Claude translation

The earth, then, is at rest and came to be for these reasons, and lies in the middle, being, so to speak, no part of the universe, given off from the burning; from this, as it was first burned off, came the nature of the stars, of which the largest is the sun, the second the moon, and of the others some smaller and some larger.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 24 · 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.9.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/9/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.9.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/9/3/).