Refutation of All Heresies 10.14.1

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, 514

Βασιλείδης δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς λέγει εἶναι θεὸν οὐκ ὄντα, πεποιημένον κόσμον ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων οὐκ ὄντα, οὐκ ὂν καταβαλλόμενόν τι σπέρμα, ὡσεὶ κόκκον σινάπεως ἔχοντα ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὸ πρέμνον, τὰ φύλλα, τοὺς κλάδους, τὸν καρπόν, ἢ ὡς ὠὸν ταοῦ ἔχον ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν τῶν χρωμάτων ποικίλην πληθύν· καὶ τοῦτο εἶναι φασι τὸ τοῦ κόσμου σπέρμα, ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα γέγονεν.

English · Claude translation

Basilides too says that there is a non-existent God, who made a non-existent world out of things that are not, laying down some non-existent seed, like a grain of mustard seed that has in itself the trunk, the leaves, the branches, the fruit, or like a peacock's egg that has in itself the varied multitude of colors; and they say this is the seed of the world, from which all things came into being.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 514 · 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.

Scripture

Matt 13:31 · allusion, medium confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

See 7.20–27 above. The mustard seed recalls Matt 13:31.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent: ὂν): οὐκ ὄν καταβαλλόμενόν → οὐκ ὂν καταβαλλόμενόν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.14.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/14/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.14.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/14/1/).