Refutation of All Heresies 10.21.1

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.

Summary: Summary of Cerinthus: an angelic power, ignorant of the highest God, made the world.

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Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 526

Κήρινθος δέ, ὁ ἐν τῇ Αἰγύπτῳ ἀσκηθεὶς αὐτός, οὐχ ὑπὸ τοῦ πρώτου θεοῦ τὸν κόσμον γεγονέναι ἠθέλησεν, ἀλλʼ ὑπὸ δυνάμεώς τινος ἀγγελικῆς, πολὺ κεχωρισμένης καὶ διεστώσης τῆς ὑπὲρ τὰ ὅλα αὐθεντίας καὶ ἀγνοούσης τὸν ὑπὲρ πάντα θεόν.

English · Claude translation

Cerinthus, himself trained in Egypt, held that the world was made not by the first God but by some angelic power, far separated and removed from the supreme Authority above all things, and ignorant of the God who is above all.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 526 · 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.
Topics
Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.21.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/21/1/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 10.21.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/21/1/).

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