Refutation of All Heresies 4.13.2

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: Number-diviners deceive the simple by boasting of their rare successes.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 72

καὶ στοιχείων σχεδιάζουσι μαντευόμενοι μάταια· ὧν ὁμοίως λόγους ἐρανισάμενοί τινες ἀποπλανῶσιν ἰδιώτας, προγνωτικοὺς ἑαυτοὺς φάσκοντες ἔσθʼ ὅτε διὰ τοῦ πολλὰ μαντεύεσθαι ἓν ἐπιτυγχάνοντες καὶ ἐπὶ μὲν τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀποτεύγμασι μὴ αἰδούμενοι, ἐπὶ δὲ τῷ ἑνὶ ἐγκομπάζοντες. Οὐδὲ τούτων τὴν ἄσοφον σοφίαν παραπέμψομαι, ἀλλʼ ἐκθέμενος τοὺς ἐκ τούτων ἐπιχειροῦντας θεοσέβειαν συνιστᾶν ἐλέγξω ῥίζης ἀσυστάτου καὶ πανουργίας ἀναπλέου ὄντας μαθητάς.

English · Claude translation

and letters, divining vain things. Some, gathering their words likewise, lead laymen astray, calling themselves foreknowers, sometimes hitting on one thing by divining many, and not ashamed of their many failures, but boasting over the one. I shall not pass over their unwise wisdom either, but, setting out those who try from these things to construct a worship of God, I shall refute them as disciples of an unsound root full of knavery.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 72 · 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. 4.13.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/13/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.13.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/13/2/).