Refutation of All Heresies 4.46.2

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: Some heretics allegorize Aratus's star-lore as images of Scripture.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 114

Ἵνα δὲ σαφέστερα τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι τὰ ῥηθησόμενα φανῇ, δοκεῖ καὶ [τὰ] τῷ Ἀράτῳ πεφροντισμένα περὶ τῆς κατὰ τῶν οὐρανίων ἄστρων διαθέσεως ἐξειπεῖν, ὥς τινες εἰς τὰ ὑπὸ τῶν γραφῶν εἰρημένα ἀπεικονίζοντες αὐτὰ ἀλληγοροῦσι, μετάγειν τὸν νοῦν τῶν προσεχόντων πειρώμενοι, πιθανοῖς λόγοις προσάγοντες αὐτοὺς πρὸς ἃ βούλονται, ξένον θαῦμα ἐνδεικνύμενοι ὡς κατηστερισμένων τῶν ὑπʼ αὐτῶν λεγομένων,

English · Claude translation

So that what will be said may appear clearer to readers, it seems best to state also what Aratus has worked out about the arrangement of the heavenly stars, how some, making them images of what is said by the Scriptures, allegorize them, trying to divert the mind of those who attend to them, drawing them by persuasive words to what they wish, displaying a strange wonder, as though what they say had been set among the stars;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 114 · 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, Scripture and canon

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.46.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/46/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.46.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/46/2/).