Refutation of All Heresies 5.13.12

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, 182–184

Ταύτην τὴν σύστασιν καὶ τὴν διαφορὰν τῶν ἄστρων Χαλδαϊκὴν ὑπάρχουσαν πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς ἐπισπασάμενοι οὓς προείπομεν, ἐπιψευσάμενοι τῷ τῆς ἀληθείας ὀνόματι, ὡς Χριστοῦ λόγον κατήγγειλαν αἰώνων στάσιν καὶ ἀποστασίας ἀγαθῶν δυνάμεων εἰς κακὰ καὶ συμφωνίας ἀγαθῶν μετὰ πονηρῶν προσαγορεύοντες. Καλοῦντες οὖν τοπάρχας καὶ προαστείους καὶ ἄλλα πλεῖστα ὀνόματα ἀναπλάσσοντες ἑαυτοῖς οὐχ ὑποκείμενα, ἀλλὰ τὴν τῶν ἀστρολόγων περὶ τοὺς ἀστέρας πᾶσαν φαντασίαν ἀτέχνως τεχνολογοῦντες, μεγάλης πλάνης ὑπόθεσιν ἐπεισάγοντες, ἐξελεγχθήσονται σὺν τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ ἐμμελείᾳ.

English · Claude translation

This Chaldean doctrine of the combination and difference of the stars those whom we mentioned before have drawn to themselves; and, falsely using the name of the truth, they have proclaimed as the word of Christ a revolt of Aeons and apostasies of good powers into evil, speaking also of concords of good powers with wicked ones. Calling them, then, “toparchs” and “suburbans” and inventing for themselves very many other names that correspond to nothing real, but artlessly making a system of the whole fantasy of the astrologers about the stars, and so introducing the ground of a great error, they will be refuted by our careful treatment.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 182–184 · 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

Notes

Translation notes

“Toparchs” (local governors) and “suburbans” (προάστειοι, those in the outskirts) are Peratic names for cosmic powers; “Aeons” are the heavenly beings or ages of Gnostic systems.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.13.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/13/12/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.13.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/13/12/).