Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.8

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, 192

Ἐπὶ τοῦτον, φησίν, ὁ ἐλπίσας ὑπὸ τῶν ὄφεων τῆς ἐρήμου οὐ διαφθείρεται, τουτέστι τῶν θεῶν τῆς γενέσεως. Γέγραπται, φησίν, ἐν βίβλῳ Μωσέως· οὗτος, φησίν, ὁ ὄφις ἐστὶν ἡ δύναμις ἡ παρακολουθήσασα τῷ Μωσεῖ, ἡ ῥάβδος ἡ στρεφομένη εἰς ὄφιν. Ἀνθεστήκεισαν δέ, φησί, τῇ δυνάμει Μωσέως ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ μάγων οἱ ὄφεις, οἱ θεοὶ τῆς ἀπωλείας· ἀλλὰ πάντας αὐτοὺς ὑπέταξε καὶ διέφθειρεν ἡ ῥάβδος Μωσέως. Ὁ καθολικὸς ὄφις, φησίν, οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ σοφὸς τῆς Εὔας λόγος.

English · Claude translation

“He who has hoped in this one,” he says, “is not destroyed by the serpents of the wilderness, that is, by the gods of generation. It is written,” he says, “in the book of Moses. This serpent,” he says, “is the power that accompanied Moses, the rod turned into a serpent. The serpents of the magicians in Egypt, the gods of destruction, withstood the power of Moses,” he says, “but the rod of Moses subdued and destroyed them all. This universal serpent,” he says, “is the wise word of Eve.”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 192 · 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

Exod 7:10–12 · allusion, high confidence
Gen 3:1 · allusion, medium confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text; wrong breathing in the digital text): ἠ παρακολουθήσασα → ἡ παρακολουθήσασα; τὴς Εὔας → τῆς Εὔας.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.16.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/16/8/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.16.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/16/8/).