Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.4

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: Light shines down into darkness, while the spirit's fragrance spreads in every direction.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 200

Ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἄνω ἐστὶ τὸ φῶς καὶ κάτω [τὸ] σκότος, καὶ τούτων, ὡς ἔφην, τοιοῦτον τρόπον μέσον τὸ πνεῦμα, τὸ δὲ φῶς πέφυκε καθάπερ ἀκτὶς ἡλίου ἄνωθεν ἐλλάμπειν εἰς τὸ ὑποκείμενον σκότος, ἀνάπαλιν δὲ ἡ τοῦ πνεύματος εὐωδία μέσην ἔχουσα τάξιν ἐκτείνεται καὶ φέρεται πανταχῆ, ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν ἐν πυρὶ θυμιαμάτων τὴν εὐωδίαν πανταχῆ φερομένην ἐπεγνώκαμεν·

English · Claude translation

Since the light is above and the darkness below, and between them, as I said, is the spirit in this manner; and the light by nature shines like a ray of the sun from above into the darkness beneath, while conversely the fragrance of the spirit, holding the middle rank, extends and is carried everywhere, as we recognize with incense on the fire that its fragrance is carried everywhere;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 200 · 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. 5.19.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/19/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.19.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/19/4/).