Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.6

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: The darkness knows it is nothing without the light and strives to keep the captured spark.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 200

Τὸ δὲ σκότος ἀσύνετον οὐκ ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ φρόνιμον παντελῶς, καὶ οἶδεν ὄτι, ἂν ἀπαρθῇ τὸ φῶς ἀπὸ τοῦ σκότους, μένει τὸ σκότος ἔρημον, ἀφανές, ἀλαμπές, ἀδύναμον, ἄπρακτον, ἀσθενές. Διὸ πάσῃ φρονήσει καὶ συνέσει βιάζεται κατέχειν εἰς ἑαυτὸ τὴν λαμπηδόνα καὶ τὸν σπινθῆρα τοῦ φωτὸς μετὰ τῆς τοῦ πνεύματος εὐωδίας.

English · Claude translation

The darkness is not unintelligent but thoroughly shrewd, and it knows that if the light is taken away from the darkness, the darkness remains desolate, obscure, without brightness, without power, inactive, weak. Therefore with all shrewdness and intelligence it strains to hold within itself the brightness and the spark of the light together with the fragrance of the spirit.

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. 5.19.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/19/6/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.19.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/19/6/).