Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.14

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: Evil began when Elohim rose to the heights of heaven, leaving the earthly Eden below.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 222

Γέγονε δὲ ἡ τῆς κακίας ἀνάγκη ἐκ τοιαύτης τινὸς αἰτίας· κατασκευάσας καὶ δημιουργήσας Ἐλωεὶμ ἐκ κοινῆς εὐαρεστήσεως τὸν κόσμον, ἀναβῆναι ἠθέλησεν εἰς τὰ ὑψηλὰ μέρη τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ θεάσασθαι, μή τι γέγονε τῶν κατὰ τὴν κτίσιν ἐνδεῶς, συμπαραλαβὼν τοὺς ἰδίους ἀγγέλους μετʼ αὐτοῦ, ἦν γὰρ ἀνωφερής, καταλιπὼν τὴν Ἐδὲμ κάτω, γῆ γὰρ οὖσα ἐπακολουθεῖν ἄνω τῷ συζύγῳ οὐκ ἠθέλησεν.

English · Claude translation

The necessity of evil arose from some such cause as this. Elohim, having furnished and fashioned the world out of their common good pleasure, wished to go up to the high parts of heaven and see whether anything in the creation had turned out deficient. He took his own angels with him, for he tended upward, and left Eden below; for she, being earth, was unwilling to follow her consort upward.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 222 · 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. 5.26.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/26/14/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.26.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/26/14/).