Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.24

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: They read Proverbs' "the righteous falls seven times" as the motions of the planets.

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Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 142

καὶ τοῦτο ἐστὶ τὸ εἰρημένον, φησίν, ἐν τῇ γραφῇ· ἑπτάκις πεσεῖται ὁ δίκαιος καὶ ἀναστήσεται. Αὗται γὰρ αἱ πτώσεις, φησίν, αἱ τῶν ἄστρων μεταβολαὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ πάντα κινοῦντος κινούμεναι.

English · Claude translation

and this is what is said, he says, in Scripture: "Seven times the righteous man will fall and rise again." For these falls, he says, are the changes of the stars, moved by the one who moves all things.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 142 · 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
Topics
Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

  • The quotation is Prov 24:16.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.24 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/24/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.24 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/24/).

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