Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.28

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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 Naassenes see the phallic image of Osiris, set up publicly, as the "good" proclaimed on the housetops.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 144

Ὄσιρις γάρ, φησίν, ἐστὶν ἐν ναῷ πρὸ τῆς Ἴσιδος, οὗ ἕστηκε γυμνὸν τὸ κεκρυμμένον, κάτωθεν ἄνω βλέπον καὶ πάντας αὐτοῦ τοὺς καρποὺς τῶν γινομένων στεφανούμενον· ἑστάναι δὲ οὐ μόνον ἐν τοῖς ἁγιωτάτοις, πρῶτον ἀγαλμάτων, ναοῖς λέγουσι τὸ τοιοῦτον, ἀλλὰ γὰρ καὶ εἰς τὴν ἁπάντων ἐπίγνωσιν, οἱονεὶ φῶς [οὐχ] ὑπὸ τὸν μόδιον, ἀλλʼ ἐπὶ τὴν λυχνίαν ἐπικείμενον, κήρυγμα κηρυσσόμενον ἐπὶ τῶν δωμάτων, ἐν πάσαις ὁδοῖς καὶ πάσαις ἀγυιαῖς καὶ παρʼ αὐταῖς ταῖς οἰκίαις ὅρον τινὰ καὶ τέρμα τῆς οἰκίας προτεταγμένον, καὶ τοῦτο εἶναι τὸ ἀγαθὸν ὑπὸ πάντων λεγόμενον· ἀγαθηφόρον γὰρ αὐτὸ καλοῦσιν, ὃ λέγουσιν οὐκ εἰδότες, καὶ τοῦτο Ἕλληνες μυστικὸν ἀπὸ Αἰγυπτίων παραλαβόντες φυλάσσουσι μέχρι σήμερον.

English · Claude translation

For Osiris, he says, is in a temple in front of Isis, and his hidden part stands naked, looking upward from below and crowned with all its fruits of the things that come to be. They say that such a thing stands not only in the holiest temples, first of the images, but also for the recognition of all, like a light not under the bushel but set on the lampstand, a proclamation proclaimed on the housetops, in all roads and all streets and beside the houses themselves, set up as a boundary and limit of the house; and that this is the good spoken of by all; for they call it good-bringing, saying so without knowing it. And this the Greeks, having received it as a mystery from the Egyptians, keep to this day.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 144 · 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 allusions are Matt 5:15 and Matt 10:27. The square brackets around "not" are the editor's.

Notes on the original text

  • Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): καὶ τοῦτο εἷναι → καὶ τοῦτο εἶναι.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.28 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/28/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.28 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/28/).

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