Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.8

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 seek the soul's nature in the mysteries, not in Scripture.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 136

Ζητοῦσιν οὖν αὖ πάλιν τίς ἐστιν ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ πόθεν καὶ ποταπὴ τὴν φύσιν, ἵνʼ ἐλθοῦσα εἰς τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ κινήσασα καταδουλώσῃ καὶ κολάσῃ τὸ πλάσμα τοῦ τελείου ἀνθρώπου· ζητοῦσι δὲ οὐκ ἀπὸ τῶν γραφῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο ἀπὸ τῶν μυστικῶν. Εἶναι δὲ φασὶ τὴν ψυχὴν δυσεύρετον πάνυ καὶ δυσκατανόητον· οὐ γὰρ μένει ἐπὶ σχήματος οὐδὲ μορφῆς τῆς αὐτῆς πάντοτε οὐδὲ πάθους ἑνός, ἵνα τις αὐτὴν ἢ τύπῳ εἴπῃ ἢ οὐσίᾳ καταλήψεται.

English · Claude translation

They inquire again, then, what the soul is, and whence, and of what nature, that coming into man and moving him it should enslave and punish the molded form of the perfect Man. And they inquire not from the Scriptures, but this too from the mystic rites. They say the soul is very hard to find and hard to understand; for it does not remain in the same figure or form always, nor in one state, so that one could either describe it by type or grasp it by substance.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 136 · 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

Notes

Notes on the original text

  • Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): ἤ τύπῳ → ἢ τύπῳ.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/8/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/8/).

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