Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.4

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 150

Οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ τρεῖς ὑπέρογκοι λόγοι· καυλακαῦ, σαυλασαῦ, ζεησάρ. Καυλακαῦ τοῦ ἄνω, τοῦ Ἀδάμαντος, σαυλασαῦ τοῦ κάτω θνητοῦ, ζεησὰρ τοῦ ἐπὶ τὰ ἄνω ῥεύσαντος Ἰορδάνου. Οὗτος ἐστί, φησίν, ὁ ἐν πᾶσιν ἀρσενόθηλυς ἄνθρωπος, ὃν οἱ ἀγνοοῦντες Γηρυόνην καλοῦσι τρισώματον, ὡς ἐκ γῆς ῥέοντα Γηρυόνην, κοινῇ δὲ Ἕλληνες ἐπουράνιον μηνὸς κέρας, ὅτι καταμέμιχε καὶ κεκέρακε πάντα πᾶσι.

English · Claude translation

These are the three exalted words: Kaulakau, Saulasau, Zeesar. Kaulakau of the one above, Adamas; Saulasau of the mortal one below; Zeesar of the Jordan that flowed upward. This, he says, is the male-female Man in all things, whom the ignorant call three-bodied Geryon, as flowing from the earth, and the Greeks in common "the heavenly horn of the moon," because he has mixed and blended all things with all.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 150 · 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

Isa 28:10 · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

Kaulakau and Saulasau come from the Hebrew of Isa 28:10, 13 (qav laqav, tsav latsav); Zeesar is often explained from ze'er sham, "a little there". The Geryon pun is on γῆ "earth" and ῥέω "flow"; κεράννυμι "mix" is linked with κέρας "horn".

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (stray period in the digital text): ἐπὶ τὰ. ἄνω → ἐπὶ τὰ ἄνω.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.8.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/8/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.8.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/8/4/).