Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.15

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, 170–172

Ἐδὲμ δὲ εἶναι λέγουσι τὸν ἐγκέφαλον, οἱονεὶ δεδεμένον καὶ κατεσφιγμένον ἐν τοῖς περικειμένοις χιτῶσιν ὥσπερ οὐρανοῖς· παράδεισον δʼ εἶναι νομίζουσι τὸν μέχρι μόνης τῆς κεφαλῆς ἄνθρωπον. Ἐξερχόμενον οὖν τοῦτον τὸν ποταμὸν ἐξ Ἐδέμ, τουτέστιν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐγκεφάλου, ἀφορίζεσθαι εἰς ἀρχὰς τέσσαρας, καλεῖσθαι δὲ τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ πρώτου ποταμοῦ Φεισών, οὗτος ὁ κυκλῶν πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν Εὐϊλάτ· ἐκεῖ οὗ ἐστὶ τὸ χρυσίον, τὸ δὲ χρυσίον τῆς γῆς ἐκείνης καλόν, καὶ ἐκεῖ ἐστὶν ὁ ἄνθραξ καὶ λίθος ὁ πράσινος.

English · Claude translation

They say Eden is the brain, as it were bound (dedemenon) and bound tight in the membranes lying round it, as in heavens; and they think paradise is man as far as the head only. So this river going out from Eden, that is, from the brain, is divided into four heads; and the name of the first river is called Pheison: "this is the one that encircles the whole land of Evilat; there is the gold, and the gold of that land is good, and there is the carbuncle and the green stone."

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 170–172 · 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

Gen 2:10–12 · quotation, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

The quotation is Gen 2:10–12 (LXX). The play is on Ἐδέμ and δεδεμένον "bound".

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (stray space inside a word in the digital text): ὁ ἄν θραξ → ὁ ἄνθραξ.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.9.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/9/15/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.9.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/9/15/).