Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.5

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: God formed man double, according to image and likeness.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 242–244

Αὕτη γὰρ ἡ δύναμις, ἡ ἐπιφερομένη ἐπάνω τοῦ ὕδατος ἐξ ἀφθάρτου, φησί, γεγενημένη μορφῆς κοσμεῖ μόνη πάντα. Τοιαύτης οὖν τινὸς καὶ παραπλησίου τῆς κατασκευῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενομένης παρʼ αὐτοῖς, ἔπλασε, φησίν, ὁ θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον χοῦν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς λαβών· ἔπλασε δὲ οὐχ ἁπλοῦν, ἀλλὰ διπλοῦν κατʼ εἰκόνα καὶ καθʼ ὁμοίωσιν.

English · Claude translation

For this power that is borne above the water, born,” he says, “from an incorruptible form, alone orders all things. When, then, the fashioning of the world had come about among them in some such way, God,” he says, “formed man, taking dust from the earth; and he formed him not single but double, according to image and according to likeness.”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 242–244 · 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 2:7 · allusion, high confidence
Gen 1:26 · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.14.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/14/5/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.14.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/14/5/).