Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.8

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, 244

Εἰ δὲ πλάσσει ὁ θεὸς ἐν μήτρᾳ μητρὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, τουτέστιν ἐν παραδείσῳ, ὡς ἔφην, ἔστω παράδεισος ἡ μήτρα, Ἐδὲμ δὲ τὸ χωρίον, ποταμὸς ἐκπορευόμενος ἐξ Ἐδὲμ ποτίζειν τὸν παράδεισον ὁ ὀμφαλός. Οὗτος, φησίν, ἀφορίζεται ὁ ὀμφαλὸς εἰς τέσσαρας ἀρχάς, ἑκατέρωθεν γὰρ τοῦ ὀμφαλοῦ δύο εἰσὶν ἀρτηρίαι παρατεταμέναι, ὀχετοὶ πνεύματος, καὶ δύο φλέβες, ὀχετοὶ αἵματος.

English · Claude translation

“If God forms man in the mother's womb, that is, in paradise, as I said, let the womb be paradise, and Eden the region, and ‘the river going out of Eden to water paradise’ the navel. This navel,” he says, “is divided into four principles; for on either side of the navel two arteries are stretched, channels of spirit, and two veins, channels of blood.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 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 2:10 · quotation, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): εἰσίν ἀρτηρίαι → εἰσὶν ἀρτηρίαι.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.14.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/14/8/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.14.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/14/8/).