Refutation of All Heresies 6.18.1

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, 250

Γέγονεν οὖν ὁμολογουμένως κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον τοῖς ἀνοήτοις Σίμων θεός, ὥσπερ ὁ Λίβυς ἐκεῖνος ὁ καὶ Ἄψεθος, γεννητὸς μὲν καὶ παθητός, ὅταν ᾖ ἐν δυνάμει, ἀπαθὴς δὲ ἐκ γεννητοῦ, ὅταν ἐξεικονισθῇ καὶ γενόμενος τέλειος ἐξέλθῃ τῶν δυνάμεων τῶν πρώτων δύο, τουτέστιν οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς.

English · Claude translation

According to this account, then, Simon admittedly became a god for the senseless, like that Libyan, Apsethus: begotten and subject to suffering while he is in potentiality, but free from suffering after being begotten, when he is brought to his full image and, having become perfect, goes out from the first two powers, that is, heaven and earth.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 250 · 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 (misread letter in the digital text; wrong accent in the digital text): Γέγονεν οὗν → Γέγονεν οὖν; ὁ Αίβυς → ὁ Λίβυς; ἄπαθὴς → ἀπαθὴς.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.18.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/18/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.18.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/18/1/).