Refutation of All Heresies 6.20.4

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.

Summary: Valentinus's six Aeons are Simon's six roots renamed; Hippolytus turns to Valentinus.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 258

Οὗτος δὴ καὶ ὁ κατὰ τὸν Σίμωνα μῦθος, ἀφʼ οὗ Οὐαλεντῖνος τὰς ἀφορμὰς λαβὼν ἄλλοις ὀνόμασι καλεῖ. Ὁ γὰρ νοῦς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ λόγος καὶ ζωὴ καὶ ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἐκκλησία, οἱ Οὐαλεντίνου αἰῶνες, ὁμολογουμένως εἰσὶν αἱ Σίμωνος ἓξ ῥίζαι, νοῦς, ἐπίνοια, φωνή, ὄνομα, λογισμὸς καὶ ἐνθύμησις. Ἀλλʼ ἐπεὶ ἱκανῶς ἡμῖν δοκεῖ ἐκτεθεῖσθαι τὴν Σίμωνος μυθοποιΐαν, ἴδωμεν τί λέγει καὶ Οὐαλεντῖνος.

English · Claude translation

This, then, is the myth according to Simon, from which Valentinus took his starting points and calls them by other names. For Mind and Truth and Word and Life and Man and Church, the Aeons of Valentinus, are admittedly Simon's six roots: Mind, Thought, Voice, Name, Reasoning, and Reflection. But since Simon's mythmaking seems to us to have been set out sufficiently, let us see what Valentinus too says.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 258 · 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

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.20.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/20/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.20.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/20/4/).