Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 6.23.2

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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: Zaratas, Pythagoras's teacher, called one the father and two the mother; from them come the numbers up to ten.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 260

Καὶ Ζαράτας ὁ Πυθαγόρου διδάσκαλος ἐκάλει τὸ μὲν ἓν πατέρα, τὰ δὲ δύο μητέρα. Γεγέννηται γὰρ ἐκ μὲν μονάδος δυὰς κατὰ τὸν Πυθαγόραν, καὶ ἔστιν ἡ μὲν μονὰς ἄρρεν καὶ πρώτη, ἡ δὲ δυὰς θῆλυ. Παρὰ τῆς δυάδος δὲ πάλιν, ὡς ὁ Πυθαγόρας λέγει, ἡ τριὰς καὶ οἱ ἐφεξῆς ἀριθμοὶ μέχρι τῶν δέκα.

English · Claude translation

And Zaratas, the teacher of Pythagoras, called the one father and the two mother. For according to Pythagoras the dyad has been begotten from the monad, and the monad is male and first, the dyad female. And from the dyad in turn, as Pythagoras says, come the triad and the following numbers up to ten.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 260 · 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.

Notes

Translation notes

  • Zaratas is Zoroaster.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.23.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/23/2/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 6.23.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/23/2/).

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