Refutation of All Heresies 6.25.4

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: Pythagoras taught that souls come from the stars, are entombed in the body, and become immortal when released.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 264–266

Οὐ παύσεται οὖν οὔτε τὸ νεῖκος τὸν κόσμον διαιροῦν οὔτε ἡ φιλία τὰ διῃρημένα τῷ κόσμῳ προσνέμουσα. Αὕτη τὶς ἐστίν, ὡς ἔοικε, κατὰ Πυθαγόραν ἡ τοῦ κόσμου διανομή. Λέγει δὲ Πυθαγόρας εἶναι ἀπορραγάδας τοῦ ἡλίου τοὺς ἀστέρας, καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν ζῴων ἀπὸ τῶν ἄστρων φέρεσθαι· εἶναι δὲ αὐτὰς θνητὰς μέν, ὅταν ὦσιν ἐν τῷ σώματι, οἱονεὶ ἐγκατορωρυγμένας ὡς ἐν τάφῳ, ἀνίστασθαι δὲ καὶ γίνεσθαι ἀθανάτους, ὅταν τῶν σωμάτων ἀπολυθῶμεν. Ὅθεν ὁ Πλάτων ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπό τινος· τί ἐστι φιλοσοφία;

English · Claude translation

Strife, then, will not cease dividing the world, nor Love assigning back to the world what has been divided. Such, it seems, is the distribution of the world according to Pythagoras. And Pythagoras says that the stars are fragments broken off the sun, and that the souls of living creatures are carried down from the stars; and that they are mortal when they are in the body, buried in it as in a tomb, but rise and become immortal when we are released from our bodies. Hence Plato, asked by someone, “What is philosophy?”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 264–266 · 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.25.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/25/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.25.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/25/4/).