Refutation of All Heresies 6.27.1

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.

Summary: Hippolytus recalls Pythagoras's symbolic sayings, because the heretics imitate that manner of speech.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 266

Ἀλλʼ ἐπεὶ καὶ τὰ σκοτεινῶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Πυθαγόρου λεγόμενα πρὸς τοὺς μαθητὰς διʼ ὑποσυμβόλων ἐνηρξάμεθα λέγειν, δοκεῖ καὶ τῶν ἑτέρων ὑπομνησθῆναι διὰ τὸ καὶ τοὺς αἱρεσιάρχας τοιούτῳ τινὶ τρόπῳ ἐπικεχειρηκέναι ὁμιλεῖν διὰ ὑποσυμβόλων, καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἰδίων, ἀλλὰ Πυθαγορείων πλεονεκτήσαντες λόγων.

English · Claude translation

But since we have begun to speak also of the things said obscurely by Pythagoras to his disciples through symbols, it seems good to recall the others as well, because the heresiarchs too have attempted to converse in some such way through symbols, and these not their own, but sayings they have appropriated from the Pythagoreans.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 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.

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.27.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/27/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.27.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/27/1/).