Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.1

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: Valentinus and his school, Heracleon and Ptolemy, built their teaching on Pythagorean number, not on the Gospels.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 270

Τοιαύτη τις, ὡς ἐν κεφαλαίοις εἰπεῖν ἐπελθόντα, ἡ Πυθαγόρου καὶ Πλάτωνος συνέστηκε δόξα, ἀφʼ ἧς Οὐαλεντῖνος, οὐκ ἀπὸ τῶν εὐαγγελίων τὴν αἵρεσιν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ συναγαγών, ὡς ἐπιδείξομεν, δικαίως Πυθαγορικὸς καὶ Πλατωνικός, οὐ Χριστιανὸς λογισθείη. Οὐαλεντῖνος τοίνυν καὶ Ἡρακλέων καὶ Πτολεμαῖος καὶ πᾶσα ἡ τούτων σχολή, οἱ Πυθαγόρου καὶ Πλάτωνος μαθηταί, ἀκολουθήσαντες τοῖς καθηγησαμένοις, ἀριθμητικὴν τὴν διδασκαλίαν τὴν ἑαυτῶν κατεβάλοντο.

English · Claude translation

Such, to put it in summary as I go over it, is the doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato, from which Valentinus, and not from the Gospels, compiled his heresy, as we will show; he would rightly be reckoned a Pythagorean and a Platonist, not a Christian. Valentinus, then, and Heracleon and Ptolemy and their whole school, disciples of Pythagoras and Plato, following their guides, laid down their teaching on the basis of number.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 270 · 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. 6.29.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/29/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.29.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/29/1/).