Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.3

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: Some Valentinians make the Father solitary; others give him a consort, Silence.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 270

Διαφορὰ δέ τις εὑρίσκεται πολλὴ παρʼ αὐτοῖς· οἱ μὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν, ἵνʼ ᾖ παντάπασι καθαρὸν τὸ δόγμα τοῦ Οὐαλεντίνου Πυθαγορικόν, ἄθηλυν καὶ ἄζυγον καὶ μόνον τὸν πατέρα νομίζουσιν εἶναι· οἱ δὲ ἀδύνατον νομίζοντες δύνασθαι ἐξ ἄρρενος μόνου γένεσιν ὅλως τῶν γεγενημένων γενέσθαι τινός, καὶ τῷ πατρὶ τῶν ὅλων, ἵνα γένηται πατήρ, σιγὴν ἐξ ἀνάγκης συναριθμοῦσι τὴν σύζυγον.

English · Claude translation

But much disagreement is found among them. For some of them, so that the doctrine of Valentinus may be wholly and purely Pythagorean, think that the Father is without female, without consort, and alone; while others, thinking it impossible that any generation of the things that have come to be could come from a male alone, of necessity count Silence as consort with the Father of all, so that he may become a father.

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. 6.29.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/29/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.29.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/29/3/).