Refutation of All Heresies 6.34.1

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 282

Ἔστιν οὖν ἡ κατὰ Οὐαλεντῖνον τετρακτὺς πηγή τις ἀενάου φύσεως ῥιζώματʼ ἔχουσα, καὶ ἡ σοφία, ἀφʼ ἧς ἡ κτίσις ἡ ψυχικὴ καὶ ὑλικὴ συνέστηκε νῦν. Καλεῖται δὲ ἡ μὲν σοφία πνεῦμα, ὁ δὲ δημιουργὸς ψυχή, ὁ διάβολος δὲ ὁ ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου, Βεελζεβοὺλ δʼ ὁ τῶν δαιμόνων.

English · Claude translation

The tetraktys according to Valentinus, then, is “a spring holding the roots of ever-flowing nature,” and so is Sophia, from whom the psychic and material creation now consists. And Sophia is called spirit, the Demiurge soul, the devil the ruler of the world, and Beelzebul the ruler of the demons.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 282 · 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.

Extrabiblical texts

Carm. aur. 48 (Golden Verses (Pythagorean)) · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

The phrase is from the Pythagorean oath quoted at 6.23.3.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): Ἔστιν οὗν → Ἔστιν οὖν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.34.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/34/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.34.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/34/1/).