Refutation of All Heresies 6.42.5

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, 302–304

Ἡ δὲ ἐκφώνησις τοῦ ὀνόματος ἐγένετο τοιαύτη· ἐλάλησε λόγον τὸν πρῶτον τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτοῦ, ἥτις ἦν ἀρχή, καὶ ἦν ἡ συλλαβὴ αὐτοῦ στοιχείων τεσσάρων, ἔπειτα συνῆψε τὴν δευτέραν, καὶ ἦν καὶ αὐτὴ στοιχείων τεσσάρων, ἑξῆς ἐλάλησε τὴν τρίτην, ἥτις ἦν στοιχείων δέκα, καὶ τὴν τετάρτην ἐλάλησε, καὶ ἦν καὶ αὐτὴ στοιχείων δώδεκα.

English · Claude translation

The utterance of the name was as follows: he spoke the first word of his name, which was ‘Beginning,’ and its syllable was of four letters; then he joined the second, and it too was of four letters; next he spoke the third, which was of ten letters; and he spoke the fourth, and it was of twelve letters.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 302–304 · 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

Notes

Translation notes

στοιχεῖον means both “letter” and “element”; Marcus plays on both. “Beginning” (ἀρχή) has four letters in Greek.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.42.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/42/5/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.42.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/42/5/).