Refutation of All Heresies 6.43.3

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: Each letter's name is spelled with other letters, whose names are spelled with others, without end.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 306–308

Τὸ δὲ στοιχεῖον αὐτό, ἀφʼ οὗ τὸ γράμμα σὺν τῇ ἐκφωνήσει τῇ ἑαυτοῦ κατῆλθε κάτω, γραμμάτων φησὶν εἶναι τριάκοντα, καὶ ἓν ἕκαστον τῶν τριάκοντα γραμμάτων ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἔχειν ἕτερα γράμματα, διʼ ὧν τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ γράμματος ὀνομάζεται, καὶ μὴν πάλιν τὰ ἕτερα διʼ ἄλλων ὀνομάζεσθαι γραμμάτων, καὶ τὰ ἄλλα διʼ ἄλλων, ὥστε εἰς ἄπειρον ἐκπίπτειν τὸ πλῆθος, ἰδίᾳ τῶν γραμμάτων γραφέντων.

English · Claude translation

The letter itself, from which the sign came down below with its own pronunciation, he says is of thirty signs, and each one of the thirty signs has in itself other signs, by which the name of the sign is named; and again the others are named by other signs, and the others by others, so that the multitude falls into infinity when the signs are written out separately.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 306–308 · 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. 6.43.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/43/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.43.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/43/3/).