Refutation of All Heresies 6.8.4

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: A Greek retaught the parrots to expose the trick, and the Libyans burned Apsethus.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 234–236

Τῶν δὲ Ἑλλήνων τις ἀκριβῶς ἐννοήσας τὸ σόφισμα τοῦ νενομισμένου θεοῦ διὰ τῶν αὐτῶν ἐκείνων ψιττακῶν οὐκ ἐλέγχει μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀφανίζει τὸν ἀλαζόνα καὶ φορτικὸν ἐκεῖνον ἄνθρωπον. Μετεδίδαξε δὲ ὁ Ἕλλην καθείρξας πολλοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν ψιττακῶν λέγειν· Ἄψεθος ἡμᾶς κατακλείσας ἠνάγκασε λέγειν, Ἄψεθος θεός ἐστιν. Ἀκούσαντες δὲ οἱ Λίβυες τῆς παλινῳδίας τῶν ψιττακῶν, πάντες ὁμοθυμαδὸν συνελθόντες κατέκαυσαν τὸν Ἄψεθον.

English · Claude translation

But one of the Greeks, perceiving exactly the trick of the supposed god, not only refutes but also destroys that boastful and vulgar man by means of those same parrots. The Greek shut up many of the parrots and retaught them to say: “Apsethus shut us up and forced us to say, ‘Apsethus is a god.’” When the Libyans heard the parrots' recantation, they all came together with one accord and burned Apsethus.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 234–236 · 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.8.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/8/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.8.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/8/4/).