Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 7.19.5

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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: Aristotle's doctrine of the soul is unclear: his definition is easy to state but hard to understand.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 354

Ὁ δὲ περὶ ψυχῆς αὐτῷ λόγος ἐστὶν ἀσαφής. Ἐν τρισὶ γὰρ συγγράμμασιν ὅλοις οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν σαφῶς, ὅ, τι φρονεῖ περὶ ψυχῆς Ἀριστοτέλης. Ὃν γὰρ ἀποδίδωσι τῆς ψυχῆς ὅρον ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ῥᾴδιον, τὸ δὲ ὑπὸ ὅρου δεδηλωμένον ἐστὶ δυσεύρετον.

English · Claude translation

But his account of the soul is unclear. For in three whole treatises it is impossible to say clearly what Aristotle thinks about the soul. The definition he gives of the soul is easy to state, but what is shown by the definition is hard to discover.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 354 · 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.

Notes

Translation notes

  • The three books of On the Soul.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.19.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/19/5/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 7.19.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/19/5/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage