Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.2

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: Basilides rejects emanation or pre-existing matter as the way God made the world.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 360

Ἐπεὶ δὲ ἦν ἄπορον εἰπεῖν προβολήν τινα τοῦ μὴ ὄντος θεοῦ γεγονέναι τι οὐκ ὄν, — φεύγει γὰρ πάνυ καὶ δέδοικε τὰς κατὰ προβολὴν τῶν γεγονότων οὐσίας ὁ Βασιλείδης — ποίας γὰρ προβολῆς χρεία, ἢ ποίας ὕλης ὑπόθεσις, ἵνα κόσμον θεὸς ἐργάσηται, καθάπερ ὁ ἀράχνης τὰ μηρύματα, ἢ θνητὸς ἄνθρωπος χαλκὸν ἢ ξύλον ἤ τι τῶν τῆς ὕλης μερῶν ἐργαζόμενος λαμβάνει;

English · Claude translation

But since it was difficult to say that something non-existent came to be by some projection from the non-existent God (for Basilides utterly shuns and fears substances of created things that come by projection): for what need of projection, or what assumption of matter, would there be for God to make a world, as the spider takes its threads, or a mortal man takes bronze or wood or some part of matter to work on?

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 360 · 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. 7.22.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/22/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.22.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/22/2/).

Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.2

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 360

English · Claude translation

About this passage

Notes

Translation notes

Cite this passage