Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.6

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: Whatever comes into being later was already stored in the cosmic seed, so one need not ask where it came from.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 360

Ὑποκειμένου τοίνυν τοῦ κοσμικοῦ σπέρματος, ἐκεῖνοι λέγουσιν· ὅ, τι ἂν λέγω, φησίν, μετὰ ταῦτα γεγονέναι, μὴ ἐπιζήτει πόθεν. Εἶχε γὰρ πάντα τὰ σπέρματα ἐν ἑαυτῷ τεθησαυρισμένα καὶ κατακείμενα, οἷον οὐκ ὄντα, ὑπό τε τοῦ οὐκ ὄντος θεοῦ γενέσθαι προβεβουλευμένα.

English · Claude translation

The cosmic seed, then, being laid down beneath, they say: whatever I say came to be after these things, he says, do not ask from where. For it had all the seeds stored up and lying in itself, as non-existent, and planned beforehand by the non-existent God to come into being.

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. 7.22.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/22/6/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 7.22.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/22/6/).

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