Refutation of All Heresies 7.28.6

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: Saturnilus taught two races of humans, evil and good, and that the Savior came to destroy the evil and save the good.

Show

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 382

Δύο γὰρ γένη τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὑπὸ τῶν ἀγγέλων πεπλάσθαι ἔφη, τὸ μὲν πονηρόν, τὸ δὲ ἀγαθόν, καὶ ἐπειδὴ οἱ δαίμονες τοῖς πονηροῖς ἐβοήθουν, ἐληλυθέναι τὸν σωτῆρα ἐπὶ καταλύσει τῶν φαύλων ἀνθρώπων καὶ δαιμόνων, ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ δὲ τῶν ἀγαθῶν.

English · Claude translation

For he said that two races of human beings were formed by the angels, one evil and the other good; and since the demons helped the evil, the Savior came for the destruction of the wicked people and the demons, and for the salvation of the good.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 382 · 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. 7.28.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/28/6/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 7.28.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/28/6/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage