Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 7.29.14

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: Empedocles calls himself an exile from God, torn by Strife from the original unity.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 386–388

Τοιοῦτόν τι καὶ κάλλιστον εἶδος τοῦ κόσμου ἡ φιλία ἐκ πολλῶν ἓν ἀπεργάζεται· τὸ δὲ νεῖκος, τὸ τῆς τῶν κατὰ μέρος διακοσμήσεως αἴτιον, ἐξ ἑνὸς ἐκείνου ἀποσπᾷ καὶ ἀπεργάζεται πολλά. Καὶ τοῦτό ἐστιν ὃ λέγει περὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ γεννήσεως ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς· τῶν καὶ ἐγὼ νῦν εἰμι φυγὰς θεόθεν καὶ ἀλήτης, τουτέστι θεὸν καλῶν τὸ ἓν καὶ τὴν ἐκείνου ἑνότητα, ἐν ᾧ ἦν πρὶν ὑπὸ τοῦ νείκους ἀποσπασθῆναι καὶ γενέσθαι ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς τούτοις τοῖς κατὰ τὴν τοῦ νείκους διακόσμησιν·

English · Claude translation

Some such most beautiful form of the world Love makes, one out of many; but Strife, the cause of the ordering of the particular things, tears away from that one and makes many. And this is what Empedocles says about his own birth: “Of these I too am now one, an exile from God and a wanderer,” that is, calling God the One and its unity, in which he was before he was torn away by Strife and came to be among these many things in the order set up by Strife;

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 386–388 · 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.
Extrabiblical texts
  • Empedocles, frag. 115.13 (Empedocles (fragments)) · quotation, high confidence

Notes

Translation notes

  • Empedocles, fragment 115.13.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.29.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/29/14/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 7.29.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/29/14/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage