Refutation of All Heresies 7.29.22

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 taught his followers to abstain from meat, as housing punished souls, and from sexual intercourse, which serves Strife.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 390

ὅπως τὰ πάντα εἰς τὴν ἑνότητα καταντήσῃ ὑπʼ αὐτῆς ἀγόμενα. Διὰ τὴν τοιαύτην οὖν τοῦ ὀλεθρίου νείκους διακόσμησιν τοῦδε τοῦ μεμερισμένου κόσμου πάντων ἐμψύχων ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ μαθητὰς ἀπέχεσθαι παρακαλεῖ· εἶναι γάρ φησι τὰ σώματα τῶν ζῴων τὰ ἐσθιόμενα ψυχῶν κεκολασμένων οἰκητήρια· καὶ ἐγκρατεῖς εἶναι τοὺς τῶν τοιούτων λόγων ἀκροωμένους τῆς πρὸς γυναῖκα ὁμιλίας διδάσκει, ἵνα μὴ συνεργάζωνται καὶ συνεπιλαμβάνωνται τῶν ἔργων, ὧν δημιουργεῖ τὸ νεῖκος, τὸ τῆς φιλίας ἔργον λύον ἀεὶ καὶ διασπῶν.

English · Claude translation

so that all things, led by her, may arrive at unity. Because of such an ordering of this divided world by destructive Strife, Empedocles urges his disciples to abstain from all living things; for he says that the bodies of animals that are eaten are the dwellings of punished souls. And he teaches those who hear such doctrines to be self-controlled in intercourse with women, so that they may not cooperate with and take part in the works that Strife fashions, always undoing and tearing apart the work of Love.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 390 · 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

Marriage

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.29.22 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/29/22/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.29.22 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/29/22/).