Refutation of All Heresies 7.30.1

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 392–394

Ἐπειδὰν οὖν Μαρκίων ἢ τῶν ἐκείνου κυνῶν τις ὑλακτῇ κατὰ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ, τοὺς ἐκ τῆς ἀντιπαραθέσεως ἀγαθοῦ καὶ κακοῦ προφέρων λόγους, δεῖ αὐτοῖς λέγειν, ὅτι τούτους οὔτε Παῦλος ὁ ἀπόστολος, οὔτε Μάρκος ὁ κολοβοδάκτυλος ἀνήγγειλαν, (τούτων γὰρ οὐδὲν ἐν τῷ κατὰ Μάρκον εὐαγγελίῳ γέγραπται), ἀλλὰ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς Μιῶνος Ἀκραγαντῖνος, ὃν συλαγωγῶν μέχρι νῦν λανθάνειν ὑπελάμβανε τὴν διαταγὴν πάσης τῆς κατʼ αὐτὸν αἱρέσεως ἀπὸ τῆς Σικελίας εἰς τοὺς εὐαγγελικοὺς λόγους μεταφέρων αὐταῖς λέξεσι.

English · Claude translation

Whenever, then, Marcion or one of his dogs barks against the Demiurge, bringing forward arguments from the contrast of good and evil, one must tell them that neither Paul the apostle nor Mark the stump-fingered announced these (for none of these things is written in the Gospel according to Mark), but Empedocles, son of Meton, of Acragas; whom Marcion plagiarized, supposing until now that he escaped notice as he transferred the arrangement of his whole heresy from Sicily into the words of the gospel in the very same terms.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 392–394 · 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 (Empedocles (fragments)) · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

“Mark the stump-fingered” (κολοβοδάκτυλος) is an ancient nickname of the evangelist. The digital text reads Μιῶνος for Empedocles' father Meton.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent: οὖν): Ἐπειδὰν οὗν → Ἐπειδὰν οὖν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.30.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/30/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.30.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/30/1/).