Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 8.13.1

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: The iota, whose number value is ten, contains all the numbers from one to ten.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 426

Ἔστιν οὖν, φησίν, ἡ μονάς, ἡ μία κεραία, καὶ δεκάς· δύναμις γὰρ αὐτῇ τὸ ῑ τῆς μιᾶς κεραίας καὶ δυὰς καὶ τριὰς καὶ τετρὰς καὶ πεντὰς καὶ ἑξὰς καὶ ἑπτὰς καὶ ὀγδοὰς καὶ ἐννεὰς μέχρι τῶν δέκα· οὗτοι γὰρ, φησίν, εἰσὶν οἱ πολυσχιδεῖς ἀριθμοὶ ἐν ἐκείνῃ κατοικοῦντες τῇ ἁπλῇ καὶ ἀσυνθέτῳ τοῦ ἰῶτα κεραίᾳ μιᾷ.

English · Claude translation

The monad, then, he says, the one stroke, is also a decad; for the iota (ten) of the one stroke is its power, and also the dyad and triad and tetrad and pentad and hexad and heptad and ogdoad and ennead up to ten. For these, he says, are the many-divided numbers dwelling in that simple and uncompounded one stroke of the iota.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 426 · 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

Notes

Translation notes

  • The letter iota stands for the number ten in Greek.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.13.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/13/1/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 8.13.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/13/1/).

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