Refutation of All Heresies 8.15.3

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: Monoimus's teaching comes from Pythagorean geometry and arithmetic; Hippolytus moves on.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 432

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐκεῖνοι, οἷς οὐκ ἀνάγκην ἔχομεν τὰ παρʼ Ἕλλησι προμεμεριμνημένα παρατιθέναι οὖσι προδήλοις τοῖς ὑπʼ αὐτῶν λεγομένοις τὴν σύστασιν ἔχειν ἐκ γεωμετρικῆς τέχνης καὶ ἀριθμητικῆς, ἣν γενναιότερον οἱ Πυθαγόρου μαθηταὶ διέθεντο, καθὼς ἔστι τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν ἐπιγνῶναι ἐν τοῖς τόποις, οἷς προδιηγησάμεθα περὶ πάσης σοφίας Ἑλλήνων. Ἀλλʼ ἐπεὶ καὶ τὰ Μονοΐμου αὐτάρκως διελήλεγκται, ἴδωμεν τίνα καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ τεχνάζονται ἑαυτοῖς βουλόμενοι ὄνομα μάταιον ὑψοῦν.

English · Claude translation

These, then, are their teachings. We have no need to set beside them what was worked out earlier among the Greeks, since it is plain that what they say has its composition from the art of geometry and arithmetic, which the disciples of Pythagoras set out more nobly, as readers can recognize in the places where we previously gave an account of all the wisdom of the Greeks. But since the views of Monoimus too have been sufficiently refuted, let us see what the rest contrive for themselves, wishing to exalt an empty name.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 432 · 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. 8.15.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/15/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.15.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/15/3/).