Refutation of All Heresies 8.20.1

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.

Summary: The Encratites, orthodox about God and Christ, abstain from meat and wine and forbid marriage, more like Cynics than Christians.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 436

Ἕτεροι δὲ ἑαυτοὺς ἀποκαλοῦντες Ἐγκρατίτας τὰ μὲν περὶ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὁμοίως καὶ τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ ὁμολογοῦσι, περὶ δὲ πολιτείαν πεφυσιωμένοι ἀναστρέφονται, ἑαυτοὺς διὰ βρωμάτων δοξάζειν νομίζοντες ἀπεχόμενοι ἐμψύχων, ὑδροποτοῦντες καὶ γαμεῖν κωλύοντες, καὶ τῷ λοιπῷ βίῳ καταξήρως προσέχοντες, μᾶλλον Κυνικοὶ ἢ Χριστιανοὶ οἱ τοιοῦτοι κρινόμενοι, οὐ προσέχοντες τοῖς διὰ τοῦ ἀποστόλου Παύλου εἰς αὐτοὺς προειρημένοις, ὃς προφητεύων τὰ μέλλοντα ὑπό τινων μάτην καινίζεσθαι οὕτως ἔφη·

English · Claude translation

Others, calling themselves Encratites, confess the truths about God and Christ in the same way as the church, but in their way of life they conduct themselves puffed up, thinking to glorify themselves through foods, abstaining from living things, drinking water, forbidding marriage, and giving themselves to the rest of life in an extremely austere way; such people are to be judged Cynics rather than Christians. They do not heed what was said beforehand about them through the apostle Paul, who, prophesying what would be vainly introduced as novelties by some, spoke thus:

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 436 · 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, Marriage, Fasting

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.20.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/20/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 8.20.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/8/20/1/).