Refutation of All Heresies 9.13.1

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, 462

Τούτου κατὰ πάντα τὸν κόσμον διηχηθείσης τῆς διδασκαλίας, ἐνιδὼν τὴν πραγματείαν ἀνὴρ δόλιος καὶ ἀπονοίας γέμων, Ἀλκιβιάδης τις καλούμενος, οἰκῶν ἐν Ἀπαμείᾳ τῆς Συρίας, γοργότερον ἑαυτὸν καὶ εὐφυέστερον ἐν κυβείαις κρίνας τοῦ Καλλίστου, ἐπῆλθε τῇ Ῥώμῃ φέρων βίβλον τινά, φάσκων ταύτην ἀπὸ Σηρῶν τῆς Παρθίας παρειληφέναι τινὰ ἄνδρα δίκαιον Ἠλχασαΐ,

English · Claude translation

When this man's teaching had resounded through the whole world, a crafty man full of madness, called Alcibiades, who lived in Apamea of Syria, seeing the business and judging himself sharper and cleverer at dice-play than Callistus, came to Rome bringing a certain book, claiming that a righteous man, Elchasai, had received it from the Seres of Parthia,

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 462 · 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 digital text repeats a clause by dittography; see the correction. The Seres were a people of the far East (associated with silk). “Dice-play” means trickery.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (dittography in the digital text: a clause repeated): παρειληφέναι τινὰ, φάσκων ταύτην ἀπὸ Σηρῶν τῆς Παρθίας παρειληφέναι τινὰ ἄνδρα → παρειληφέναι τινὰ ἄνδρα.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.13.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/13/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.13.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/13/1/).