Refutation of All Heresies 9.28.1

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, 486

Ἔστι μὲν οὖν καὶ ἕτερον Ἐσσηνῶν τάγμα, τοῖς μὲν αὐτοῖς ἤθεσι καὶ διαίτῃ χρώμενοι, ἑνὶ δὲ τούτων ἐνδιαλλάττουσι, τῷ γαμεῖν, δεινόν τι λέγοντες δρᾶν τοὺς ἀ[πο]ποιήσαντας γάμου· πρὸς τὴν ἀναίρεσιν τοῦ βίου γίνεσθαι τοῦτο, καὶ μὴ δεῖν ἐκκόπτειν τὴν τῶν τέκνων διαδοχὴν φάσκοντες, ὡς εἰ πάντες τοῦτο φρονήσειαν, ἐκκοπήσεσθαι ῥᾳδίως τὸ πᾶν γένος ἀνθρώπων.

English · Claude translation

There is also another order of Essenes, using the same customs and way of life, but they differ from these in one thing, marrying, saying that those who have renounced marriage do something dreadful; that this tends to the destruction of life, and that one must not cut off the succession of children, since if all thought this way, the whole human race would easily be cut off.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 486 · 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

Josephus, B.J. 2.160 (Josephus (works)) · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Marriage

Notes

Translation notes

Compare Josephus, Jewish War 2.160.

Notes on the original text

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

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.28.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/28/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.28.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/28/1/).