Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 9.9.6

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: Heraclitus tells of Homer fooled by boys' riddle about lice to show how people are deceived about visible things.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 444

ἀπὸ τῶν τοιούτων αὐτοῦ λόγων κατανοεῖν ῥᾴδιον· Ἐξηπάτηνται, φησίν, οἱ ἄνθρωποι πρὸς τὴν γνῶσιν τῶν φανερῶν παραπλησίως Ὁμήρῳ, ὃς ἐγένετο τῶν Ἑλλήνων σοφώτερος πάντων. Ἐκεῖνόν τε γὰρ παῖδες φθεῖρας κατακτείνοντες ἐξηπάτησαν εἰπόντες· ὅσα εἴδομεν καὶ κατελάβομεν, ταῦτα ἀπολείπομεν, ὅσα δὲ οὔτε εἴδομεν οὔτʼ ἐλάβομεν, ταῦτα φέρομεν.

English · Claude translation

it is easy to understand from such words of his as these: “Men are deceived,” he says, “about the knowledge of visible things, much like Homer, who was wiser than all the Greeks. For boys killing lice deceived him, saying: what we saw and caught, these we leave behind; but what we neither saw nor caught, these we carry.”

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 444 · 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
  • Heraclitus, frag. 56 (Heraclitus (fragments)) · quotation, high confidence

Notes

Translation notes

  • Heraclitus, fragment 56.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.9.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/9/6/).

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

Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 9.9.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/9/6/).

Download citation:BibTeX ·RIS (Zotero, EndNote)

Whole work:BibTeX ·RIS ·Markdown text

Report an error in this passage