Philosophumena; or, The refutation of all heresies, Volume IHippolytus, Antipope
Philosophy
Philosophumena; or, The refutation of all heresies, Volume I
Hippolytus, Antipope
Christian heresies -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Occultism; Philosophy, Ancient
for Book I, besides being harmless, it had possibly by that time become
too firmly connected with the name of Origen for its attribution to
this other sufferer in the Maximinian persecution to be disturbed in
later times.
It only remains to see how this theory fits in with the remarks of
Photius given above. It is fairly evident that Photius is speaking
from recollection only, and that the words do not suggest that
he had Hippolytus’ actual work before him when writing, while he
throughout speaks of it in the past tense as one might speak of a
document which has long since perished, although some memory of its
contents have been preserved. If this were so, we might be prepared
to take Photius’ description as not necessarily accurate in every
detail; yet, as we have it, it is almost a perfect description of
our text. The 32 heresies, as we have shown above, appear in our
text as in Photius’ document. Our text contains not only the large
excerpts from Irenæus which we might expect from Photius’ account
of its inception, but also the “refutations” which do not appear in
the _Adversus Omnes Hæreses_. It extends “up to,” as Photius says,
Noetus and the Noetians, and although it does not contain any mention
of Dositheus or the Dositheans, this may have been given in the part
which has been cut out of Book X.[67] If that were the case, or if
Photius has made any mistake in the matter, as one might easily do
when we consider that all the early heresiologies begin with Jewish
and Samaritan sects, the only real discrepancy between our text and
Photius’ description of Hippolytus’ work is in the matter of length.
But it is by no means certain that Photius ever saw the whole work
put together, and it is plain that he had never seen or had forgotten
the first four books dealing with the philosophers, the mysteries and
the charlatans. Without these, and without the summary, Books V to IX
do not work out to more than 70,000 words in all, and this might well
seem a mere “booklet” to a man then engaged in the compilation of his
huge _Bibliotheca_. Whether, then, Hippolytus did or did not reduce
to writing the exposition of heresies which he made in his youth, it
seems probable that all certain trace of this exposition is lost. It is
certainly not to be recognized in pseudo-Tertullian’s _Adversus Omnes
Hæreses_, and the work of Hippolytus recorded by Photius was probably a
copy of our text in a more or less complete form.
5. THE STYLE OF THE WORK
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