J. A. Cerrato: Hippolytus as Homilist: Aspects of Oratory in the Second Century Commentator

The commentaries of Hippolytus, composed in the late second century and early third, show marks suggestive of sermons delivered in congregational settings, as well as evidence of influence by the Second Sophistic. This study examines the loci in which these marks and influences appear, pointing to an author who stood between the classical and biblical worlds of learning as an interpreter, speaker and teacher. Passages from the Daniel Commentary, On the Antichrist, On the Song of Songs and from various authentic extracts and fragments throughout the extant corpus are investigated. Attention is given to the author's standing among contemporaneous homilists and writers, providing a literary-historical context. Included is an assessment of the primary audiences and the occasions on which the original teachings were delivered. These considerations bear on the provenance and identity inquiries which attend the author - the Hippolytus Question - and help to illuminate his overall character as a writer and teacher. Of interest is the query whether any of these indicators are useful in revealing elements of a rhetorical education acquired in Rome, Roman Asia, Egypt or the MidEast. The rhetorical indicators alone do not provide conclusive proof of a western or eastern venue, but when combined with other evidence from the corpus, do not rule out, and in some instances support, a Roman Asian, or generally levantine, provenance.

Sebastian Hanstein: Advertising the true faith – the refutation of all heresies in its roman context

The so-called ‚Refutation of all Heresies‘ traditionally (yet probably wrongly) attributed to Hippolytus of Rome is usually seen as one of the main sources of 2nd/3rd century Gnosticism introducing a number of hitherto unknown ‘heresies’and their teachings to a bigger audience.Among those, a group of several snake-related ‘heresies’ (the Naassenes, Peratae, Sethians and Justin) stand out decisively as they share a set of identical phrases, ideas and biblical quotations. Those features anda number of other problems concering the value of the work have been known for many decades. They have been subject to controversial debates.My paper examines the possible genus of the work and tries to draw conclusions from it as it appears to be a logos protreptikos, aiming to promote the author’s theological views and refuting his Roman competitors. Through examining the framework set by the genus I aim to reevaluate the source material and the quality of the information given by the author.

Katharina Bracht: The Aroma of Christ. Hippolytus’ λόγος-christology in his Commentary on the Song of Songs

Hippolytus of Rome is well-known as the author of the first Christian commentary on the Song of Songs. He determined the course for future Christian christological Canticum-exegesis by interpreting the bridegroom typologically as Christ and the bride as the Church, as it is taken up by Origen, Ambrose and other fathers of the church.Far less known, however, are those passages in which Hippolytus develops other typologies for Christ (now easily accessible not only in the Latin translation of the Georgian version by G. Garitte, Traités d’Hippolyte, CSCO 264, 1965, but also in an English translation by Y. W. Smith, The Mystery of Anointing,2015). The paper takes Hippolytus’ commentary on Cant 1:14 (13) (Hipp. Cant.13:1–4) as point of departure, where he typologically interprets the balsam taken from the trees growing in the vineyards of Engedi as the „aroma of Christ“, i.e. the „grace of economy“ which he diffuses at his crucifixion. It investigates in how far this corresponds with Hippolytus’λόγος-christology as known from his Commentary on Daniel(cf. Bracht, Hippolyts Schrift In Danielem, STAC 85, 2014, 279–91) and elucidates the ”logic“ of this strange typology. The paper furthermore pays attention to the reception of this motif in later Canticum-exegesis.

István M. Bugár: Hippolytus on the Virgin

The correct assessment of the theological output of the early-third-century author Hippolytus was considerable hindered by the discovery of a contemporary text transmitted under the name of Origen that soon became attributed the Hippolytus nearly unanimously by scholars from the middle of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century and was still considered a work by the renowned author by many for further four decades. The discussion of this controversial text and later of its authorship took virtually all the space devoted to Hippolytus by the scholarly literature. Now that this unfruitful digression of the Hippolytean studies is nearly over, it is worth revisiting the literary remains of this early Christian theologian for an assessment of his remarkably consistent thought. This concerns not only the fields of Trinitology, exegesis, or the theology of the Incarnation, but -- largely resulting from his treatment of the latter subject -- also of his insights concerning the place of the Virgin in salvation history. In this field, too, his achievement is not only remarkable as largely unparalleled in the surviving literary output by notable authors of this early period, but also as completely ignored by earlier scholarship. Thus, in the paper proposed I attempt at a comprehensive overview of his propositions concerning the Mother of Christ.

Francesca Minonne: Early Christians and the debate on a new τέχνη γραμματική

In a passage from the Refutation of All Heresies, attributed to the so-called western Hippolytus, the Gnostics were accused of being “the discoverers of a new art of grammar” (ἐφευρεταὶ καινῆς τέχνης γραμματικῆς). By speaking of a “new” – i.e. invented and technically groundless – grammar, the author discredited them as erroneous interpreters of the sacred texts. He also blamed them for deceiving the untrained people through their fallacious exegesis of the Scriptures. These accusations reveal the value the author of the Refutation attributed to grammar, as it was for him an important tool of textual exegesis. Interestingly, the idea of discovering “new arts”, that is new methods to trick the enemies or take advantage of the situation, occurs also in Athenaeus of Naucratis’ Deipnosophists and is attested in the more ancient poem commonly referred to as Batrachomyomachia. These parallels allow us to deduce also the meaning of the expression contained in the Refutation, in relation to the contemporary cultural context in which Christianity flourished. From this passage we can then reflect on the Christian exegetical tools and the cultural references of the debate between the Gnostics and the author of the Refutation.

Michael Flexsenhar III: Seeking Death in a Synagogue: Satire in the Refutation of All Heresies (9.12.7-9)

In the Book 9 of his Refutation of all Heresies, the third-century polemicist conventionally called ‘Hippolytus of Rome’ makes an unusual claim about his opponent: Callistus, a domestic slave, entered a synagogue of the Jews on the Sabbath, caused a disturbance by saying he was a Christian, and so sought his own death. This claim by ‘Hippolytus’ has received only passing attention in scholarship. While some commentators use the reference to the “synagogue of the Jews” to elucidate contemporaneous Jewish worship practices, the Jews’ legal status in Rome, or Callistus’s own relationship to those Jews, what has been overlooked is the thoroughly satirical nature of Hippolytus’s account. This essay explains that the claim about Callistus seeking his own death in a would-be suicide attempt is not only a counter-claim on his status as a martyr. It is character assassination modeled on Second Sophistic satire. The larger story about Callistus in the Refutation parallels Lucian of Samosata’s ‘slave satires’. The similarity to Death of Peregrinus is especially strong. The Refutation’s satirical story complicates any attempt to reconstruct the history, whether of Callistus or the Jews. The claim against Callistus does, however, reveal social conflict and tension between Roman Christians and Jews at that time—at least as envisioned by the author ‘Hippolytus.’ The idea that a person like Callistus would enter a synagogue gathering and proclaim himself to be a Christian is itself ridiculed. The story thus helps us plot yet another voice in the “parting of the ways.”

Scott Manor: Gaius or Hippolytus? Revisiting Lightfoot's hypothesis

In his essay, Caius or Hippolytus?, J.B. Lightfoot hypothesized that these two figures may have been one in the same person. The duplicity of personalities was the result of erroneous assumptions on the part of Eusebius and others who know of an individual "Gaius" primarily through the work Dialogue with Proclus the Montanist in which a certain Gaius is cast as the main protagonist. In reality, nearly every particular that is predicated to Gaius belongs also to Hippolytus, thus leading Lightfoot to question the historical existence of Gaius of Rome.
This hypothesis dissolved upon the discovery of some commentaries by Dionysius bar Salibit (d. 1171), who claims to record a dispute between Hippolytus and Gaius over the integrity of the Johannine literature. With this, Lightfoot abandoned his theory. Moreover, with this new information scholarly estimations of Gaius’ own legacy shifted drastically from viewing him as an orthodox hero to being the sole constituent of the heresy known as the Alogi, which tried to banish the Gospel and Apocalypse of John from the early church. But is this the proper way to conceive of and calibrate the evidence?
The aim of this short communication is to reconsider whether Lightfoot’s original hypothesis was indeed correct. By developing the work of some scholars who have questioned the accuracy the bar Salibi commentaries, I shall argue that the identity and existence of Gaius should once again be subsumed into that of Hippolytus.

Jared Secord: Medicine and Sophistry in Hippolytus' Refutatio

Hippolytus’ Refutatio is an underexploited source for the connections that existed between the Christian communities of Rome and the city’s diverse intellectual life. Most of the current work on the subject focuses on philosophy, and has been concerned especially with testing the reliability of Hippolytus’ citations from otherwise lost philosophical texts (e.g. Osborne 1987, Mansfeld 1992), or with demonstrating that the organization of Hippolytus’ community resembled that of a philosophical school (e.g. Brent 1995, 405-6). The paper I offer extends the scope of current research to include the areas of medicine and the sophistic movement.

In the area of medicine, evidence from the Refutatio demonstrates that some Christians had an active and technical interest in the mechanics of human anatomy and physiology (some discussion in Pouderon 2005). One passage (4.51.10-13) even seems to suggest that Christians formed part of the audience for public medical demonstrations and dissections of the type performed by Galen and Rome’s other doctors (see Debru 1995, von Staden 1997).

The Refutatio also contains signs of Hippolytus’ awareness of the public displays associated with the contemporary sophistic movement. He uses the vocabulary commonly applied to extemporizing sophists – particularly the verb schediazein (e.g. 9.12.19) – to describe the speech of his opponents. Their tendency to improvise, Hippolytus suggests, functions not as a demonstration of their verbal acuity, as it would for a Greek sophist, but rather of their hastiness and inconsistency as Christian teachers and theologians.

In sum, the paper demonstrates both that the Christian communities of Rome were well aware of the public displays of Greek doctors and sophists, and that Hippolytus exploits this level of awareness as part of his attack on heretics, depicting them as more like doctors and sophists than Christians.