Hippolytus

Abstract

There are a great number of writings attributed to one Hippolytus of Rome. According to the traditional nineteenth-century view they were all written by a presbyter-bishop involved in some major theological controversies in Rome at the beginning of the third century. If this is correct — and the following overview explores the plausibility of such claims — the corpus comprises the first major exegetical works by a Christian author, the first elaborate Christian liturgy and the first systematic heresiology, but also constitutes an important witness of the dawn of the trinitarian controversy. Anyone interested in the beginnings of Christian `theology' must therefore look into this diverse legacy from possibly the last Greek Church Father in the west.