Primary source · Greek
Heracleon: Fragments of the Hypomnemata
Heracleon · c. AD 170–180
What this text is
The first known commentary on any Gospel — forty-eight fragments on John, every one surviving because Origen quoted it in order to argue with it two generations later. A book preserved by its opponent: the archive's cleanest case of adversarial transmission.
Public-domain translations
Working translation (fragments via Origen)
'In him was life' — Heracleon says: to those spiritual ones, life was in him. (Fragment 2, on John 1:4) ... The Samaritan woman signifies the spiritual nature. (on John 4)
Manuscript witnesses
Preserved in Origen, Commentary on John (Munich, BSB gr. 191)
13th c.The principal carrier of Origen's commentary — and therefore of every Heracleon fragment.
Brooke, The Fragments of Heracleon
1891The Cambridge collection that numbered the forty-eight fragments as cited today.
Provenance
The Valentinian school 'of Italy'; preserved inside Origen's Commentary on John
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- The Fragments of HeracleonA. E. Brooke, 1891Text and numbering of the fragments.
- Heracleon PhilologusAnsgar Wucherpfennig, 2002Critical rereading of Heracleon as exegete rather than caricatured heretic — the anti-bias control.