Originally Posted by mountainman

Hey arnaldo,

We may understand the humour of Hippolytus by understanding he was a 3rd century heresiologist and his humour was of the 3rd century heresiological kind, which required the existence of both the orthodoxy (US) and the heretics (THEM) in the 3rd century.

The humor resolves to invectives couched in canonical authority like "the mote in the 3rd century orthodox eye, and the massive beam in eye of the 3rd century heretic". This is not humour but simple literary calumny, the characteristic tool of orthodox christian heresiologists ever since "Christian Origins" was fortuitously published by Eusebius in the 4th century.

Q: What form of humour is to be found in the statement "This docetic heretic is foolish!" ?
A: Heresiological.


Best wishes


Pete

Originally Posted by arnoldo

For those interested in reading more alleged examples of Hippolytus's attempts at humour see pg 25 of Philosophumena available here.