Hippolytus of Rome (170–235) also wrote about heresies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippolytus_of_Rome
I capture the note, that Hippolytus ...
Hippolytus I begins his enumeration of the thirty-two heresies by mentioning Dositheos; hence this sect is made to appear older than the Sadducees,[5] and on this heresy is based the system of Philaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dositheos_%28Samaritan%29
The 32 .... maybe just accident, maybe intention.
This might be the relevant text, but if it is it, it doesn't contain a 32 ... perhaps not complete, or a another text is the reference ...
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050105.htm
Added later: Another text of Hippolytus, also against heresies:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050110.htm
It contains the matter with the 32 children of Ham (earlier mentioned below for the notes of Epiphanius) ...
Noah had three sons— Shem, Ham, and Japheth. From these the entire family of man was multiplied, and every quarter of the earth owes its inhabitants in the first instance to these. For the word of God to them prevailed, when the Lord said, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. So great efficacy had that one word that from the three sons of Noah are begotten in the family 72 children—(viz.,) from Shem, 25; from Japheth, 15; and from Ham, 32. Unto Ham, however, these 32 children are born in accordance with previous declarations.
**********
*************************************
Selections from
The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis
A Treatise Against Eighty Sects
http://www.masseiana.org/panarion_bk1.htm#7.
Nahor was born as a son to Serug and became the father of Terah. The making of images with clay and pottery began at this point, with the art of this Terah. And with him the world arrived at its twentieth generation, comprising 3332 years.
I've to control that still. In my bible version it's just the year 1878, and Terah is the 19th generation. There are different chronologies and slightly different figures ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_Bible.
Somehow they must have arranged in 164 BC, that they had 4000 years ...
4000: (164 BCE) Rededication of the Temple
The final period is the 374 years between the Edict of Cyrus (538 BCE) and the re-dedication of the Temple by the Maccabees (164 BCE). The overall 4,000 year cycle is calculated backwards from this point.
My list has the funny condition, that Sem (son of Noah, lived 600 years, died 2158) survived Abraham (lived 175, died 2123, about 10 generations later). Noah was still living (950 years, died 2006), when Abram was born (1948).
**************
And, as I have already explained in the foregoing Sects with regard to the series of generations I dealt with earlier, all humanity then consisted of 72 men, who were princes and patricians—32 of Ham's stock, 15 of Japheth's, and 25 of Shem's. And so the tower and Babylon were built.
Interesting. I don't know, how he got this.
Added later: see above the added note for Hippolytus.
2:1 The Saviour was born at Bethlehem of Judea in the thirty-third year of Herod (would be 8 BC), the forty-second of the Emperor Augustus (would be impossible, I guess; 44 BC or 27 BC might be possible dates for the start of reign; possibly he was adopted earlier ?). He went down into Egypt in the thirty-fifth year of Herod (6 BC) and returned from Egypt after Herod's death (4 BC).
2:2 And so in the thirty-seventh year of that same reign of Herod, when Herod died after a reign of 37 years (4 BC), the child was four years old.
2:3 Archelaus ruled for nine years (deposed 6 AD). When Joseph left Egypt with Mary and the child at the beginning of his reign, hearing that Archelaus was king he went back to the Galilee and at this time settled in Nazareth.
2:4 Archelaus had a son, Herod the Younger (this is considered a brother), and this Herod succeeded him as king in the ninth year of the reign of his father Archelaus; and the years of Christ’s incarnation numbered thirteen.
2:5 In the eighteenth year of Herod surnamed Agrippa Jesus began his preaching and at that time received the baptism of John and preached an 'acceptable year' opposed by no one—Jews, Greeks, Samaritans or anyone else.
2:6 Then he preached a second year, in the face of opposition; and this Herod had reigned for nineteen years while it was the Saviour's thirty-second.Then he preached a second year, in the face of opposition; and this Herod had reigned for nineteen years while it was the Saviour's thirty-second.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_Antipas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_Archelaus
For the birth of Jesus at wiki ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Jesus
In Book 2 Epiphanius develops very detailed ideas, when Jesus born (5th/6th of January) and that he lived
32 years and 74 days.
https://books.google.de/books?id=DAP-uJ ... 54&f=false
This sounds different from the usual "33" ... in mine culture you're 33, if you have finished the 33rd year, not before. There are other cultures, which handle this different.
Anyway, he calculates there "something", and I don't understand, what he's doing there completely (the text is not complete).
**********************
About Valentinus, his 30 aeons and Hesiod:
2:4 And so, in imitation of Hesiod's Theogony and the thirty so-called gods that are mentioned by Hesiod himself, Valentinus, who had memorized the heathen mythological poetry and adopted the notion from those who had lost the truth in his time and before it, wanted to deceive the world with material just like Hesiod's by changing the names into different ones.
2:5 For he too wants to introduce thirty gods, aeons, and heavens. ...
....
3:1 And this is their mythological romance of the thirty aeons, and their nonsense of a supposed 'spiritual Pleroma' in pairs!6
3:2 If, by way of comparison, one were to set it beside the one in Hesiod, Stesichorus, and the other Greek poets, he would find that, put parallel, they are precisely the same, and would learn from this that the leaders of these systems are professing to speak in mysteries about nothing that is remarkable.
We had his Hesiod question earlier.