Classifying Christians

Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity

Todd S. Berzon

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780520284265
• eBook ISBN: 9780520959880
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion

Classifying Christians investigates late antique Christian heresiologies as ethnographies that catalogued and detailed the origins, rituals, doctrines, and customs of the heretics in explicitly polemical and theological terms. Oscillating between ancient ethnographic evidence and contemporary ethnographic writing, Todd S. Berzon argues that late antique heresiology shares an underlying logic with classical ethnography in the ancient Mediterranean world. By providing an account of heresiological writing from the second to fifth century, Classifying Christians embeds heresiology within the historical development of imperial forms of knowledge that have shaped western culture from antiquity to the present.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Classifying Christians
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Writing People, Writing Religion
• 1. Heresiology as Ethnography: The Ethnographic Disposition
• 2. Comparing Theologies and Comparing Peoples: The Customs, Doctrines, and Dispositions of the Heretics
• 3. Contesting Ethnography: Heretical Models of Human and Cosmic Plurality
• 4. Christianized Ethnography: Paradigms of Heresiological Knowledge
• 5. Knowledge Fair and Foul: The Rhetoric of Heresiological Inquiry
• 6. The Infinity of Continuity: Epiphanius of Salamis and the Limits of the Ethnographic Disposition
• 7. From Ethnography to List: Transcribing and Traversing Heresy
• Epilogue: The Legacy of Heresiology
• Bibliography
• Index