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“Classifying Christians represents a crucial missing chapter in the larger history of Western discourse about itself and others. Too often, studies of heresiology understand and present it as a sui generis literature, a fascinating late-ancient ‘oddity’ that gets pitched to modern readers as an intriguing bauble. Todd Berzon’s study is the first to make a convincing argument as to why anyone outside the narrow field of late ancient studies should care about heresiology.”—Andrew Jacobs, Professor of Religious Studies and Mary W. and J. Stanley Johnson Professor of Humanities, Scripps College
“With Classifying Christians, Todd Berzon has produced an original, important, and impressive intellectual intervention in early Christian history, the history of social sciences, and critical theory of religion. This well-conceived, highly learned, and sophisticated analysis of the genre of heresiology will be required reading for scholars of antiquity.”—Jeremy Schott, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington
List of 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
About the author
Todd S. Berzon is Assistant Professor of Religion at Bowdoin College.
Summary
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.
Additional text
"Classifying Christians is a splendid and challenging study, a must-read for scholars in the field of Late Antique theological polemics. . . . immersive and engaging while intellectually challenging at the same time."
