Classifying Christians : Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity / Todd S. Berzon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berzon, Todd S., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Church history--Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600.

Church history.

Christian heresies--History--Early church, ca. 30-600.

Christian heresies.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (317 p.)

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [2016]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Writing People, Writing Religion

1. Heresiology as Ethnography: Th e Ethnographic Disposition

2. Comparing Theologies and Comparing Peoples: Th e 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: Th e 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

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780520959880

0520959884

OCLC:

935925294