Todd S. Berzon
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520284265
- eISBN:
- 9780520959880
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520284265.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
This book investigates late antique Christian heresiologies as ethnographies that catalogued and detailed the origins, rituals, doctrines, and customs of the heretics in explicitly polemical and ...
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This book 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, the book 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, the book embeds heresiology within the historical development of imperial forms of knowledge that have shaped western culture from antiquity to the present.Less
This book 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, the book 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, the book embeds heresiology within the historical development of imperial forms of knowledge that have shaped western culture from antiquity to the present.