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.
By:
Todd S. Berzon
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 28mm
Weight: 544g
ISBN: 9780520284265
ISBN 10: 0520284267
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 23 February 2016
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
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
Todd S. Berzon is Assistant Professor of Religion at Bowdoin College.
Reviews for Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity
Berzon's book offers a potent epistemological reflection on the production, organization, and limits of knowledge in late antiquity... a finely articulated meditation on the effects of theological and ethnographic ancient list-making. Bryn Mawr Classical Review Classifying Christians is a remarkable book... indispensable. Reading Religion
