Classifying Christians : ethnography, heresiology, and the limits of knowledge in Late Antiquity /

Classifying Christians : ethnography, heresiology, and the limits of knowledge in Late Antiquity /

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Berzon, Todd S., 1983- author.
Imprint:	Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2016]
Description:	xiv, 302 pages ; 24 cm
Language:	English
Subject:	Christian heresies -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600. Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600. Christian heresies -- Early church. Church history -- Primitive and early church. History.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10507558

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9780520284265 0520284267 9780520959880 0520959884
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:	"Classifying Christians investigates the ways in which late antique Christian heresiologists (150-450 C.E.) produced polemical ethnographies and presented their ethnographic dispositions in theological terms. The book demonstrates how the rituals, doctrines, customs, and origins of heretics functioned to map and delimit the composition of the Christian world and the world at large. Heresiology was about understanding human difference and organizing knowledge of it"--Provided by publisher.

Description
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.
Physical Description:	xiv, 302 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:	9780520284265 0520284267 9780520959880 0520959884