Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity i... more Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity 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, I argue 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.
This essay analyzes how late antique commentaries on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians capitalized ... more This essay analyzes how late antique commentaries on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians capitalized on the issue of theological disobedience to elaborate the precise meaning of Christian kinship and cohesion in their times. Paul’s anger and frustration at the Galatians, in particular, provides a convenient rhetorical platform for theorizing the nature of and impediments to Christian community, as they define it. While most Pauline exegetes of this period read the Galatians’ disobedience as a conscious choice born of ignorance, misunderstanding, and weak-mindedness, Jerome located the source of this indiscipline in the Galatians’ ethnic or national disposition. For him, the Galatians were an ethnological plaything—a canvas upon which he could suggest an explicit correlation between Christian error, on the one hand, and ethnic disposition, on the other. The differences and factions that Paul described in his letters were reimagined in late antiquity as both exemplars of Christian heresy and as heresies of ethnological origin. Ultimately, however, the process of transforming Paul into a heresiologist served only to emphasize the complexity of interpretive maneuvers deployed to define the terms of Christian community vis-à-vis other manner of social, political, and ethnic affiliation.
Is there a way to connect the polyphony of attitudes and diversity of strategies that late antiqu... more Is there a way to connect the polyphony of attitudes and diversity of strategies that late antique Christian authors display in writing about Jews and Judaism into a discursive whole? This essay offers one possible answer by focusing on the rhetorical effects of contradiction within Christian rhetorical constructions of the Jews. Using Eve Sedgwick’s theory of the double bind—the idea that discourses gain power over their productions through the rhetoric of incoherence—I argue that Christian writers constructed a Judaism that was marked by contradiction, ambiguity, and incongruity. With specific attention to the writings of John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Rufinus, and the Theodosian Code, this paper shows how the construction of Christianity’s Judaism was built upon rhetorical, exegetical, theological, and legal tensions that were neither reconcilable nor intended to be. The very irresolution of Christian discourse about the Jews—the construction of their history, cult, or tradition as fundamentally incoherent—functioned, in effect, as a form of anti-Judaism.
Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity i... more Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity 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, I argue 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.
This essay analyzes how late antique commentaries on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians capitalized ... more This essay analyzes how late antique commentaries on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians capitalized on the issue of theological disobedience to elaborate the precise meaning of Christian kinship and cohesion in their times. Paul’s anger and frustration at the Galatians, in particular, provides a convenient rhetorical platform for theorizing the nature of and impediments to Christian community, as they define it. While most Pauline exegetes of this period read the Galatians’ disobedience as a conscious choice born of ignorance, misunderstanding, and weak-mindedness, Jerome located the source of this indiscipline in the Galatians’ ethnic or national disposition. For him, the Galatians were an ethnological plaything—a canvas upon which he could suggest an explicit correlation between Christian error, on the one hand, and ethnic disposition, on the other. The differences and factions that Paul described in his letters were reimagined in late antiquity as both exemplars of Christian heresy and as heresies of ethnological origin. Ultimately, however, the process of transforming Paul into a heresiologist served only to emphasize the complexity of interpretive maneuvers deployed to define the terms of Christian community vis-à-vis other manner of social, political, and ethnic affiliation.
Is there a way to connect the polyphony of attitudes and diversity of strategies that late antiqu... more Is there a way to connect the polyphony of attitudes and diversity of strategies that late antique Christian authors display in writing about Jews and Judaism into a discursive whole? This essay offers one possible answer by focusing on the rhetorical effects of contradiction within Christian rhetorical constructions of the Jews. Using Eve Sedgwick’s theory of the double bind—the idea that discourses gain power over their productions through the rhetoric of incoherence—I argue that Christian writers constructed a Judaism that was marked by contradiction, ambiguity, and incongruity. With specific attention to the writings of John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Rufinus, and the Theodosian Code, this paper shows how the construction of Christianity’s Judaism was built upon rhetorical, exegetical, theological, and legal tensions that were neither reconcilable nor intended to be. The very irresolution of Christian discourse about the Jews—the construction of their history, cult, or tradition as fundamentally incoherent—functioned, in effect, as a form of anti-Judaism.
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