Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : writing people, writing religion -- Heresiology as ethnography : the ethnographic disposition -- Comparing theologies and comparing peoples : the customs, doctrines, and dispositions of the heretics -- Contesting ethnography : heretical models of human and cosmic plurality -- Christianized ethnography : paradigms of heresiological knowledge -- Knowledge fair and foul : the rhetoric of heresiological inquiry -- The infinity of continuity : Epiphanius of Salamis and the limits of the ethnographic disposition -- From ethnography to list : transcribing and traversing heresy -- Epilogue : the legacy of heresiology.

"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 based on print version record.