ABSTRACT
Heresiology is a notoriously difficult genre to work with. 1 The sheer volume, and at times, mind-numbing tedium of the minutiae found in its representative writings can be quite off-putting. But perhaps more than the length or the overabundance of detail, it is the spirit of heresiology that is so dissonant with modern sensibilities. Heresiologies were rhetorical works constructed by authors who had a vested interest in presenting the ‘other’ in the worst possible light, sometimes by duplicitous and underhanded means, and at the same time the heresiologists claimed an irrefutable hold on the absolute truth, as they articulated and emphasised the apostolic pedigree and the orthodox purity and exclusivity of their own beliefs. Heresiologies, however, might still contain some traces of the ideas and practices of so-called ‘heretics’, and thus scholars continue to turn to them, at least as starting points or bases of comparison in those rare instances when they have extant writings with which such appraisals can be made. Unfortunately, too few texts of those on the losing end of the struggle over Christian belief have survived, and scholars are often left with little recourse but to resort to the heresiologists to attempt to recover and understand marginalised Christianities on their own terms.
