ABSTRACT
The work of Epiphanius is best known because it has proved a quarry for material needed by the textual critic of the New Testament and the historian of the early Church. A good deal of effort has been expended on tracing Epiphanius' sources and estimating their reliability; very little work has treated Epiphanius as interesting in him. Embracing as it does all non-Christian religions and philosophies, heresy is quite clearly identified as external to the Church, and an interesting pointer to Epiphanius' attitudesIt is hardly surprising that Petau concluded that Epiphanius was confused. In the opening paragraph of the Panarion, Epiphanius makes it clear that his purpose is to map out a genealogy of heresy. At one point he is the paradigm of the true Christian; at another his circumcision marks the origin of the Jewish heresy. In both places Samaritanism is treated as one of the five 'mothers of heresy'.
