ABSTRACT
In the Dialogue, Justin not only seeks to convince his audience that certain Christians are misguided in their convictions, but he also advocates a hardline, heresiological response that excludes these people from the community and denies them their claim to the name “Christian.” In the process of demonstrating the advantages of this heresiological approach and downplaying its potential disadvantages (in particular, the fact that it highlighted dissent among Christians), Justin makes various claims about Jewish “heresies” that have erroneously been taken as a reliable basis for scholarly reconstructions of contemporary Jewish sectarianism and heresiology.
