Pauline Paleontology

by Matthew Thiessen in


"The oblique nature of Paul’s references to the Abraham Narrative suggests that his implied readers, in fact, do know the basic contours of that story. Paul’s allusions to Genesis, therefore, must represent his efforts to get them to read or hear the Abraham Narrative very differently than they currently do."

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Book Note | Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge

by David Maldonado Rivera in


"One of Berzon’s constant reminders is that powerful ideologies and strategies of representation often strive to hide their own seams and points of tension, but that it is in the process of highlighting these very points of tension that they find themselves at their most reproducible but also at their most frail.  The late ancient heresiologists cultivated strong rhetorics of exceptionality and mastery—the heresy hunter excelled at making discoveries and at flaunting erudition—but also rehearsed a discourse of fear of contagion, vulnerability, and epistemic overload."

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