Heresy is a central concept in the formation of Orthodox Christianity. Where does this notion come from? This book traces the construction of the idea of heresy in the rhetoric of ideological disagreements in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian texts and in the development of the polemical rhetoric against heretics, called heresiology. Here, author Robert Royalty argues, one finds the origin of what comes to be labelled heresy in the second century. In other words, there was such as thing as heresy in ancient Jewish and Christian discourse before it was called heresy. And by the end...