Quote. Gérard Vallée, ‘A study in Anti-Gnostic polemics: Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius’, Introduction. 1981.
Out of the large number of heresiologists who wrote during the first centuries, why concentrate on the Adversus haereses of Irenaeus, the Elenchos of Hippolytus, and the Panarion of Epiphanius? The answer, in a nutshell, is that these works are available ; they are typical ; and they each took…