Despite the numerous recent studies devoted to heresies (and the deconstruction of “heresy”) in early Christianity, no study has been undertaken devoted solely to the early heresy catalogues of early Christians. Geoffrey S. Smith has now filled this lacuna for us with his work, Guilt by Association. Unlike “those scholars” (unnamed) who uncritically see “heresy catalogues first and foremost as archives that have the potential to yield important historical information,” Smith reads these sources as evidence of “early Christian representations of others in relation to themselves” (xii).

In his first chapter, Smith challenges the common view that Christian heresy catalogues belong to the same genre as earlier philosophical catalogues of teachers and “schools.” While the Christian heresy catalogues admittedly “resemble” the earlier philosophical doxography, the two kinds of sources “function” very differently (15). Namely, the Christian catalogues include a clear polemic. Whence this polemic? Smith argues that this impulse arose in the Pseudo-Pauline material (21–47).

Smith's second chapter rejects Justin as the author of the Syntagma Against All Heresies. Justin's reference to this work is understood not as a claim to authorship, but as an “advertisement” of a work he endorses. The ramification of Smith's conclusion is to shift the paradigm from “a landscape in which two opposing groups struggle to gain an advantage over each other [i.e., orthodox vs. heretics],” and instead “we should imagine a competitive religious marketplace in which numerous Christian teachers seek to convince others of the merits of their own vision for Christianity” (85).

This marketplace of Christianities can be further glimpsed in chapter three, where Smith surveys “rival heresy catalogues”: Hegesippus's Seven Heresies among the People, Justin's list of Jewish heresies (Dialogue with Trypho 80.4), a passage from the Tripartite Tractate, and the Testimony of Truth. A comparative analysis brings to light unique features of the Syntagma.

In his fourth chapter, Smith first explicates how Irenaeus accommodated an updated/post-Justin version of the Syntagma so as to construct a single “manageable category” of heresy. Next, Smith argues that Irenaeus's umbrella category is meant to discredit the various groups now labeled “the Valentinian school” in order to associate them with the “Gnostics”—thus the title of Smith's work. While Irenaeus assumes that the earliest Simonian groups are the true “Gnostic school,” he also—contrary to some recent scholars (see p. 158)—labels the Valentinians as such. In conclusion, Smith—contrary to several recent scholars (see pp. 166–170)—finds that “Gnostic” as a label of a school was not a self-description of any early Christian group, even if Christians claimed to have “gnosis” or to be “gnostic.” Likewise, none that we would consider Valentinians thought of themselves as belonging to a, or the, “Valentinian School.” These, Smith insists, are constructs derived from ancient heresiologists and accepted uncritically by modern scholars.

With a book as technical and meticulous as this, there will undoubtedly be those who disagree with some of Smith's specific conclusions. For example, while Smith presents a compelling case against Justin's authorship of the Syntagma, there is still room for debate. As a much more general observation, the title is also somewhat misleading, in that only the heresy catalogues from the second century are treated here, not the major works of later authors like Epiphanius. An additional chapter on these later sources would have been welcome, but on the other hand Smith cannot be blamed for focusing on the limited scope of early Christian history in his monograph. Another area where scholars will likely challenge Smith is in his use of loaded terms and anachronistic descriptors: examples include the term “blacklist” (xi, 6, 20, 50, 171) for heresy catalogues and the label “marginalized Christians” for heretical groups (131). Smith rightly applies a hermeneutic of suspicion to the “orthodox” sources, and yet his definition of orthodoxy as (merely?) a “prize” to be “won” (175) risks making an uncritical accommodation of the now cliché idea that “history is written by the winners.” While at one level this is a truism for early Christian studies, at another level, our discipline could use a bit more nuance on this issue, as the sources themselves certainly present us with less tidy of a narrative. There was no centralized power structure in second and third century Christianity, and so a “history of the winners” over the “marginalized” motif does not quite fit what can be found in the surviving material. Smith does show that the Valentinians and other groups understood themselves as orthodox, and so why not allow for “orthodoxy” to be as much of a constructed category as “heresy”? All parties were aiming to “win,” and we cannot assume one center had the power to marginalize.

These minor criticisms, of course, do not in any way detract from the quality of this book. Instead, they arise because Smith offers such an engaging and insightful contribution to our field. Guilt by Association is a study that no future discussion of second-century Christianity should ignore. His writing is straightforward and precise, and this work could even be assigned to non-specialists and students since he has presented the material so clearly. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the diversity and debates found in the earliest Christian sources.