"[3] It treats 80 religious sects, either organized groups or philosophies, from the time of Adam to the latter part of the fourth century, detailing their histories, and rebutting their beliefs.
The treatise can be considered a sequel to the Ancoratus (374), which takes the form of a letter to the church of Syedra in Pamphylia, describing how the "barque" of the church can counteract the contrary winds of heretical thought, and become "anchored" (ἀγχυρωτός); hence the title of the work; the Ancoratus even outlines the content of the Panarion within its text.
It ends with what has since been called De Fide, a short description of the orthodox catholic faith of the Great Church.
The number of sects covered in the work is based on Song of Songs 6:8-9, quoted below in the original Hebrew, and in the English translation from JPS 1917: Epiphanius interpreted the fourscore (80) concubines as sects, who take the name of Christ without being truly matrimonial; the threescore queens as the generations from Adam to Jesus; the one dove as the true wife, the church; and the numberless virgins as all the philosophies unrelated to Christianity.
At Constantinople, he had to acknowledge to the Origenist monks, whom he opposed, that he was not acquainted with either their school or their books, and that he only spoke from hearsay (Sozomen, Hist.
[3] The Panarion furnishes very valuable information concerning the religious history of the fourth century, either because the author confines himself to transcribing documents preserved by him alone, or because he writes down his personal observations.
With regard to Hieracas (Haer., lxvii), he makes known a curious Egyptian sect by whom asceticism and intellectual work were equally esteemed.
In connection with the Melitians of Egypt (Haer., lxviii), he has preserved important fragments of contemporary Egyptian history of this movement.
An Old Church Slavonic translation was made, probably at the Preslav school during the reign of Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria in the early 10th century.