Poverty in the early church and today: a conversation

This innovative volume focuses on the significance of early Christianity for modern means of addressing poverty, by offering a rigorous study of deprivation and its alleviation in both earliest Christianity and today's world.

The contributors seek to present the complex ways in which early Christian ideas and practices relate to modern ideas and practices, and vice versa.

In this light, the book covers seven major areas of poverty and its causes, benefaction, patronage, donation, wealth and dehumanisation, 'the undeserving poor', and responsibility.

Each area features an expert in early Christianity in its Jewish and Graeco-Roman settings, paired with an expert in modern strategies for addressing poverty and benefaction; each author engages with the same topic from their respective area of expertise, and responds to their partner's essay.