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Treasure in Heaven - The Holy Poor in Early Christianity (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R516
Discovery Miles 5 160
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(17%)
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Treasure in Heaven - The Holy Poor in Early Christianity (Hardcover)
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List price R621
Loot Price R516
Discovery Miles 5 160
You Save R105 (17%)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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The ""holy poor"" have long maintained an elite status within
Christianity. Differing from the ""real"" poor, these clergymen,
teachers, and ascetics have historically been viewed by their
fellow Christians as persons who should receive material support in
exchange for offering immeasurable immaterial benefits-teaching,
preaching, and prayer. Supporting them-quite as much as supporting
the real poor-has been a way to accumulate eventual treasure in
heaven. Yet from the rise of Christian monasticism in Egypt and
Syria to present day, Christians have argued fiercely about whether
monks should work to support themselves. In Treasure in Heaven,
renowned historian Peter Brown shifts attention from Western to
Eastern Christianity, introducing us to this smoldering debate that
took place across the entire Middle East from the Euphrates to the
Nile. Seen against the backdrop of Asia, Christianity might have
opted for a Buddhist model by which holy monks lived by begging
alone. Instead, the monks of Egypt upheld an alternative model that
linked the monk to humanity and the monastery to society through
acceptance of the common, human bond of work. This model of Third
World Christianity-a Christianity that we all too easily associate
with the West-eventually became the basis for the monasticism of
western Europe, as well as for modern Western attitudes to charity
and labor. In Treasure in Heaven, Brown shows how and why we are
still living-at times uncomfortably-with that choice.
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