Loving the poor, saving the rich : wealth, poverty, and early Christian formation /

Rhee (Westmont College) offers an informative introduction to the teaching and practice of Christian almsgiving in the second and third centuries. The author of Early Christian Literature (2005), she writes from a broadly Christian point of view and seeks to relate the life of the early church to contemporary Christian thought and practice. Rhee builds on previous surveys of Christian almsgiving, which have been produced fairly steadily over the past few decades, yet her book is unique in its focus on how Christian almsgiving helped the early church carve out a niche for itself in the Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds by shaping various aspects of their thought and structure. This book will be helpful to undergraduate and graduate students; scholars may want to consult a far more ambitious work, Peter Brown's Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (CH, May'13, 50-4937). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers. J. P. Blosser Benedictine College