Helen Rhee
What did pain and illness mean to early Christians? And how did their approaches to health care compare to those of the ancient Greco-Roman world? In this wide-ranging interdisciplinary study, Helen Rhee examines the ways that early Christians viewed illness, pain, and health care—and how they were influenced both by their own tradition and by the milieu of the larger ancient world. Throughout the book, Rhee places the history of medicine, Greco-Roman literature, and ancient philosophy in fruitful dialogue with early Christian literature and theology to show the nuanced ways Christians understood, appropriated, and reformulated Roman and Byzantine conceptions of health and wholeness from the second through sixth centuries CE. Utilizing the contemporary field of medical anthropology, Rhee engages illness, pain, and health care as sociocultural matters. Through this and other methodologies, she explores the theological meanings attributed to illness and pain; the religious status of those suffering from these and other afflictions; and the methods, systems, and rituals that Christian individuals, churches, and monasteries devised to care for those who suffered. Rhee’s findings ultimately provide an illuminating glimpse into an instrumental way that Christians began shaping a distinct identity—both as part of and apart from their Greco-Roman world. Helen Rhee is professor of the history of Christianity at Westmont College. She is the author of Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity; Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation; and Early Christian Literature: Christ and Culture in the Second and Third Centuries. Rhee is also the ordained minister at Free Methodist Church of Santa Barbara, California. 978-0-8028-7684-3 • Jacketed Hardcover • 360 pages • $49.99 US • $66.99 CAN • £40.99 UK AVAILABLE OCTOBER 2022
The Jesus Handbook
Edited by Jens Schröter and Christine Jacobi Translated by Robert L. Brawley Foreword by Dale C. Allison Jr.
An authoritative collection of first-rate scholarship on Jesus, his world, the outcomes of his life, and the quest to locate him in history. The Jesus Handbook is an indispensable reference work featuring essays from a team of renowned international scholars on the significance and meaning of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Rooted in historical-critical methodology, it emphasizes a diversity of perspectives and provides a spectrum of possible interpretations rather than a single unified portrait of Jesus. After an introduction that lays out the considerations of the task at hand, the authors survey the history of Jesus research and take a close look at the historical material itself—textual and otherwise. From this foundation, the Handbook then details the life of Jesus as best it can be known, before at last exploring the reception and effects of Jesus’s life after his death, especially in the first centuries CE.
N E W T E S T A M E N T & E A R LY C H R I S T I A N I T Y
Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity
CONTRIBUTORS
Sven-Olav Back, Knut Backhaus, Reinhard von Bendemann, Albrecht Beutel, Darrell L. Bock, Martina Böhm, Cilliers Breytenbach, James G. Crossley, Lutz Doering, Martin Ebner, Craig Evans, Jörg Frey, Yair Furstenberg, Christine Gerber, Katharina Heyden, Friedrich Wilhelm Horn, Stephen Hultgren, Christine Jacobi, Jeremiah J. Johnston, Thomas Kazen, Chris Keith, John S. Kloppenborg, Bernd Kollmann, Michael Labahn, Hermut Löhr, Tobias Nicklas, Markus Öhler, Martin Ohst, Karl-Heinrich Ostmeyer, James Carleton Paget, Rachel Schär, Eckart David Schmidt, Daniel R. Schwartz, Markus Tiwald, David du Toit, Joseph Verheyden, Samuel Vollenweider, Ulrich Volp, Annette Weissenrieder, Michael Wolter, Jürgen K. Zangenberg, Christiane Zimmermann, and Ruben Zimmermann. Jens Schröter is professor of New Testament and ancient Christian apocrypha at Humboldt University of Berlin. Christine Jacobi is visiting professor of New Testament and ancient Christian apocrypha at Humboldt University of Berlin. 978-0-8028-7692-8 • Jacketed Hardcover • 720 pages • $74.99 US • $100.99 CAN • £60.99 UK AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 2022
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