The formerly wealthy poor: from empathy to ambivalence in rabbinic literature of late antiquity

Students of poverty in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim social, literary, and legal contexts in late antiquity and the Middle Ages have noted the phenomenon of wealthy people who fall into poverty and the provision of charitable assistance to them. This essay's principal purpose is to point out an...

Descrizione completa

Salvato in:  
Dettagli Bibliografici
Altri titoli:Research Article
Autore principale: Gray, Alyssa M. (Autore)
Tipo di documento: Elettronico Articolo
Lingua:Inglese
Verificare la disponibilità: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Caricamento...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Pubblicazione: [2009]
In: AJS review
Anno: 2009, Volume: 33, Fascicolo: 1, Pagine: 101-133
(sequenze di) soggetti normati:B Povertà / Epoca tardo-antica / Letteratura rabbinica / Empatia / Ambivalenza
Notazioni IxTheo:BH Ebraismo
Altre parole chiave:B Jewish Culture
B Social classes
B Poverty
B Redaction
B Horses
B Rabbis
B Fraud
B Late Antiquity
B Talmud
B Slaves
Accesso online: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Descrizione
Riepilogo:Students of poverty in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim social, literary, and legal contexts in late antiquity and the Middle Ages have noted the phenomenon of wealthy people who fall into poverty and the provision of charitable assistance to them. This essay's principal purpose is to point out an important difference between the development of attitudes toward the formerly wealthy poor in rabbinic literature of late antiquity and in other religious and legal contexts. Peter Brown notes evidence of late Roman empathy for the wellborn poor, hypothesizing that this empathy can be attributed to a desire to preserve these remnants of the old, proud plebs romana in the uncertain sixth century. Ingrid Mattson demonstrates that between the eighth and tenth or eleventh centuries CE, Islamic jurists moved in the direction of taking the “social and economic context” of a poor person into account in determining that person's legitimate needs. By contrast, as this essay will show, rabbinic literature of late antiquity moved in the opposite direction, from third-century empathy for the formerly wealthy poor to growing ambivalence in the fourth through the seventh centuries.
ISSN:1475-4541
Comprende:Enthalten in: Association for Jewish Studies, AJS review
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0364009409000051