Through the Eye of a Needle by Peter Brown - 9780691152905

Through the Eye of a NeedleWealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD\nAuthor(s): Peter Brown\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Princeton University Press, United States\nImprint: Princeton University Press\nISBN-13: 9780691152905, 978-0691152905\nSynopsis\nJesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity. Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Br.