Maladie, douleur et soins de santé dans le christianisme primitif

Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity
 

Helen Rhee 

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Eerdmans (October 22, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 367 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0802876846
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802876843

In this wide-ranging interdisciplinary study, Helen Rhee examines how early Christians viewed illness, pain, and health care and how their perspective was influenced both by Judeo-Christian tradition and by the milieu of the larger ancient world. Throughout her analysis, Rhee places the history of medicine, Greco-Roman literature, and ancient philosophy in constructive dialogue with early Christian literature to elucidate early Christians’ understanding, appropriation, and reformulation of Roman and Byzantine conceptions of health and wholeness from the second through the 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 how Christians began forming a distinct identity—both as part of and apart from their Greco-Roman world.