Health Care and the Rise of Christianity (review)

Abstract

In recent years, Hector Avalos has contributed to Early Christian studies through his work on the topics of illness, medicine, social institutions and pagan religious traditions in the Ancient Near East. In his newest book, this medical anthropologist considers how early Christianity functioned as a health care system whose wide array of benefits attracted new converts. The nature of Christianity--low ritual requirements, promulgation of ubiquitous prayer, offer of free physical healing, transcendence over customary laws--formed a healthcare strategy superior [End Page 286] to contemporary religious traditions. Avalos shows in detail how the Jewish Levitical and oral laws encumbered the healing procedure, while polytheism confused the sick populace of Greco-Roman religious traditions. Moreover, geography, cost, time, and socioreligious stigma hindered sick members in these systems from healing opportunities. His emphasis is on the beneficial system of health care that Christianity offered--its collection of superior features for healing over the lesser systems of Judaism and paganism (3).