Social welfare in the Greco-Roman world as a background for early Christian practice

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dc.contributor.authorLampe, P.
dc.date.accessioned2017-01-09T10:15:55Z
dc.date.available2017-01-09T10:15:55Z
dc.date.issued2016
dc.description.abstractThe essay investigates if and how Greco-Roman theorists attempted to motivate altruistic behaviour and devise a social-welfare ethics. In comparison, it studies actual social-welfare practices on both the private and the state level. Various social-welfare tasks are touched upon – health care; care for the elderly, widows, orphans and invalids; the patron-client system as countermeasure to unemployment; distribution of land, grain, meals and money; alms, donations, foundations as well as education – with hardly any one of them being especially tailored to the poor. The enormous role of civil society – private persons, their households and associations – in holding up social-welfare functions is shown. By contrast, the state was comparatively less involved, the commonwealth of the Romans, especially in Republican times, even less than the Greek city-states. The Greek poleis often invested income such as wealthy citizens’ donations in social welfare, thus brokering between wealthy private donors and less well-to-do persons. The church, living in private household structures during the first centuries, took over the social-welfare tasks of the Greco-Roman household and reviewed them in the light of Hebrew and Hellenistic-Jewish moral traditions.en_ZA
dc.description.versionPublisher's version
dc.identifier.citationLampe, P. (2016). Social welfare in the Greco-Roman world as a background for early Christian practice. Acta Theologica, 23, 1-28.en_ZA
dc.identifier.issn1015-8758 (print)
dc.identifier.issn2309-9089 (online)
dc.identifier.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.4314/actat.v23i1S.1
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11660/5262
dc.language.isoenen_ZA
dc.publisherFaculty of Theology, University of the Free Stateen_ZA
dc.rights.holderFaculty of Theology, University of the Free State
dc.subjectAlimentaen_ZA
dc.subjectAlmsen_ZA
dc.subjectAltruismen_ZA
dc.subjectClientsen_ZA
dc.subjectDonationsen_ZA
dc.subjectEducationen_ZA
dc.subjectElderlyen_ZA
dc.subjectEmpathyen_ZA
dc.subjectFoundationsen_ZA
dc.subjectFreed personsen_ZA
dc.subjectGrain distributionsen_ZA
dc.subjectHealth careen_ZA
dc.subjectInvalidsen_ZA
dc.subjectLand distributionsen_ZA
dc.subjectLoansen_ZA
dc.subjectMeal distributionsen_ZA
dc.subjectMoney distributionsen_ZA
dc.subjectOrphansen_ZA
dc.subjectPatronen_ZA
dc.subjectPhysiciansen_ZA
dc.subjectPooren_ZA
dc.subjectSelflessnessen_ZA
dc.subjectSlavesen_ZA
dc.subjectSocial welfareen_ZA
dc.subjectWidowsen_ZA
dc.subjectWomenen_ZA
dc.titleSocial welfare in the Greco-Roman world as a background for early Christian practiceen_ZA
dc.typeArticleen_ZA
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AT 2016 Supplementum 23