Early Christian Care for the Poor: An Alternative Subsistence Strategy Under Roman Imperial Rule: 11 (Matrix: The Bible in Mediterranean Context)

Beginning with Jesuss ministry in the villages of Galilee and continuing over the course of the first three centuries as the movement expanded geographically and numerically throughout the Roman world the Christians organized their house churches at least in part to provide subsistence insurance for their needy members. While the Pax Romana created conditions of relative peace and growing prosperity the problem of poverty persisted in Romes fundamentally agrarian economy. Modeling their economic values and practices on the traditional patterns of the rural village the Christians created an alternative subsistence strategy in the cities of the Roman empire by emphasizing need rather than virtue as the main criterion for determining the recipients of their generous giving.