Publisher's Synopsis
In this reappraisal of charity in the biblical tradition, Gary Anderson argues that the poor constituted the privileged place where Jews and Christians met God. Though concerns for social justice were not unknown to early Jews and Christians, the poor achieved the importance they did primarily because they were thought to be 'living altars', a place to make a sacrifice, a loan to God that he, as the ultimate guarantor, could be trusted to repay in turn.
