Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity

Reviews in Religion & Theology
“Rhee’s attention to details in the primary sources coupled with the clear argumentative line throughout her book makes for a volume that is both enjoyable to read and hard to put down. This book will become a standard work to engage with for scholars of early Christianity in the first five centuries as well as for interdisciplinary scholarship on interactions between medicine and ancient religion.”

“Rhee has drawn on a deep and wide pool of sources, addressing a diverse range of ancient voices and engaging both classic and more recent scholarship. I have found new and challenging ideas throughout, not least in Rhee’s fresh engagement with the Greek medical and philosophical literature. This volume is a reliable introduction to a range of medical and nonmedical healing of the body and soul, from which specialists and students alike will profit.”
—Andrew Crislip, Virginia Commonwealth University

“Modern health care has deep religious roots, often unrecognized, in the cultures, beliefs, and practices that shaped Christian views on pain, wellness, and therapeutic method. In her newest book, Helen Rhee’s extensive and admirably nuanced scholarship on pain and illness offers a superb cross-disciplinary study on ‘medical pluralisms’ and why they matter in Christian history. The book will especially interest readers in health and religion, late antiquity, health humanities, anthropology, medical education and missions, nursing, and classical studies.”
—Susan R. Holman, John R. Eckrich Chair and Professor in Religion and the Healing Arts, Valparaiso University

“With her characteristic sensitivity to human nature and frailty, Rhee explores how Christians incorporated Greco-Roman medical practices and health philosophies into their own emerging theological, social, and political identities. This multidisciplinary study effectively demonstrates the level of care and attention that early Christians gave to matters of the body as they drew from Jewish, Greek, and Roman sources to inform their own developing views. This study of Christian medical care and constructions of illness and pain is a significant contribution to the growing academic interest in how medical philosophies and theologies shape personal and communal views of health and well-being.”
—Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen, Pacific Lutheran University

“This important study examines Christian practices of identity formation in late antiquity around the nexus of health and its central corollaries: illness, pain, and health care. Rhee demonstrates that each of these reflects a touchpoint between Greco-Roman and early Christian discourses: patristic writers, whether popular or elite, drew on their classical heritage and constructed distinctively Christian ways of understanding their significance. Wide-ranging and unfailingly erudite, her work remains accessible and relevant to readers from a wide range of backgrounds, which is a testimony to Rhee’s skill as scholar and author. Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity establishes Rhee’s voice as a vital contributor to the vibrant, interdisciplinary conversation surrounding health, illness, and disability in pre-modernity.”
—Maria E. Doerfler, Yale University

“Helen Rhee’s incisive analysis comes at a critical moment, as we witness a major ‘medical turn’ in early Christian studies. Relying on a sophisticated interdisciplinary trajectory, which includes an emphasis on medical anthropology, Rhee meticulously reconstructs the early Christian experience of illness, pain, and health care in its ancient Mediterranean milieux. This book will no doubt become standard reading for anyone researching the medical world of the early Christians.”
—Chris de Wet, University of South Africa