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Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 31 hrs and 15 mins
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Publisher's summary
Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.
Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven.
Through the Eye of a Needle challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.
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Once in a generation, a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be read or heard - a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is such a book. Breathtaking in ambition, it ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith.
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Bias
- By David Danielson on 10-04-10
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A History of Christianity
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 28 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1976, Paul Johnson's exceptional study of Christianity has been loved and widely hailed for its intensive research, writing, and magnitude. Weaving a great range of material, the scholar and author Johnson creates an ambitious panoramic overview of the evolution of the Western world since the founding of a little-known "Jesus sect".
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Read Brant Pitre's the case for Jesus instead.
- By Catherine BFT on 05-08-17
By: Paul Johnson
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Constantine’s Sword
- The Church and the Jews; A History
- By: James Carroll
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 27 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In a bold and moving book that is sure to spark heated debate, the novelist and cultural critic James Carroll maps the profoundly troubling 2,000-year course of the Church’s battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has provoked in his own life as a Catholic. More than a chronicle of religion, this dark history is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture.
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Preordered ~ very disappointed
- By Vieve on 08-30-22
By: James Carroll
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God's Bankers
- A History of Money and Power at the Vatican
- By: Gerald Posner
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 21 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, this book traces the political intrigue and inner workings of the Catholic Church. Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this audiobook is about the church's accumulation of wealth and its byzantine entanglements with financial markets across the world.
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The book was really good till it wasn't.
- By Dr. JSH on 06-05-16
By: Gerald Posner
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The Birth of Classical Europe
- A History from Troy to Augustine
- By: Simon Price, Peter Thonemann
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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To an extraordinary extent we continue to live in the shadow of the classical world. At every level, from languages to calendars to political systems, we are the descendants of a “classical Europe,” using frames of reference created by ancient Mediterranean cultures. As this consistently fresh and surprising new audio book makes clear, however, this was no less true for the inhabitants of those classical civilizations themselves, whose myths, history, and buildings were an elaborate engagement with an already old and revered past - one filled with great leaders and writers....
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Excellent overview of the Classical World
- By David I. Williams on 01-12-14
By: Simon Price, and others
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The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1, Revised and Updated
- The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation
- By: Justo L. González
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 18 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1, Justo L. González, author of the highly praised three-volume History of Christian Thought, presents a narrative history of Christianity from the early church to the dawn of the Protestant reformation. From Jesus' faithful apostles to the early reformist John Wycliffe, González skillfully traces core theological issues and developments within the various traditions of the church, including major events outside of Europe, such as the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the New World.
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Throughly engaging
- By Scott Pursley on 12-15-16
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Fatal Discord
- Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind
- By: Michael Massing
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 34 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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This deeply textured dual biography and fascinating intellectual history examines two of the greatest minds of European history - Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther - whose heated rivalry gave rise to two enduring, fundamental, and often colliding traditions of philosophical and religious thought.
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Excellent work - up until the discussion of America
- By Michele Esposito on 08-24-19
By: Michael Massing
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On Politics
- A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present
- By: Alan Ryan
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 46 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Both a history and an examination of human thought and behavior spanning three thousand years, On Politics thrillingly traces the origins of political philosophy from the ancient Greeks to Machiavelli in Book I and from Hobbes to the present age in Book II. Whether examining Lord Acton's dictum that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" or explicating John Stuart Mill's contention that it is "better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied," Alan Ryan evokes the lives and minds of our greatest thinkers in a way that makes hearing about them a transcendent experience.
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A concise overview for curious laymen
- By Amazon Customer on 01-07-23
By: Alan Ryan
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Empires and Barbarians
- The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe
- By: Peter Heather
- Narrated by: Sean Schemmel
- Length: 25 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Empires and Barbarians presents a fresh, provocative look at how a recognizable Europe came into being in the first millennium AD. With sharp analytic insight, Peter Heather explores the dynamics of migration and social and economic interaction that changed two vastly different worlds--the undeveloped barbarian world and the sophisticated Roman Empire--into remarkably similar societies and states.
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The Perils of Pronunciation
- By Thomas on 10-22-13
By: Peter Heather
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Cultural Christians in the Early Church
- A Historical and Practical Introduction to Christians in the Greco-Roman World
- By: Nadya Williams
- Narrated by: Marni Penning
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Cultural Christians in the Early Church, which aims to be both historical and practical, argues that cultural Christians were the rule, rather than the exception, in the early church. Using different categories of sins as its organizing principle, the book considers the challenge of culture to the earliest converts to Christianity, as they struggled to live on mission in the Greco-Roman cultural milieu of the Roman Empire.
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helpful and surprisingly funny
- By Adam Shields on 11-28-23
By: Nadya Williams
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Heart of Europe
- A History of the Holy Roman Empire
- By: Peter H. Wilson
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 34 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Holy Roman Empire lasted 1,000 years, far longer than ancient Rome. Yet this formidable dominion never inspired the awe of its predecessor. Voltaire quipped that it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. Yet as Peter H. Wilson shows, the Holy Roman Empire tells a millennial story of Europe better than the histories of individual nation-states.
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Mixed feelings on this one.
- By Stuart Seymour on 09-19-17
By: Peter H. Wilson
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What listeners say about Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD
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- Tom
- 10-16-12
A Remarkable Journey with an Amazing Guide
Where does Through the Eye of a Needle rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
This is a book of outstanding scholarship written with great clarity by one of the most knowledgable and trustworthy historians of the period of the late Roman empire. Brown uses the issue of wealth as a key to enter a complex social and religious world that saw the emergence of Christianity into the ancient hierarchies of power, prestige, and vast wealth that had powered the Roman empire for many centuries.
Brown's narrative is fascinating and relatively easy to follow and brings to life the variety of characters and interests of the period in a wonderfully vivid way. He leads the listener to understand the nuances of primary texts while evaluating many current debates among historians with a sure touch.
Brown writes as a person who has lived in the world he describes for many years and understands its nooks and crannies like a native. I emerged from the long journey with a tremendous sense of gratitude for Brown's guidance through an important historical period in which modern prejudices could easily distort my perceptions.
Which character – as performed by Fleet Cooper – was your favorite?
Cooper reads the book with great clarity and articulation. My only problem with the narration was that quite a number of the names of ancient people or texts or technical terms seemed mispronounced. It did not seem in keeping with the high scholarly quality of the book otherwise.
Any additional comments?
I highly recommend this work. It is very substantive and assumes that the listener has a basic knowledge of the period covered. But it certainly rewards careful listening.
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20 people found this helpful
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- Marie
- 04-10-13
Slow, plodding but very informative
There was a chance I was not going to finish this book because it was a little dry and there was so much necessary information the author was putting forth. But after listening I believe I am a better and informed Christian and would recommend the book with the caveat that it is a little difficult to really get into the book, in the beginning.
One of the things Peter Brown does well is provide a sense of the culture and environment people lived in for the modern reader. He made me realize my concepts of what was wealth and poverty did not match up to late Roman views of wealth, and the importance of citizenship, and poverty. He translates the past for the modern reader. Unfortunately it take a while to translate and can be a tad uninteresting.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Donald
- 09-09-14
fascinating study
Any additional comments?
This is one of those books that sheds an astonishing amount of light on the evolution of the western world, in politics, religion, and the distribution of power and of wealth. It's much less about how Christian doctrine changed the pagan world, than about how Christian doctrine evolved to co-opt pagan wealth and power structures, letting the church emerge as a temporal power in its own right. Along the way we get marvelous peeks at life in late antiquity which animate the whole narrative. I found this book fascinating, and perhaps recommended best for those with a taste for thorough historical documentation and methodical argument. Peter Brown is clearly a master of this period of Roman history, deeply familiar with the latest archeological and textual discoveries, allowing him to overturn many long held misconceptions.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Radical Centrist
- 08-08-20
Fascinating book, laughable narration
A great history of the late Empire and the development of the Church, using the lens of charitable donation. It helps if you know some basics about the history of the period, though -- this isn't a survey book for beginners. But the narrator was hilariously bad -- he fluctuated between classical and medieval pronunciation of Latin, his French sounded like Peter Sellers doing Inspector Clouseau, and even a lot of the English words were mispronounced.
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- Gwbach
- 08-09-17
a lot of history
interesting and very detailed in the early Roman church. a lot of history that helps are how the Catholic Church eas formed.
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- ReviewAmazon384
- 01-27-23
Awful narration; Peter Brown with flaws etc.
Usually the narration is an afterthought with any book, but in this case, it is the primary focus. Fleet Cooper mispronounces words in nearly every single sentence. He emphasizes almost every clause incorrectly. The book is full of phrases and quotations from different languages—especially French and Latin. Cooper not only mispronounces all of these in an egregious way, but puts on a faux Legolas/D&D elf voice whenever he quotes an ancient author. The mispronunciations aren't even consistent or on difficult words. Many could have been remedied with a minute of research or a single rehearsal before sending the audio to print. Ambrose is usually Ambróse, but sometimes Ámbrose. Cassiciacum is pronounced three different (not terribly similar ways) in the course of maybe 15 pages. If you didn't already know enough about Augustine's biography, you would not have been able to tell he was referring to the same place over and over again with different sounds starting with "C."
I don't blame Cooper for this (I may have done just as poorly), but my goodness did the producers mess up on choosing him for this assignment and not even giving enough time for rehearsal and training. And why did they do so? I understand that voice actors knowledgeable in patristic theology or Classical literature might be too rare to rope into this assignment, but at least get an English actor with some classical education, knowledge of French, and Christian culture. David Suchet, Derek Jacobi, Derek Perkins, and Phyllida Nash would all have done an excellent job—and many others besides. Someone who is seeing the name "St. Ambrose" for the first time while doing the final recording is not the right person for the job.
Other decisions with the production of this audiobook are dumbfounding. Someone in the boardroom thought it was a good idea to replace every instance of "book" in Peter's Brown's text with "audiobook" with the result that Brown describes himself sitting down to write his last audiobook and other such absurdities.
Voice acting aside, the book is about the diversity of views towards wealth in the early Church, mostly focusing on the 4th century. It begins with a lengthy study of how wealth was viewed outside the Church and of the basic structure of the economy in the Rome Empire. The rest looks at wealthy Christians and the wealth that back some of the Church Fathers. As Peter Brown tends to do, the book is a bit iconoclastic and something of a revisionist history. The goal is to question standard narratives about wealth in the early Church—such as the idea that the pagan world didn't care about the poor at all and that Christians invented social welfare and were a Church of poor monks serving the poor right from the outset. It succeeds in thoroughly demolishing this overly simplified picture and narrating something of the complex relationship and interplay between various levels of wealth and status in late ancient society and the young Church in different regions.
Peter Brown is one of the foremost scholars of late antiquity. I believe he is Catholic, and this is a scholarly book about economics. As such, it will be very dry to some—a point especially aggravated by the horrendous narration. While Brown is an excellent scholar drawing deeply from primary sources, he has his flaws that are on full display in this book. He sometimes goes so far to destroy preconceived notions about history that he indulges in pointless irreverence and cynicism and groundless psychological speculation.
My recommendation is: only purchase this book if you are already fairly familiar with the history of the early Church, late ancient Rome, and patristic theology; and you care enough about the theology of wealth and Church hierarchy that you are willing to grit your teeth through 30 hrs of nearly unbearable narration.
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- Bodacious Wonderment
- 02-12-13
Meh
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Probably not. Pretty dry and LOTS of conjectures.
Has Through the Eye of a Needle turned you off from other books in this genre?
No.
Which character – as performed by Fleet Cooper – was your favorite?
N/A
If this book were a movie would you go see it?
Probably.
Any additional comments?
It was OK. But a bit unfocused and there were a LOT of conjectures and not a lot of internal consistency. EG, he makes a point of saying that, contrary to what we used to believe, a lot of villa's were built up not just to point out that the rich were different/better than the poor, but because the rich actually LIKED their homes (not much of a inference in any event), then moments later says that the villas were like machines whose function was to separate the rich from the poor.
On one hand, this book did give a good feeling for the complexities of trying to capture a long gone culture, on the other hand, fell to the temptation to rather dogmatically make broad generalizations based on scanty evidence.
Still....pretty interesting...
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- Wade R Johnston
- 07-22-22
Mispronunciation
Key words and names were mispronounced continuously and in sometimes very creative ways, which was very distracting.
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- Fr.Matthew Harrington
- 08-14-17
a very good listen..highly recommended for anyone.
I really enjoyed this book and if you are interested in the Early Christian Church and late Roman Empire, you will not be disappointed
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- Doug D. Eigsti
- 08-08-13
The Economics of Roman Christianity
I really enjoyed the approach of this history. It is a history of Rome from the fourth to the sixth century from the perspective of the economics of a changing world in a state of flux caused by the rise of Christianity. The importance of Northern Africa to the Roman world was brought out in a way that I have never understood before. The fact that history is made by the rich and powerful is made profoundly clear in this work. The poor and down-trodden leave no mark save for the manner in which the rich are moved to bring them aid. This is a fine book.
Fleet Cooper gets kudos for his excellent diction. I could always understand what he was reading. Some of his odd pronunciation choices, however, rise to the level of annoyance after a time. He has obviously done some study of different languages and he pronounces foreign words with ease. The problem is that he lets this foreign language training influence the way he pronounces words that are to be spoken in a certain way in English. This is pervasively noticeable for names containing the letter “U.” He insists on giving it the long vowel sound even when the short vowel sound is correct. Towards the end the historical figure Pelagius enters the narrative and I had to suffer through many pronunciations of “Pell-ay-gee-OOS” before he began to say it correctly: “Pell-AY-gee-us.” These oddities of pronunciation were a distraction but did not detract from making this an excellent audio book.
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2 people found this helpful