Origins of Charity

In 1943, Hendrik Bolkestein published his dissertation in a German translation, Wohltatigkat und Armenflege im vor-christlichen Alterlsum: Ein Beitrag zum Problem “Moral und Gesellschaft . According to the reviewer in The Classical Journal , Bolkestein’s thesis was that Greek and Latin terms thought to refer to “charity” have a very different meaning in their original settings.

Of philanthropia , he argued that “during classical times meant decent respect for one’s fellows, an attitude of willingness to perform the reciprocal favors people in a society of equals perform for each other as occasion requires. It was not used to denote a relationship between the rich and the poor at all in the period of classical Greece.” Likewise “pity” ( eleemosune ) “meant insight or consideration for one’s peers as misfortune overtook them, such as illness, loss of friends, defeat in battle. It had no usage corresponding to our employment of the word eleemosynary, giving alms to the poor. In fact, Bolkestein raises the question of whether there is any word in classical Greek corresponding to our word alms.”

The notion of charity as we think of it comes, somewhat paradoxically, from autocratic polities to the east.

“Conversely, in the autocratic cultures of the East, the rulers or the rulers and their associated nobility are the masters; the people are under their control and look to their overlords for protection. They have no ‘rights’ enforceable by any recognized governmental means, and there appear to have been but few up- risings against the rulers who abused their power. In these cultural groups, Egyptian and Hebrew (he occasionally brackets Babylonia in the category), the practice of charity was always between the overlords and their subjects. It became a title to divine approval that the powerful man was merciful to the poor. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is conclusive evidence that the wealthy considered it their ethical and religious obligation to see that the poor did not suffer from the want of those necessities which the wealthy could furnish.”

Beliefs about the afterlife were important to these developments. The poor were assured that they would enjoy happiness in a future life, which made life tolerable. The wealthy, however, had to do good deeds to ensure a happy afterlife.

Thus: “It is against this background that deeds of charity and human kindliness in the Orient are to be understood. The Old Testament abounds with illustrations of such sentiments, as does the literature of Egypt. The powerful are curbed in their greed by fear of a deity who takes the poor under his protection; whereas the poor are supported in their evil plight by the conviction that they are under the special guardianship of their deity. Poverty, by another slight shift in philosophy, becomes a virtue, which it never is in classical Greece. There poverty was to be avoided in oneself or regretted in others, for it led either to debasement of moral character by reason of the subterfuges the poor had to practice in order to secure attention, or it led to rebellion, the most serious of sins in a democratic state.”