Charity is a complex concept. What someone does as charitable work is never just
a response to the need of poor people, it also describes what kind of culture, civilization, system
of thought or religion, as a motivation or base of charity, we are dealing with.
Poverty, the conceptualization of poverty, the question of righteousness, the structure of society, the role of religion, the intertwining of different cultures, distinct urban or agrarian
setting, the visibility of poverty and influence of religious elements, especially relationship
toward history of religion – all these give research a special place. Charity has its own development through time which also reveals how Judaic charity influenced other approaches to the
problem of poverty, in our case Christian approach. F. M. Loewenberg and G. E. Gardner are
dealing with this problem each from their own point of view.
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