Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD

By: Peter Brown

Narrated by: Fleet Cooper

Length: 31 hrs and 15 mins

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.

©2012 Princeton University Press (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Incredibly detailed.

Mr. Brown takes the reader on a tour of the early Latin Church in the waning days of the Roman Empire. The author posits an interesting theory that Christianity did not so much consume the Romans as the Romans consumed Christianity in that many of the tenet of Christianity were already present in Roman culture.

Review

Would you consider the audio edition of Through the Eye of a Needle to be better than the print version?

This is an academic work. It requires a careful reading to fully grasp the import of the author's argument and to achieve a nuanced understanding. The audio version is a very poor cousin. However, for my present purpose, listening to it in the car has been a fruitful experience, and I will be purchasing the book for a more complete study.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The performance was generally good, although the reader's pronunciation of certain words raised my eyebrows from time to time. Often, I wasn't sure whether the reader was using an Americanism, or just incorrect.

Heady material

A gap in my historical knowledge, this book explores the interplay between Christianity and traditional Roman views on wealth and how this brought about modern thought and the Catholic church.

I also gleaned insight into some parallels between the decline of Rome and the decline of the United States, but I don't think the author intended that.

I can admit this book is in many ways over my head. The writer quotes copious amounts of Latin, at some points I'm unsure why it was necessary.

While this is not my century or region of interest, I can say I learned a lot.

Deep dive into Transitional Christianity of late Antiquity

Not for the faint of heart because it is so lengthy and comprehensive, but if you want to investigate how and why Christianity developed the way it did this is the book for you.

Focuses on the 350-550 AD period.

A masterpiece performed by a great narrator

Almost a picture perfect example of what an audiobook should be. A great technical audio production enables the narrator's voice and the author's narrative to flow like a smooth and silky river in summer.

The book itself is beyond comparison for those that can recognise a classic and timeless piece of research. The narrator does struggle with Greek and Latin names but makes up for it with rarely encountered ability to add emphasis, emotion and tone.

Detailed, yet fascinating and engaging

I am about half the way through the audio book and completely absorbed by it. It's a detailed story of a complex swath of history, yet it hasn't gotten bogged down itemizing battles and rulers. Instead, it reveals the spirits of the times through the lives of history's notable intellects. Even better, it explores what historical writers didn't say, but that historians have since deduced, to shed light on the realities behind the dogma.

The narrator's mispronunciations, however, are driving me nuts. His voice is excellent, his pacing and emphasis are good, and even some of his mispronunciations I could live with if he would simply stick with them. But instead, he ping-pongs back and forth, seemingly unable to decide. Is it AM-brose or Am-BROSE? Constan-TEEN or Constan-TINE? Will it be tree-AY or tree-AIR for Trier? Sometimes I find myself talking back to him: "Prelate rhymes with pellet, not relate!" "Per-VANE-us? Did you perhaps mean parvenus?" And I almost spit out my coffee when he tried to say "Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose". It was so funny I wish I'd bookmarked it.

Nevertheless, I'd rather listen to this very dense book, mispronunciations and all, than try to find the time and focus to read all 800 pages myself.

Good book destroyed by lousy reader

This was quite an interesting scholarly book, but it's remarkable that the author allowed this recording to see the light of day. The reader constantly mispronounced words. He used the same fakey type voice for every quotation. His pronunciation of foreign words was embarrassingly affected. But his worst sin is that he didn't really seem to have a sense of the meaning of the material — he invariably emphasized the wrong word in a sentence (usually the verb), so there was no flow to the narrative. Instead of being able to listen to the argument, you had to mentally re-interpret to get the author's intended meaning, and couldn't really focus on the arc of the history being told.

You need to be a real history buff...

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I like history but this is way too particular for me to enjoy and keep interest for such a long listen. Someone with a major in Church history for that period might appreciate though.

What do you think your next listen will be?

something more general (in history still)

What three words best describe Fleet Cooper’s performance?

The narrator is excellent and probably the reason why I could hold on until mid point in the book.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Through the Eye of a Needle?

I would use the abridged edition

Any additional comments?

The potential subject matter was very good, but I lacked knowledge of places and names to enjoy it.

Breathtaking scholarship, incompetent reading

Peter Brown’s scholarship needs no comment. Anyone interested in early Christianity should read everything he has written.

That said, I returned this book. The reading is unbearable. Pretentious and ignorant at the same time. Bizarre accents, confusing intonation, and clueless pronunciation of many non-English words and quotations (and there are a lot). Who can know, but it seemed as if the reader had no comprehension of what he was reading. Both the reader and the producer should be embarrassed.

I no longer order many books from LibriVox because there is no quality control. Readers are volunteers so you get what you get. What is the excuse for this commercial performance?