Gardner opens his book with a curious story about the so-called Tomb of the Kings outside Jerusalem, a tomb that may have been the original creation of the aristocratic family of Munbaz. Munbaz’s fame derives from his acts as a spender—bizbaz, the Hebrew play on words as irresistible a mnemonic as was Munbaz’s giving itself; he was said to have saved the Jewish community during a famine. Gardner’s excellent book follows Munbaz’s lead. Munbaz’s philanthropic reputation was launched through the works of the Tannaim, the third-century Galilean rabbinic authors of the Mishnah, Tosefta, and other exegetical works, who form the protagonists of Gardner’s book. And Munbaz was a wealthy giver, the son of an aristocratic Mesopotamian family whose top-down conceptions of charity frame Gardner’s story.
In eight clear, condensed chapters, Gardner argues for a wealth-oriented theology of charity as set out by the third-century Tannaim. Gardner keeps refreshingly...
University of California Press