ABSTRACT
The implied imagery of Christianity as a single powerful tide progressively sweeping away the vestiges of paganism, and thus effecting a distinct and measurable difference, owes too much to the primary-colored triumphalist narrative of Christianization bequeathed to us by fifth-century historians. The hospital highlighted the poor as the defining group in the new Christian representation of society. Several paradoxical aspects of the establishment should, rather, be stressed. As a ‘hostel with chambers’ it resembles the accommodation for visitors that could be found beside any major shrine in the ancient world, such as that of Epidaurus. There seems to have been no wider system of organized charity in Jerusalem at the time; individual initiatives such as that of Theodotos were crucial. There is little or no specific evidence of other such hospices attached to synagogues in the first five or six centuries ce despite a number of rabbinic texts which show that travellers might be lodged within a synagogue precinct.
