Valuing Life in This World II: 1000–1800 CE

This chapter picks up where the last one left off by examining how the theme of valuing the present world developed in Christian and Jewish cultures in Europe during the late medieval and early modern periods. We will see that in this time frame, the gap between the two cultures regarding this issue significantly narrowed, with Christian culture unwittingly taking on features of Jewish culture and Jewish culture unwittingly taking on features of Christian culture. Whether that gap ever closed entirely is a question we will have to examine. But whether it did or not, the confluence between the two