schisms among historians

How did all of this escape scholars?

First, as we have already noted, there is a schism between “classical” and “religious” historians.  There are schisms among “religious” historians:  Protestant historians try to find the “Jesus moment,” something that can document the lifetime of Jesus, or they try to reconstruct the early Christian church, largely by retrojecting contemporary sectarianism back onto the ancient world.  Catholic historians try to syncretize the gospels and the letters to arrive at a timeline that makes the simple narrative of Church doctrine logical.  Torah-mi-Sinai Jewish historians try to make a logical narrative of a history that includes Moses receiving a text that includes the description of his own death.  Non-Torah-mi-Sinai Jewish historians try to construct a logical history that accounts for the delivery of the Torah on Sinai, yet accounts for other elements of documented history that conflict with the narrative as it is transmitted in Torah.

Those are among the schisms in the “religious” historical field.

Then there are the schisms in the “classical” history field.  “Classical” scholars divide classical history into two parts:  Greek history and Roman (Latin) history. 

Greek history, as it is taught, encompasses Homer, the philosophers and the classes of ancient theatre .

Roman history, as it is taught, encompasses Virgin, Ovid, the historians Tacitus and Suetonius, and (the Latin student’s real reason for studying Latin), Catullus.

Among all of these schisms quite a lot falls through the cracks.

We know the LXX was a translation of the Hebrew text of the TaNaKh into Greek, using Greek syntax and adhering as closely as possible to the rules of Hebrew grammar.

We know that the early church (Pauliine letters, gospels, history, etc) were written in Greek.  Tertullian, writing in Carthage, North African, wrote in the late 2^nd/early 3^rd century CE complaining of “this barbarian language.”  He was complaining about Latin. 

In the ancient world the koine, the common language and the mark of the “civilized” person, was proficiency in Greek.  Early Christian texts were written in Greek.  They were translated into Latin in about the 4^th century CE by Jerome (who, as we have noted, had issues).