Phase 1: Learning Language (Months 1-12)#

This phase is all about learning the tools of the trade. We can’t critically analyze a text if we can’t read it. It’s the foundation. Start with the basics. Don’t worry about complex philosophy just yet. Focus on learning the language itself. Master the grammar and vocabulary of a language like Latin or Ancient Greek. This initial step is a critical thinking exercise in itself, as we are learning to solve a logical puzzle with every sentence we translate.

The ideal amount of time we spend each day during the “Foundations” period should be based on consistency and focused effort - a moderate, daily commitment is far more effective than sporadic, long study sessions. A realistic and sustainable goal for the first 1-12 months would be to aim for 30 to 90 minutes per day, six to seven days a week, depending on how busy we are on a particular day:

• 30 Minutes: The Absolute Minimum. This is the time we should aim for even on our busiest days. It’s enough to review vocabulary flashcards, go over a grammar point from our textbook, or translate a short sentence or two. The goal here is to maintain daily exposure to the language and prevent ourselves from losing momentum. Consistency is the most important factor in language learning, and a short daily session is the key to maintaining it.

  Anki Flashcards with Lexitheras

  Anki is by far the best flashcard offering the maximized personalization and it supports literally every computing platforms on this planet, such as Android. Anki enables us to make use of time pockets on the go in whatever way we want. Once Anki is installed, we can use Lexitheras to auto generate flashcards

  1
  pip3 install lexitheras
  2
  lexitheras iliad
  

• 60 Minutes: The Ideal Sweet Spot. An hour a day allows for a more comprehensive session. We can dedicate a portion of this time to learning new material (a new chapter or a set of new vocabulary words) and another portion to reviewing old material. This time frame allows us to move at a good pace without feeling overwhelmed. It’s often the minimum amount of time recommended by many serious self-learners and can be broken up into smaller chunks throughout the day if a full hour isn’t possible all at once.

• 90 Minutes: The Accelerated Approach. If you have more time and want to make faster progress, 90 minutes is an excellent target. With this amount of time, we can tackle more challenging exercises, review material more thoroughly, and start to build more complex sentences. It allows us to both learn and apply the new information in a single session.

In addition, instead of thinking, “I need to study for 60 minutes,” think about what we will accomplish during that time. Our study session should be an active process, not a passive one. A good daily plan could look like this:

• 5-10 minutes: Review old vocabulary with flashcards.
• 20-30 minutes: Work through new grammar and examples in our textbook.
• 20-30 minutes: Translate a short passage from the textbook or an easy reader.
• 5-10 minutes: Recite vocabulary out loud or review the text we just translated.

TIP

Most people with jobs are most free after dinner. There are 2 periods at night

1. After dinner
2. Before sleeping

From a cognitive and neurological perspective, studying just before we go to sleep at night is generally considered the more effective of the two options for memorization. The primary reason for this is a process called memory consolidation. When we sleep, our brain is not inactive; it is working to process, organize, and consolidate the information we learned while you were awake. This process moves new memories from a short-term, fragile state to a more stable, long-term state. Studying right before sleep allows this consolidation process to begin with the most recently learned information fresh in your mind, which can significantly improve recall.

While studying after dinner might also be effective, it often comes with a few potential drawbacks. The period after a meal can sometimes be associated with a “post-lunch dip” or a feeling of drowsiness, especially if the meal was large. Additionally, if there are hours of wakefulness between studying and sleeping, other activities, information, or distractions can interfere with the memory consolidation process.

The period directly before sleep has a significant scientific advantage due to the powerful role of sleep in cementing new information into long-term memory

By focusing on daily, consistent, and active engagement, we will build a strong foundation of grammar and vocabulary. This approach not only makes the process more manageable but also ensures that when we are ready to move to Phase 2.

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OpenML has a dedicated hub offering learning resources of the following languages:

• German
• Italian
• Ancient Greek
• Latin
• Classical Hebrew

Please check them out here

Phase 2: The Transition (Months 12-24)#

Once we have a firm grasp of grammar, we can start to apply our skills to more complex texts and begin to engage with the critical analysis aspect.

Transition from textbook’s simplified passages to real authors, like Caesar, Cicero, or Xenophon. These texts will be more complex and will present ambiguities.

Use a Commentary

A good commentary is our best friend. It won’t give us the answer, but it will provide context, point out potential ambiguities, and highlight scholarly debates. This is where we learn to “listen” to the critical conversation.

Begin to read for rhetoric by paying attention to the author’s style. For example, Caesar’s Gallic Wars, he uses the third person (“Caesar led his men…”) to create a sense of objectivity and authority, even when writing about his own actions. We are learning to identify a persuasive technique.

Phase 3: The Deep Dive (Year 3 Onwards)#

This is where we fully develop our critical thinking skills by moving beyond individual texts to a broader historical and philosophical context what include:

• secondary sources: Beyond the ancient authors, we will also read what modern scholars say about them. This exposes us to different interpretations, methodologies, and scholarly debates. We might find two historians who have completely opposite views on an event described by Livy, and our job is to evaluate their arguments and the evidence they use.

• different genres collectively compared: Read a historical text (e.g., Thucydides’ History) alongside a philosophical one (e.g., Plato’s Republic) and a play (e.g., a tragedy by Sophocles) from the same time period.

  • How does the portrayal of “justice” differ between these 3 genres?
  • How do the authors use their respective forms to convey their ideas?

  This is where we develop the ability to think interdisciplinarily and to synthesize information from a variety of sources, which is a hallmark of sophisticated critical thinking.

The Seed: A Crisis in Judaism#

In the 1st Century, the Jewish people were suffering under the brutal occupation of the Roman Empire. They were waiting for a מָשִׁיחַ (Messiah) - a Jewish King promised in the Hebrew Bible who would defeat the Romans and restore the Kingdom of Israel.

Into this environment came Jesus of Nazareth. He was not a Christian; he was a Jewish rabbi. He did not preach a new religion. He preached that the Jewish God was about to act, that the Kingdom was coming, and that the Jewish people needed to purify their hearts to prepare for it. He debated Jewish Law, quoted Jewish prophets, and celebrated Jewish festivals. His followers were entirely Jewish.

When Jesus was executed by the Romans, that should have been the end of the story. Historically, when a would-be Messiah died, their movement died with them. But his followers claimed something unprecedented: that he had risen from the dead.

For the first few decades after his death, this movement (the “Jesus Sect”) was just one of many groups within Judaism. They were not called Christians yet. They still worshipped at the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. They still kept כָּשֵׁרַ (Kosher). They still circumcised their sons.

TIP

When we say the early followers of Jesus “kept Kosher”, we mean they strictly followed the Jewish dietary laws. They only ate animals deemed “pure” (like cows or sheep) and refused to eat “impure” animals (like pigs or shellfish), just as the Torah commanded.

If we have asked a follower of Jesus in the year 35 CE what religion they were, they would have looked at us with confusion and said, “I am a Jew.” They simply believed the Messiah had arrived, while other Jews did not.

The Birth of “Christianity”#

On the origin of word “Christianity”

Etymologically, the heart of the word is the title Christ. As we mentioned earlier, In the Hebrew Bible, kings, priests, and prophets were anointed with oil to signify their appointment by God. This figure was the “Messiah”. When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into the Septuagint, translators used the word Χριστός (Christos meaning “anointed one”) to translate “Messiah”.

The Greek root Christ- combined with the Latin suffix -ianus to become Christianus. The -ianus suffix was commonly used in the Roman world to denote a slave belonging to a master or a partisan belonging to a political faction. Therefore, Christianus originally meant “Partisan of Christ” or “Slave of Christ.”

Later, the abstract noun was formed to describe the religion itself rather than the humane-style Christianus using -itas, giving Christianitas (the state of being a Christian)

Over time, this shifted from a description of a quality (e.g., “his christianity/piety is strong”) to the collective name of the religion itself.

The “new religion” didn’t happen because of Jesus; it happened largely because of the Apostle Paul, who was a Jewish scholar and had a radical idea: The Messiah, Jesus in particular, wasn’t just for the Jews - he was for the whole world.

Paul began traveling to the Greek-speaking Roman cities (like the ones on the map) and telling non-Jews (Gentiles) about this Jewish Messiah. He wanted to prove Jesus is the Messiah but language became the barrier because nobody understood Paul’s Hebrew language. Luckily, Paul found Septuagint to be a very handy solution; Septuagint, thus, stopped being just a “translation for Diaspora Jews” and became the primary weapon of the Christian mission. This created a massive conflict. These non-Jews wanted to join the movement, but they didn’t want to follow Jewish laws (like circumcision or not eating pork).

They decided to let them in without becoming Jewish. This decision was the moment the umbilical cord was cut. Once you allowed people to join the movement without following Jewish Law, the movement was no longer Judaism. It became a new entity.

Within a generation, the non-Jewish members outnumbered the Jewish members. The movement shifted its center from Jerusalem to cities like Antioch and Rome. They stopped reading Hebrew and switched entirely to Greek (the Septuagint). They eventually developed their own rituals and theology that drifted further and further from the original Hebrew culture.

Christianity, therefore, inherited the Hebrew Bible as a birthright because it was born in a Jewish cradle. It only became a Roman religion later, when the child grew up and left home.

Why Rome Adopted The New Sect#

It is one of history’s greatest ironies: the Roman Empire executed Jesus as a political criminal, yet 300 years later, it adopted his movement as the supreme law of the land.

By the 4th Century, Rome had spent nearly 50 years in chaos (known as the Crisis of the Third Century). Generals were fighting each other constantly for the throne in civil wars; the economy was collapsing; there were hundreds of gods worshipped and there was no single “Roman” spiritual identity holding these diversity together.

In 312 CE, a general named Constantine, who would had become the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, was fighting a civil war to become Emperor. According to the legend, before a decisive battle (The Battle of the Milvian Bridge), he saw a vision of the Christian cross in the sky with the words: “In this sign, you will conquer.” He had his soldiers paint the Christian symbol on their shields. He won the battle and became the sole Emperor of the West.

Whether the vision was real or a savvy political move is debated, but the result was clear: He credited the Christian God for his victory. In 313 CE, he issued the Edict of Milan, which made Christianity legal. It wasn’t the “official” religion yet, but it was no longer a crime to be Christian.

Constantine later realized that Christianity offered something the old pagan religions couldn’t: Centralization:

Constantine saw that if he could control the Church, he could control the people. He liked the idea of Monotheism (One God) because it mirrored the political structure he wanted: Monarchy (One Emperor).

• One God in Heaven.
• One Emperor on Earth.
• One Church to bind them all.

He effectively “hired” Christianity to be the spiritual cement for his empire.

Making it Mandatory#

Constantine legalized it, but a later emperor, Theodosius I, made it the law. In 380 CE, Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica. This law made Nicene Christianity the only official state religion of the Roman Empire. With that taking effective, pagan sacrifices were banned; temples were closed or converted into churches; and more importantly the “Eternal Flame” of Rome was extinguished.

Final Step - Vulgate#

Around 380 CE, the people in Rome were reading an old Latin version of the Bible called the Vetus Latina, which was totally different from the one read in a church in Milan or Carthage. In fact there was a chaotic mess.

There was no authorized “Publisher” for the Old Latin Bible. Over the previous centuries, whenever a local priest or monk got their hands on a Greek scroll, they would translate it into Latin for their own congregation. The result was that the Church had no standard text. In one church, a verse might say “The light shines in the darkness,” and in the church down the road, it might say “The darkness did not capture the light.” You couldn’t run a unified empire with a fragmented law book.

In 382 CE (overlapping with Theodosius’s reign), the Pope commissioned a brilliant scholar named Jerome to produce a standard Latin Bible. This version became known as the Vulgate (meaning “the common version”)

The Codex Amiatinus is considered the best-preserved manuscript of the Latin Vulgate version of the Christian Bible

Image source: Codex Amiatinus

Jerome’s personal experience played a key role in this masterpiece. By the 4th Century, Christians and Jews were living side-by-side and often debating scripture. He noticed a painful pattern. A Christian would triumphantly quote a prophecy from his Old Latin Bible to prove Jesus was the Messiah. The Jewish scholar would look at him and say, “That verse isn’t in the Bible. Your translator made it up”. And the Jewish scholar was usually right. Because the Old Latin was based on the Greek Septuagint (which had many errors and additions), the Christians were basing their theology on bad data.

He made a radical decision: “Why are we translating from the Greek copy? We should go back to the original source”. And in thinking so he moved to Bethlehem, learned Hebrew from Jewish rabbis, and translated the Old Testament directly from the original Hebrew Bible, bypassing the Septuagint entirely.

This created a massive conflict because the Septuagint contained extra books (like Maccabees and Tobit) while the Hebrew Bible did not. Jerome wanted to throw out the “extra” Septuagint books because they weren’t in the Hebrew. The Church leaders said “No, we have used these books for 300 years. Keep them.”

At the end of the day both sides reached a compromise that formed the Catholic Old Testament we know today:

• The Core: The main books were translated from the Hebrew (Jerome’s preference), fixing the mistranslations of the Septuagint.
• The Order: They kept the Christian ordering (Prophets at the end), not the Jewish ordering.
• The Extras: They kept the extra Septuagint books (the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon) but gave them a secondary status.