Julius Africanus

When you hear about "Thallus", you are hearing from Julius Africanus. I'll summarise New Advent.

"African" means Algerian / Tunisian to us. (And to South Africans in as much as their climate is the mirror image to Algeria's. Back then that whole continent was called "Libya", as Suidas will report.) Julius for his part was fluent in Hebrew, as well as the usual Greek; and in Latin as well although in his days that was the army language, not the Church's. I assume the Christians recruited first among the Punic coast. These would be fellow Semites who, following the great Jewish Diaspora revolt, weren't happy with Hebrews. It's later on that you find Berbers like Augustine and Gelasius joining up.

The name suggests a mawla of the Julii, apparently still knocking around the Empire. Following 11 July AD 212, you didn't need Roman sponsorship to be counted Roman. But he'd been a soldier, which service we're told spanned over the 180s; so he'd got his passport before then. The patron / client relationship got him further into the super-citizenship, of Patrician status. As a soldier he'd have been familiar with the Mithraic cult.

As a Roman, our man in AD 215 went to Alexandria. Julius was a correspondent with Origen. Under the Severans (they say Alexander) he'd aided the Empire with the founding of Nicopolis on the old site of Emmaus, a sacred site for Luke's gospel community. For that, the empire needed a loyal liaison, not just a citizen because, again, everyone was a citizen. The Severans were fellow Africans with famously strong links to southwest Syrian sites like Emesa / Hims. I assume the Emmaus region was full of Christians, specifically.

I am told that Eusebius modeled his church history on Julius', which - they tell me - went up to Elagabalus. You may read many putative fragments; they mainly comprise a monograph on aligning the dates between scriptures such as Daniel 8 (and not 13!) and the Olympiads. Most fragments come from George Syncellus in Palestine whose work Theophanes Confessor continues. Beyond Pentecost, Eusebius might amount to paraphrase; I don't read Syncellus using Julius proper beyond the time of Christ. I wonder if Eusebius' popularity in Constantinople and west-Syria had crowded Julius out.

I should be most surprised if Julius had no Aramaic. The Syrian tradition brought translations to the east-Syrian librarians such as 'Abd-Isho' and west-Syrians like Bar Salibi, both recorded by Assemani. Although these translations will be in Edessene "Syriac" where Julius went more for the Palestinians. Syncellus, unlike Julius, disdained Hebrew in favour of Greek, but as a Palestinian he must have known Aramaic, as he is credited for preparing a Greek translation of Theophilus (Syriac) for his literary executor Theophanes.