Are we missing the point?

The study of emergent Christianity within wider Greco-Roman philosophical culture has become a field of minutiae: we pick and choose this or that little theme from the Roman world, showing how it may relate to this or that small part of one New Testament document or author and miss entirely the significance of the questions that animated the sources we're reading. Both the New Testament and the ancient philosophical texts are inconceivable—tout court inconceivable—as documents of minutiae. To study them as if matters of life and death were not on the table is not to conceive their finer grained points in moments of scholarly repose. It is, rather, to miss the point altogether.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 9

<idle musing>
Scholarly abstraction. That's what we're trained to do, isn't it? To stand aside from our biases (as much as possible) and analyze the data. But in so doing, we miss the point, don't we? The ancients were altogether serious when they considered study a life-changing endeavor.

Let's enjoy the ride as Rowe takes us on the journey. We might discover that our techniques are lacking…
</idle musing>