Two Books Press

The Curricula

Scala Gentium

Reading God's Two Books with the Gospel of Matthew

Thirteen original stories follow the Gospel of Matthew from the genealogy to the Great Commission. Each is told by a witness from one of the ancient nations, and each opens into a unit of history, mythology, and theology.

Jacob asleep on the ground while angels ascend and descend a stair of light into heaven.
Gustave Doré, Jacob's Dream, 1866.

What it teaches

The nations of the ancient world each saw something true. Rome had the Sibyl's song of a child who would bring back the golden age. Persia had the star and the watchers of the sky. Egypt had a mother hiding her son from a murderous king. Scala Gentium takes those partial sights seriously, and then sets them beside the Gospel that fulfills them.

Each unit begins with a story written for this curriculum. The first is narrated by the Cumaean Sibyl herself, counting out the ages of the world in grains of dust. From the story the unit opens outward: into the real history of the nation, read in a History Companion with maps and timelines; into its mythology, read in the ancient sources; and into the Gospel, read in the Douay-Rheims with the commentary of Cornelius a Lapide, the great Jesuit exegete.

Every unit also carries a Shelf Reader: one anchor classic, read whole. Unit 1 reads Book VI of the Aeneid, so that the student can walk into the Sibyl's cave and find it really there.

The thirteen stories

The stories run in Gospel order across four years: four in the first year, then three in each of the next three. The first year, The Advent of the King, covers Matthew 1–4:

  1. The Last Age of the Cumaean Song · Rome · Matthew 1–2, the genealogy and the Nativity
  2. The King's Road · Persia · Matthew 2:1–12, the Magi
  3. Coming Forth by Day · Egypt · Matthew 2:13–23, the flight into Egypt
  4. The Crossroads · Greece · Matthew 3–4, the Baptism and the temptation in the desert

Later years carry the Gospel through the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, Caesarea Philippi, and the Passion, and end in Ireland with the command to teach all nations.

The shape of a week

Five days, the same every week, so the household learns the rhythm once.

DayWork
Day 1Read the week's chapters of the story aloud, parent and student alternating by paragraph, marking the text as they go. Read the week's Scripture aloud.
Day 2History and Scripture: the History Companion spread, then written questions on the week's Lapide reading.
Day 3The Study Day. The student sets the nation's myth beside the Gospel, works through the questions and the comparison box, and ends with one sentence that states the week's finding.
Day 4A writing day for your composition course, with material handed over from the story on the Workbook's last page. The Shelf Reader continues.
Day 5The week's finished piece read aloud to the family, and the week's best lines copied into the student's own book.

Unit 1 runs nine weeks. The weeks build on a fixed schedule: more commentary each week, the comparative method taught outright in Week 7, and a closing Week 9 in which every student writes a thesis and defends it aloud for ten minutes.

For the parent who teaches it

You do not need to know Roman history, Latin, or how to teach writing. The Teacher Manual prints every line you say aloud in red, tells you which answers to expect and what to do with each, and gives a key for everything you grade. For families who want the long conversation, it also carries the full Socratic script for the week.

One rule runs through it: the parent is a fellow student. When nobody in the room knows, you say so, and open the History Companion together.

At a glance

Who it's for
Students entering high school, and the parents who teach them. No prior knowledge of the ancient world is assumed.
Credits
History and theology, four years.
Stance
Traditionally Roman Catholic, and argued rather than assumed. Non-Catholic students are invited to write persuasively on where they stand. Our approach
In the box, per unit
Reader · Workbook · Teacher Manual · History Companion · Shelf Reader
Sources
Douay-Rheims Scripture; Cornelius a Lapide; the ancient historians and poets, in public-domain translations.
Status
In pilot with homeschool families. First materials available for the 2027–28 school year.
Dante and Beatrice stand before the vast white rose of the blessed, ringed by angels around a point of light.
Gustave Doré, The Empyrean, Paradiso XXXI, 1868.

Sample pages

Two Reader pages: instructions for marking the book on the left, and the opening of the Prologue on the right with glossary notes in the outer margin.
A Reader spread, with the glossary in the margin where the student's eye already is.
Two Reader pages showing the opening of Chapter I with a drop capital and marginal glosses.
Chapter I opens: “To Console.”

All sample pages →

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