[muawiyah]

Answering the question of WHO would be wandering around the early SW with an education ~ to start with Spanish priest missionaries ~ and surveyors.

The settlement of the New World started out with a lot of really smart young men with good educations and few prospects outside the church or commercial accounting back home.

I'd be surprised to NOT find people with a knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, maybe even Ladino, out there.

[tjd1454]

I rather much doubt whether the typical education of a Spanish priest would have included studying how to read and write ancient, pre-Masoretic Hebrew scripts.