The Specter of the Jews: Emperor Julian and the Rhetoric of Ethnicity in Syrian Antioch 9780520970779

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Emperor Julian’s Jewish Gambit
1. Julian’s Hellenizing Program and the Jews
2. Setting the Stage: Hellenes, Christians, and Jews in Cosmopolitan Antioch
3. Hebrews, Jews, and Judeans: Julian’s Ethnographic Arguments and His Hellenizing Campaign
4. Propitiating the Gods, Saving the Empire: Th e Place of Jewish Sacrifi ce in Emperor Julian’s Hellenizing Program
5. A Priestly Nation: Th e Jewish Priesthood as a Model for Julian’s Priestly Program
6. Th e God of Jerusalem and His Temple: Fixing the Jewish God in Julian’s Cosmos
7. Creating and Maintaining Hellenic Places in Antioch
Conclusions: Antioch in the Aftermath of Julian
Appendix: The Letter to the Community of the Jews
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies.

The Specter of the Jews

The Specter of the Jews Emperor Julian and the Rhetoric of Ethnicity in Syrian Antioch

Ari Finkelstein

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2018 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Finkelstein, Ari, author. Title: The specter of the Jews : Emperor Julian and the rhetoric of ethnicity in Syrian Antioch / Ari Finkelstein. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: lccn 2018016222 (print) | lccn 2018018324 (ebook) | isbn 9780520970779 | isbn 9780520298729 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: Julian, Emperor of Rome, 331-363—Religion. | Rome— History—Julian, 361-363. | Jews—Middle East—History—70-638. Classification: lcc dg317 (ebook) | lcc dg317 .f56 2018 (print) | ddc 937/.004924—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016222

Manufactured in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my wife, Jennifer ‫אשת חיל מי ימצא‬ and To my father, Mel Finkelstein ‫ושאינו יודע לשאול את פתח לו‬

contents

Preface Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: Emperor Julian’s Jewish Gambit

ix xi xv 1

1. Julian’s Hellenizing Program and the Jews

11

2. Setting the Stage: Hellenes, Christians, and Jews in Cosmopolitan Antioch

28

3. Hebrews, Jews, and Judeans: Julian’s Ethnographic Arguments and His Hellenizing Campaign

45

4. Propitiating the Gods, Saving the Empire: The Place of Jewish Sacrifice in Emperor Julian’s Hellenizing Program

66

5. A Priestly Nation: The Jewish Priesthood as a Model for Julian’s Priestly Program

86

6. The God of Jerusalem and His Temple: Fixing the Jewish God in Julian’s Cosmos

101

7. Creating and Maintaining Hellenic Places in Antioch

115

Conclusions: Antioch in the Aftermath of Julian Appendix: The Letter to the Community of the Jews Notes Bibliography Index

139 145 149 211 245

preface

The reader will quickly come across a number of terms that will be defined in chapter 1. For ease of reference here are some quick definitions. Ethnos means a people possessing ancestral laws, a land, god, temple, and culture. As was the practice in Late Antiquity, Julian uses the term ethnos in a variety of ways, emphasizing to varying degrees land, kinship, culture, laws, cult, and god. I am particularly interested in how he uses the Jewish qua Judean ethnos to shape Hellenic identity and to undermine Christian ethnic claims of being the Hebrews or the “true Israel.” Julian focuses on Jewish ancestral laws but also on the Jewish god. Hellenes is a term that Julian uses in a variety of ways. They are always a people, but sometimes Julian emphasizes their common cultural characteristics; other times they are an ethnos; on other occasions, when cultic worship is stressed, they most closely resemble pagans. We will see that Julian most often stresses the ethnic qualities of Hellenes. In this iteration they are an ethnos sharing in common cultic practices, paideia, and language. However, since Hellenes comprise many ethnē they are more properly understood as a super-ethnos. Since Hellenes are very much an “imagined community”1 and do not self-identify as sharing an identity, Julian seeks to shape them. Hellenizing Program is Julian’s attempt to identify both the correct ethnic deities that safeguard the Roman oikoumenē and to establish their proper propitiation. Julian believes that this project will lead to the safeguarding and salvation of the Roman oikoumenē. Christians and Galileans: “Galileans” is Julian’s derogatory label for Christians. In Julian’s ethnological argument, Galileans are from the Galilee, a region that never had a central temple, a god, or a people with that ethnonym attached to it. ix

x

Preface

By labeling Christians “Galileans,” Julian negates their ethnic status, thereby writing them off his ethnic map. Although this study focuses on Julian’s ethnic rhetoric in furtherance of his Hellenizing program, employing the term “Galileans” would offer the reader an awkward read at times, because it does not adequately represent Christians. Nevertheless, there are some circumstances in which the term “Galileans” does important work for Julian, and so I will use this term in these instances. Jews, Judeans, and Judeanness: The term “Judean” is an ethnic rendering of the Greek term Ioudaios. There is much debate whether this term can be rendered as anything other than its ethnic sense. I will frequently use the term “Judean” but only in circumstances in which I refer to Julian’s use of Ioudaioi, which is inherently ethnological. In all other circumstances I will use the term “Jew.” The choice to hold on to the term “Jew” reflects the emerging new meaning of this term in the postConstantinian world as a result of the Christianization of the Roman empire.2 For reasons I explain in the introduction, I hesitate to define Ioudaios in religious terms especially since religion has been shown to be anachronistic in the premodern world; nevertheless, cultic aspects of the ethnic term become disembedded from its ethnic context in the mid-fourth century, and Ioudaios comes to mean something different than “Judean.”3 Since this is a process that takes place over the course of the fourth century rather than at any one moment, I prefer the term “Jew” over the ethnic term “Judean.” More importantly, the impact of Julian’s ethnographic use of “Judeans” leads to a Christian response, and together these have an important impact on Jewish-Christian relations. The use of “Jews” reflects this later impact. Meanwhile, I use “Judeanness” to discuss the cultural system of the Judeans, which included the totality of their ethnic identity, including their laws, practices, and system of belief. Neoplatonism is a philosophy of the third century and beyond that was concerned with the unity and transcendence of the One God and the hierarchically arranged hypostases of Intellect and the Soul below but a part of the One. It sought to explain the procession of the One down through the hypostases. The desire of the lowerlevel Soul was to return to the One and thus to achieve salvation. This was understood as leaving the material world and meeting the One to gain true knowledge. Theurgy means “divine work” (erga), which in practice involved divination, initiation, and purification. Theurgic Neoplatonists believed that theurgic ritual more than philosophy was essential to guide the Soul to the One. In the writings of the early fourth-century Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus of Chalcis, a theurgist, a specialized priest employed special knowledge (technē) of the cosmos to guide the Soul on the treacherous path to the One. However, theurgy also involved exegesis of mysterious divine wisdom and theology in the theurgist’s work. Julian emphasized the exegesis of divine wisdom in his use of theurgy, which he found in mystery cults and in the ancestral laws of wise ethnē. In Julian’s work, theurgy functioned as communication with the gods.

acknowled gments

A long time ago in this galaxy the idea for this book sprouted. The spark was lit in a seminar I took with Oded Irshai, “History of the Jews in Late Antiquity,” during my studies for the M.A. at Hebrew University. That is when I first encountered Emperor Julian and his attempt to rebuild the Third Temple in Jerusalem. At the time I was working almost exclusively on the Second Temple Period in Jewish antiquity. Years later that spark was reignited at Harvard University as I studied for my comprehensive exams. At the end of the oral examination the great Classicist, Christopher Jones, suggested I ought to consider whether Emperor Julian was a source for Jewish practice in Late Antiquity. With this began a rather narrow study that ultimately reached frustratingly negative conclusions. Somewhere in the midst of writing I began to notice that I was far more interested in how Julian was using Jews. The dissertation ended in a hybrid state. Now, years later, I have produced this intellectual history on Julian’s use of Jews in his Hellenizing program in its Antiochene setting. We spend so much time researching and writing alone when we prepare a book. Truthfully, we are never alone. I would not have been able to complete this book without the help of family, friends, and colleagues. This book would not be as rich without the careful reading and comments of Christine Shepardson and Elizabeth DePalma Digeser. In the past few months as I have been working with the University of California Press I have received wonderful advice from Elizabeth DePalma Digeser who was so kind and thoughtful in her conversations and written remarks. You pushed me to examine new frontiers. In early 2017 I invited Christine Shepardson to read and comment on my book in a public forum at the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati, where I was xi

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Acknowledgments

on leave for the year. I learned so much from her, and my family enjoyed her company. I thank her and the Taft Research Center for bringing her to Cincinnati and for all its support in awarding me a Taft Center Fellowship in 2016–17. Taft has been amazing, supporting me during my years at the University of Cincinnati with awards for summer fellowships, conferences, and publication grants. My thanks to its now former director, Adrian Parr, to Sean Keating, Rasha Ali, and Teresa Hamrick for their indefatigable efforts to arrange talks and for making that year such a wonderful experience. During my year on fellowship I developed close friendships with colleagues who regularly read my work and offered useful feedback even though they were not in the same field. Many thanks to Gergana Ivanova and to Heidi Maibom. Andrew Jacobs has read both the dissertation and now the book, and so he has a sense of its development. Many thanks for his encouragement over the years and especially for his careful reading of my manuscript. Over the past year I have benefited from the advice of several colleagues who have read draft chapters. Many thanks to Jeremy Schott, Michael Swartz, John Gager, and Heidi Marx for encouraging words and helpful insights. My colleagues at the University of Cincinnati came out in a big way to my Taft talk and discussion with Christine Shepardson last year. Their support has been much appreciated. Thanks to Gila Naveh Safran, Matthew Kraus, Michal Raucher, and Craig Perry for asking good questions and for being even better colleagues. I have benefited from the wisdom of so many colleagues and friends over the years. My dissertation committee members were very patient with me as I struggled through the process of writing. Thank you to Shaye Cohen, Emma Dench, and Jonathan Schofer. Their advice and good cheer helped me through those years. While I was at Harvard, Jonathan Kaplan and I ran the Judaism in Antiquity Workshop, where we often spoke about each other’s work. So many of you have offered me useful feedback over the years, whether on chapters or on talks. Many thanks to Christine Thomas, Gregg Gardner, Duncan Macrae, Ross Kraemer, Heidi Marx, Dov Weiss, Zvi Septimus, Elitzur Bar-Asher, Michal Bar-Asher, Meir ben Shachar, Ra’anan Boustan, Jordan Rosenblum, Daniel Ullucci, Nate Desrosiers, Moshe Bernstein, and many more who I am failing to remember. Some of the most fruitful discussions I have had about my work have occurred at SBL and AJS national and international conferences. Thank you to those who attended and commented on my papers, especially to those of you in the Early Jewish-Christian Relations group and the Religious Competition in Late Antiquity group. I also want to thank my professors at Hebrew University, where I completed my M.A., especially my advisor, Daniel Schwartz, and Isaiah Gafni, Lee Levine, and Oded Irshai. Where would I be without my family?! First of all, my wife, Jennifer Jensen, who came into my life as I was writing the dissertation. In addition to her own job she read my work. When it came time to try to make sense of my scribbles scrawled

Acknowledgments

xiii

over my very disorganized notes, she figured them out and put together footnotes and a bibliography. A glutton for punishment, apparently, she did it again when it came time to put together these materials for my book. Luckily, by then I was far more organized than I had been for the dissertation, though not nearly organized enough. Many, many thanks and all my love to her not just for her help but for putting up with my long nights of seclusion as I labored mightily on this book. To my children, Isabel and Yoni, now I get to spend more time with you: I can’t wait! To my family from birth, to my siblings, nieces, and nephews for their support, and to my parents, and especially my father for helping me find my voice years ago. I learned so much during my M.A. just by discussing my papers out loud with him. Thank you!

abbreviations

The following abbreviations of primary works are used throughout the book, and those of modern scholarly journals and reference works are used throughout the notes and bibliography. Adv. Iud. ANES ANRW Ant. Apost. Const. ARAM ASE BAR Catech. CD CH Chron. CP CQ De Abst. De Consensu Evangelistarum De Mens De Spec. Leg. Ep. (Epp.)

John Chrysostom, Against the Judaizers Ancient Near Eastern Studies Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews The Apostolic Constitutions ARAM Periodicals Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi Biblical Archaeology Review John Chrysostom, Catechism Damascus Rule Church History John Malalas, Chronicle Classical Philology Classical Quarterly Porphyry, On Abstinence Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels John Lydus, On the Months Philo, On the Special Legislation Epistula (Epistulae), Letter (Letters)

xv

xvi

List of Abbreviations

FC

GCS GLAJJ HE Hom. in Kalendas Hom. in Martyres HTR HUCA In I Cor. Hom. In Gal. Comm. In Ioh. Hom. In Remp. In Titum Hom. JAJ JBL JECS JEH JHS JJMJS JJS JLAR JQR JR JRS JSOT JTS LXX MEFRA Misop. Myst. NRT NTS Or. PG

Fathers of the Church: A New Translation (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1947–) Die Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller, neue Folge (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, etc., 1899–) Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, ed. Menahem Stern Historia Ecclesiastica John Chrysostom, Homily on the Kalends of January John Chrysostom, Homily on the Holy Martyrs Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual John Chrysostom, Homily on 1 Corinthians John Chrysostom, Homily on Galatians John Chrysostom, Homily on the Epistle to John Proclus, In Plato's Republic Commentary John Chrysostom, Homily on the Epistle to Titus Journal of Ancient Judaism Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal of Ecclesiastical History Journal of Hellenistic Studies Journal of the Jesus Movement in Its Jewish Setting Journal of Jewish Studies Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture Jewish Quarterly Review Journal of Religion Journal of Roman Studies Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal of Theological Studies Septuagint Les Mélanges, de l'École française de Rome Julian, Misopogon Iamblichus, On the Mysteries Nouvelle Revue Théologique New Testament Studies Oration Patrologia Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1857–66)

List of Abbreviations

PL QS QSa QSb QT RBPh RG RPh RSR VC War ZAC ZNTW

xvii

Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1844–65) Community Rule Rule of the Congregation Priestly Blessings for the Last Days Temple Scroll Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae Revue Philologique Recherches des Sciences Religieuses Vigiliae Christianae Josephus, War of the Jews Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

Introduction Emperor Julian’s Jewish Gambit

The history of Roman Late Antiquity rarely considers Jews. Unfortunately, material remains of Jews from this period are scant.1 Meanwhile all that remains of Jewish writings comes from ahistorical literature of the rabbis. The other key source, the writings of the leaders of the Church, presents Jews as rhetorical figures designed to attack “heretical” Christian others.2 Scholars like Judith Lieu, Miriam Taylor, James Carleton-Paget, and Christine Shepardson explain how Jews are employed in ancient Christian arguments. Andrew Jacobs uses postcolonial analysis to examine how Jews are used by Constantine, Eusebius, and other Christian Church leaders to develop and cement Christian imperial identity in Palestine. Some of these scholars attempt to elucidate the historical impact of Christian depictions of Jews.3 Rarely, if ever, do scholars explore works of Hellenes who employ Jews in their rhetorical arguments and imperial acts for their own ends.4 These inquiries seldom reveal much about the life of Jews in a given society and their interactions with Christians and Hellenes. Of late there are new efforts to bring Jews back into the history of Late Antiquity.5 Postcolonial theory has been used fruitfully to establish the Palestinian rabbis as a provincial elite and rabbinic literature as a source for Jewish subaltern voices.6 This book approaches the place of Jews in the Roman empire of Late Antiquity from a different vantage point. I argue that Emperor Julian (361–63) employs ethnological discourse to present Jews as the Judean ethnos and then uses them as tools not only to undermine Christians as commonly understood but also, surprisingly, to shape Hellenic identity along a variety of philosophical principles but especially along theurgic Neoplatonist philosophical lines.7

1

2

Introduction

Like Porphyry of Tyre before him, Julian mines the ethnographic wisdom of the Jews, leavens it with his own observations and then uses his findings to support his Neoplatonist philosophical goals of achieving salvation of the Soul both for individuals and for the Roman oikoumenē.8 His endeavor can be traced directly to his stay in Syrian Antioch in the second half of 362 and in the first three months of 363. There, in the face of a failing program, and in the midst of renewed efforts to Hellenize the empire, Julian employs Jews qua Judeans (the descendants of the Hebrews), their sacrifices, priests, heroes, and institutions, to emulate orthopraxy for Hellenes, a super-ethnos and an “imagined community,” while displacing Christians, whom he labels “Galileans,” from his Platonist ethnic map.9 Julian’s Jewish gambit is an attempt to leverage the place of Jews in Antioch, where some Christians kept Jewish law and some Hellenes likely participated in Jewish festivals and believed the Jewish god to be the highest god, in order to strengthen his Hellenizing program by convincing these groups to behave and identify in certain ways.10 Scholars often discount the role of Jews in Against the Galileans and in Julian’s other works, cautioning not to make too much of Julian’s rather limited use of Jews.11 Nevertheless, they are forced to explain why, prior to February 363, Julian had never used the term Ioudaios in any of his writings, and then suddenly, in the space of three months, Jews appear in five works and are present in at least an additional two letters no longer extant.12 They appear not only in Julian’s antiChristian polemic Against the Galileans but surprisingly also in his Letter to Theodorus and its companion, Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, written to his chief priest of Asia and conceived as a manual for Hellenic and priestly practice and behavior.13 They are the subject of his letters to the Jews, one of them, the Letter to the Community of the Jews,14 largely intact, and another, extant as a fragment preserved by John Lydus.15 If we set aside for the moment Julian’s largely negative depiction of Hebrews, whom Julian argues are the ancestors of the Judeans, in the first half of Galileans, the remainder of his comments about Hebrews and Judeans in that work and in these other works both cohere and are largely positive.16 Julian attempts to realize his ethnographic rhetoric by rebuilding the Jerusalem temple and by returning Jews to Jerusalem. His Jewish gambit responds to Eusebius of Caesarea’s attempt in Preparation of the Gospels and Demonstration of the Gospels Book 1 to “historicize” the Jews as a defunct ethnos whose remains could be used to authenticate and define Christianity.17 By raising the specter of the Jews, Julian resurrects the power of a living, breathing, efficacious, and compelling Jewish people and their laws for Christians, many of whom already experience Jews in Antioch in this way. The content of Julian’s response to Eusebius and his characterization of Hebrews and Judeans as engaging in theurgy not only defines correct practices for Hellenes but refutes Porphyry’s brand of Neoplatonism even as Julian employs and expands Porphyry’s Neoplatonist tactic of mining Jewish sources in the definition of Hellenic identity.18 In other words, Julian uses Jews qua Judeans to

Introduction

3

flush out his largely theurgic Neoplatonist program in order to define correct practice for Hellenes. My reading of Julian’s use of Jews runs counter to the standard perception that Jews are merely tools with which the emperor attacks Christianity.19 Typically, Jews are seen to occupy the place of the straw man in Galileans, triangulated with Hellenes and Christians and attacked as the parent of Christians but deemed a legitimate people in the Roman empire with a god and ancestral laws.20 As scholarly understanding of the relationship between Jews and Christians has shifted from a mother-daughter paradigm to one of parallel development, Daniel Boyarin suggests that we read Julian’s use of Jews through the lens of heresiological discourse.21 In his view Jews are cast as a legitimate if an inferior pole to Hellenes. Christians, who are neither fully Jews nor fully Hellenes but mixtures of both, are cast as heretics and thus deemed illegitimate. Each of these paradigms casts Jews as an “other.” At the same time, Julian’s scattered claims about Judean practices both in Galileans and in his other works are either treated separately from the dynamic in Galileans22 or are not considered in light of the full body of that work.23 The chief claim of my book is that these paradigms miss an entire dynamic within Galileans, which plays out over the course of Julian’s scattered comments about Jews. Julian’s deployment of Jews as ethnic Judeans in Galileans and in his other works in furtherance of his Hellenizing program cannot be explained as merely a symptom of the reflection of the “self ” in the creation of the “other” that Majaistina Kahlos, Judith Lieu, and others write about.24 Their thesis is that sometimes authors reflect the aspired-for qualities of the “self ” in the “other.” Judith Lieu’s analysis of the virtue of “Germans,” an enemy of Rome, functions as a fascinating case in point.25 Julian’s Judeans perform much more than merely reflect the Hellenic self in Galileans and in his other works. Nor are they always ethnic exempla in the way Aaron Johnson describes Porphyry’s use of Jews.26 Rather his Judeans sometimes are sources for ancient Hellenic wisdom. Their practices bear ancient wisdom and they can be interpreted and used to shape Hellenic identity and to support universalist philosophical goals. In the final section of Galileans, Julian uses Judeans in order to drive his argument forming Hellenic identity. Further, I engage the scholarly debate about whether Ioudaios should be translated as “Jew” or “Judean” before the late fourth century c.e. In Julian’s works, Jews are labeled Judeans by a Roman emperor for his own purposes.27 Throughout this book we will see how Julian’s ethnological use of Jews as Judeans achieves this. This book is not the first to point out that Julian aligns Jews with Hellenes in the final sections of Galileans. Some years ago, Jay Bregman argued that Julian saw in Jews a divine mystery and posited that he may have found his own “meaning and significance” in the Temple in Jerusalem.28 Jewish traditions, he noticed, retain validity and derive from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom Julian identifies as Chaldeans skilled in theurgy and who worship a great god.29 In the Letter to the

4

Introduction

Community of the Jews Julian even presents the Judean god as a solar deity, identical to Helios, Julian’s patron and the Demiurge. Therefore, argued Bregman, by reinstituting Jewish religion, Julian was reviving true Hellenic religion, which entailed theurgic rites and temple sacrifice. His argument does not go so far as to posit that Julian used Jews to develop Hellenic identity. However, Bregman did not examine all the evidence about Jews; nor did he set it in its Antiochene context. His thesis has been criticized by Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, who argues that Bregman does not think through the meaning of “theurgy.”30 She correctly notes that Julian’s use of theurgy stands in for mystical revealed wisdom rather than Iamblichus’s theurgic ritual. Indeed, we will see that Julian’s attribution of theurgy to Judean Scripture and practices largely does refer to secret wisdom rather than to the theurgic technē of the theurgists, who were trained in identifying and manipulating all of the sunthēmata (symbols or thoughts of the One) of the gods contained in the cosmos to achieve union with the One. However, Iamblichus recognized that various people’s ancestral traditions carried within them theurgic elements even in the absence of a theurgist to guide them. More recently, Giorgio Scrofani has argued that Julian strategically develops a close parallel between Judeans and Hellenes in order to show how Christians have strayed from the idea of purity shared by the other two groups.31 In response to Christian claims that animal sacrifice is impure, Julian argues that Judeans are pure and that everything they eat is sacred.32 Indeed, the Eucharist, argues Julian, is not authentic atonement sacrifice, and Christians have given up their ability to purify themselves by apostatizing from their Judean ancestral traditions. Scrofani correctly sees this argument working in fourth-century Antioch, where some Christians kept the Day of Atonement.33 However, he warns that Judaism is of little use to Julian in proving the validity of Hellenic worship.34 Scrofani’s argument that Julian strategically aligns Jewish and Hellenic traditions in order to undermine Christian notions of purity and atonement is compelling. However, he misses that Julian also is describing Iamblichean ideas of sacrificial atonement. In chapter 3 we will see that the relevant sections of Galileans are addressed to Hellenes as much as they address Christians. Nor does Scrofani consider that Galileans forms part of a triptych of works that includes Julian’s Hymn to King Helios and the Hymn to the Mother of the Gods, which are all designed to outline his Hellenizing program.35 Among these works Galileans defines the correct worship of the gods. Specifically, Judean worship is designed not only to delegitimize Christians who fail to practice their Judean ancestral laws but also to define Hellenic orthopraxy. Bregman’s observation that Jewish practice contains theurgy opens a door to a different and new analysis of Julian’s use of Jews. Scholars from Josef Vogt on have claimed that Jews and Hellenes parallel each other in the final part of Galileans for the purpose of denouncing Christians.36 Boyarin’s heresiological argument essentially argues the same thing. These analyses never consider the role of Jews in

Introduction

5

developing Hellenic identity. Consequently, we understand only half of Julian’s project in Galileans. This means we tend to overlook the fact that Julian was a Neoplatonist philosopher who read Porphyry and carried a tradition that Jews could be ethnic examples and sometimes even sources for Hellenic wisdom. We, therefore, miss that Jews as Judeans were a resource for Julian in his establishment of Hellenic identity. Antioch was the indispensable backdrop for Julian’s arguments. As Scrofani notices in the instance of purity, Julian frames his arguments addressing local Antiochene issues, particularly where Jews and Christians intersect and share practices. In the following chapters I explore Julian’s use of Jews as Judeans in the Antiochene context in greater depth through the prism of ethnological discourse. As Julian engages with his Hellenizing efforts of early 363, he enters a field of polemical and apologetic discourse that uses ethnographic knowledge about Jews to control subject peoples in an imperial context. Ancient historians and polemicists had a “dispositional” orientation or predisposition to use ethnē discursively.37 This activity essentialized, assigned distinctive dispositions and practices, to each ethnos, and then arranged them into “cultural, social and intellectual hierarchies” that would influence how people were to understand their relations with others.38 Like other ethnographers, Julian reinterprets the findings of previous authors like Celsus, Origen, Porphyry, and Eusebius to fit his particular goals and adds to them, drawing in part on his knowledge about the Jews of Antioch.39 In Against the Galileans and in the Letter to Theodorus Julian employs ethnic argumentation, defined by Aaron Johnson as “the concern to strategically formulate ethnic identities as the basis for an apologetic argument,” to shape Hellenic identity and undermine Christian ethnic identity.40 Next to a Judean ethnos with a newly reclaimed capital and rebuilt Temple, Christians are defined as ethnic Galileans, an oxymoron as the Galilee had never been home to a single ethnos possessing its own cultic center. Meanwhile, Hellenes, an “imagined community,” are encouraged by Julian to emulate Jewish sacrificial practice and a number of other Judean practices. The ethnological approach to studies on Julian is relatively new. Virtually all scholars have defined Julian’s Hellenizing program through the lens of religion. The best example of this can be found in the work of Vasiliki Limberis.41 An exception is Florin Curta and to a limited extent Aaron Johnson as well.42 However, recent studies have shown the difficulties of using religion to describe phenomena in the ancient world.43 Although recent efforts have been made to revive the use of religion as an analytical tool for this period,44 nevertheless, Julian’s ethnological arguments are at the core of the arguments in this book. He is an example of an anti-Christian author who engages in polemics within a discourse of ethnicity. His works share a strategy of identity formation through the use of ethnicity. To define Hellenes Julian is very occupied with defining Jews and Christians as ethnic entities. I hope this study will contribute to our understanding of local and specific dynamics of

6

Introduction

cultural and ethnic contestation in fourth century Antioch in which Jews played an important part. Chapter 1 explains Julian’s imperial Hellenizing program. Julian marketed himself as a son of Helios who was raised by the gods, given perfect divine knowledge, and sent back to Earth to correct the errors of the Flavian Dynasty, which had mischaracterized the cosmic order and destroyed the temples and images of the gods. Now emperor, pontifex maximus, and prophet of Didymean Apollo but acting as a philosopher with divine knowledge, Julian set out to define the correct hierarchy of ethnic gods who ensured the health and success of the Roman oikoumenē and to articulate correct worship, which would gain their beneficence. As a theurgic Neoplatonist philosopher, Julian sought salvation for every soul in his empire and, through them, for the entirety of the Roman oikoumenē. He was challenged by the fact that Hellenes did not self-identify as such. Julian borrowed Porphyry of Tyre’s tactic of finding ethnic particular wisdom in the texts and practices of certain barbarian ethnē, particularly the Jews, to inform his universal and imperial Hellenic goal of salvation. This chapter explores what Julian meant by Hellenes, Judeans, and Galileans, and lays the foundation for how he presented Jews and marshaled them to shape Hellenic identity and to undermine Christian identity: all this to achieve his theurgic Neoplatonist goal of salvation for the Roman oikoumenē. Chapter 2 lays out the Antiochene setting prior to Julian’s arrival there in the late summer of 362 and explains how Julian’s stay in the city upset the Antiochenes’ lives. The chapter explores the cosmopolitan nature of Antioch and the embeddedness of Jews within the city and its territory, as well as their interactions with local Christians and Hellenes. Many Christians kept Jewish laws and worshipped in Jewish synagogues. There is also evidence that some Antiochene Hellenes celebrated Jewish holidays with Jews and Christians. Some may have considered the Jewish god to be the highest god. Julian’s ethnic argumentation in Galileans and in his other works of early 363 map on to the Antiochene landscape. His arguments about Jews are designed to interact with Jewish sites or Jewish practices there, and this chapter offers a tableau of the landscape as it was in early 362 before Julian’s arrival. It then explains the emperor’s experiences in Antioch in the second half of that year. Chapter 3 situates Julian’s Galileans in the context of imperial ethnographic literature that shapes and positions Hebrews, and Jews, in various ways with Hellenes and Christians to define these imperial entities. After discussing the state of Galileans and its main source, Cyril of Alexandria’s Against Julian, it places Julian in dialogue with Celsus, Origen, Porphyry of Tyre, and Eusebius of Caesarea. When Julian is compared with these authors, it becomes apparent that he does not merely follow his sources about Hebrews and Jews but changes them by explicitly using the language of ethnicity to highlight their ethnographic character in a manner that seeks to alter Antiochenes’ perceptions of Jews as Judeans which he then

Introduction

7

uses to support his Hellenizing program in Antioch. This is especially apparent in the final part of that work, where he adopts Porphyry’s framework that Christians are truly heretical Judeans but changes the content of his attack in order to shape Hellenic orthopraxy via his presentation of Judean practices.45 The efficacy of Judean law is a vital piece of Julian’s response to Eusebius’s ethnic legitimation of Christians in Preparation and Demonstration, and is an organizing principle of the final section of Galileans. Its continuity with Hebrew law proves that, contrary to Eusebius, Judeans are the Hebrews of old and undermines Christian ethnic legitimacy. At the same time Julian borrows and extends a Neoplatonist tactic of using Hebrews and Jews as sources for Hellenic wisdom. In Galileans, Jews become Judeans, and their laws and institutions become useful tools that Julian employs to shape Hellenic identity. Meanwhile, Christians are Galileans, a non-ethnos from a region without a people, temple, god, or cult. Understanding this dynamic is crucial to comprehending Julian’s use of Jews as Judeans, because it is repeated in every other one of Julian’s works about Jews. We will see also that pieces of the Letter to Theodorus written at the same time as Galileans similarly contain a large section of ethnographic reasoning involving Hellenes, Judeans, and Galileans. Chapter 4 explores Julian’s effort to employ Judean “sacrifice” as a model for Hellenic practice and to convince Christians that the Eucharist bore no relationship to Hebrew sacrifice. The theurgic Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus of Chalcis claimed prayer combined with animal sacrifice was essential to the proper propitiation of the gods (On the Mysteries 5.25). But animal sacrifice was rare in Antioch, eschewed by many Hellenes and by Christians. In Galileans fragment 72 (= 305D–306A), Judean private sacrifice stands in for Hellenic sacrificial orthopraxy. Like theurgic Neoplatonic sacrifice, Judean private sacrifice contains theurgy, while Hebrew sacrifice on the Day of Atonement and Hellenic sacrifice achieve expiation. Meanwhile, Galilean sacrifice—the Eucharist—has no continuity with Hebrew sacrifice and is therefore invalid. The chapter also considers Julian’s sources for Judean private sacrifice and how his presentation overlaps and contests rabbinic and Christian narratives about Jewish private sacrifice. This analysis will explain why Julian’s argument might have been compelling to Antiochenes. Chapter 5 argues that Julian draws on Judeans to model his highly innovative priestly program. Julian assigns chief priests over the provinces and allows them to choose local priests in the temples in accordance with a series of criteria that he sets out in his Letter to Theodorus and in its companion, the Fragment of a Letter to a Priest. Julian’s presentation of Judean priests offers more evidence that he draws in part on theurgic Neoplatonism in thinking about Hellenic priests. In Julian’s writings Judeans exemplify the priestly life, and they execute laws laden with theurgic wisdom. It is this same priestly life that the emperor seeks to instill in his priests. Judeans themselves behave like what Garth Fowden describes as “pagan holy men” in observing their dietary laws, criteria by which Julian chooses his priests.46 Just as

8

Introduction

Julian seeks to promote the priests to the highest levels of leadership in the empire, he offers Judeans as an example of a people who hold priests in high esteem and implicitly suggests that he will restore Judean priests to positions of leadership. Further, Judeans offer Hellenes a model for the financing of priests, whose Judean counterparts receive the right shoulder of every sacrifice (Gal. fr. 72 = 306A). Julian’s presentation of Judean priests is compared with Christian and Jewish narratives about Jewish priests, and its potential impact on Christians and Jews is assessed. Chapter 6 explores the place Julian assigns the Judean god in his divine order. Greek and Roman philosophers had long associated the Jewish god with the universal god, equivalent to the highest god in the cosmic order. Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and a palace on the compound, declaring his association with Jesus, whom Eusebius characterizes as Plato’s Divine Intellect. Julian’s definition of the Judean god in his divine realm forms part of his attempt to correct the errors of the Flavian Dynasty (Against Heraclius), which mischaracterized it; but that definition also represents his attempt to restore the Judean ethnic god and realize his ethnological arguments about Judeans in Galileans. As Julian rethinks his Hellenizing program in early 363 and considers the cosmic order in the Hymn to King Helios, he also considers the place of the Judean god in this pantheon in Galileans, written only a month later. Julian’s various and sometimes contradictory characterizations of the Judean god reveal his ambivalence over how close he ought to hold Him. To rank the Judean god too highly might collapse the boundaries between Jews and Hellenes and wreck his still-fragile Hellenizing program. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the impact on Christians of the replacement of Jesus with the Judean god and the restoration of the Temple. Chapter 7 returns to Antioch to examine what Julian calls the “holy city” that facilitates the proper worship of the gods. Julian faces a number of challenges from Christians, which present obstacles to the proper propitiation of the gods. Chief among these problems is the Christian dead and the cult of the martyrs, which contaminates Hellenes with whom they come into contact and therefore blocks the pathways of Hellenes to their temples. To alleviate the growing threat, Julian employs a type of exegesis common in the city of Antioch, reading Scripture in its historical context, employing grammatical acumen that he learned in grammar school to alter Christians’ perceptions of their martyrs. In contesting Christian interpretations of texts, Julian shows himself as an exegete superior to Church leaders. Here we find the only instance in which Judeans are offered as a negative example for Hellenes. Julian also alludes to the Christian cult of the Maccabean martyrs, which had only recently begun in Antioch. He changes the wording of Porphyry’s implied praise of the Maccabean martyrs for keeping their Judean dietary laws to the words of the Apostolic Decree to remind Christians that these were Judeans who died for their laws, laws that the Apostles insisted all Christians keep.47 By changing perceptions of the Christian cult of the martyrs, Julian hoped

Introduction

9

to clear space for Hellenes to reach their temples in a state of purity and carry out efficacious sacrifice. The conclusion imagines the impact of Julian’s ethnological arguments on the Antiochene landscape especially as found in the writings of John Chrysostom. While Julian’s rhetoric has an impact on Hellenes as evidenced by Cyril of Alexandria, it has far greater historical impact on Christian authors in Antioch and beyond. Typically, Chrysostom’s vituperative anti-Jewish rhetoric is explained as a phenomenon of Christianization in which Christian leaders mercilessly attacked other Christian groups as heretics. Julian’s Judean rhetoric resurrects the Jewish menace that had lain dormant in Christian thought ever since Eusebius declared Jews a defunct ethnos in Demonstration Book 1. In Antioch Jews were already seen as potent figures and authentic purveyors of a Christian past by Christian groups on the borders of the Jewish community. Julian’s rhetoric turns Jews into a potentially real danger for Christians that has to be dealt with. For Chrysostom, who grew up in Antioch during Julian’s stay in the city and witnessed what the emperor’s rhetoric and actions evoked among some Christians, this may have been a formative experience. The particularly ugly language he uses to describe Jews in Against the Judaizers may, in part, be explained by his perception of Jews as a danger to Christian orthodoxy. In this sense, Chrysostom’s rhetoric really is antiJewish rather than merely against the Judaizers. Given Chrysostom’s influence, this would have negatively impacted Jewish-Christian relations for years to come. Finally, the appendix rethinks how Julian’s Letter to the Community of the Jews can fruitfully be read as the realization of Julian’s ethnological arguments in Galileans. In recent years the authenticity of this letter has been impugned as containing anachronistic elements. While there can be no doubt that there is a later hand in this letter, the evidence of Neoplatonist worship suggests that there is a Julianic core here. This is important, as this letter is the only source that discusses Julian’s resettlement of the Judeans in Jerusalem, a logical consequence of his ethnographic arguments and his rebuilding of the Temple. What do Roman Studies of Late Antiquity have to tell us about Jews in Late Antiquity? Conversely, what do Jewish Studies have to tell us about the Roman empire in this period? These are questions increasingly being asked by scholars in both fields as they attempt to bridge the gulf that has stood so long between these two fields. Recent studies explore evidence of Jews in Late Antiquity as Roman evidence, asking what this evidence reveals about life in the empire.48 This study turns the lens around, and asks how Jews are relevant to the study of what it meant to be a Hellene in Antioch. We will see how ethnological arguments about Jews qua Judeans are utilized by Julian to create Hellenic identity in the specific circumstances of Syrian Antioch and therefore what it means to be Roman there. Late Antiquity is typically conceived of as moments of conflict between pagans and Christians. Jews are often written out of this history. This is a narrative drawn

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Introduction

largely from Christian writers who portray Jews as a defeated people superseded by Christians in Adversus Iudaeos literature. Even towering works in Jewish Studies sometimes come to the conclusion that Jews and Judaism shattered after the destruction of the Temple, only to be reconstituted by the development of orthodox Christianity.49 This study strongly challenges that narrative. Julian’s use of Jews qua Judeans to shape Hellenic identity and weaken Christian identity works in Antioch precisely because Jews were powerful symbols and influential parties there. We may be tempted to think that Julian is a unique phenomenon. Having crossed the divide from Christianity to Hellenism and being a follower of Neoplatonism, he could make particularly good use of Scripture to attack Christians but also to shape Hellenes. If anything, his uniqueness sheds light on forces already present in Antioch that we may not otherwise have been aware of. His ability to change perceptions of Hellenes and Christians using local Jewish practices and sites as his background speaks to the important presence and power of Jews in Antioch for all Antiochenes. At the same time, this study challenges the notion of static identities in the ancient world. The binary of Jew versus Greek that dominates ancient Jewish and Christian literature cannot be sustained. What precisely does it mean to be a Hellene in Late Antiquity when Neoplatonists like Julian use Jewish texts, practices, and ancestral laws to shape Hellenic identity? What does the need to draw these identities reveal about life in Antioch? The same criticism is often applied to the Jewish-Christian binary. How can this binary apply when we have Christians in Antioch who argue over how much “Jewish” law they are allowed to observe and yet still be Christians? Unfortunately, we have far less information about the porousness of Jewish borders. Did some Jews sacrifice in private? Did they participate in “Hellenic” festivals and attend temples and churches? We have no evidence for this. One would imagine that some Jews would have taken part in civic festivals, but by the fourth century the Hellenic content of these festivals was greatly reduced.50 What I hope this study demonstrates is that Jews are relevant to the study of Romanitas (Romanness) in Late Antiquity. This is an intellectual history of Antioch. What applies to Antioch cannot necessarily be applied to the rest of the Roman empire. Inasmuch as processes of Romanization and Hellenization varied locally and were negotiated phenomena between the colonizer and the colonized, it is not surprising to find Jews implicated within these processes in Antioch.51 Ultimately, if we want to understand Romanness in Antioch we need to know something about Jews there. These processes suggest that there may be other locations in the empire where Jews are factors in the definition of Romanness in Late Antiquity, and I hope this will open new exploration into other parts of the empire where Jews played a part in the development of Romanness. It should also encourage us to return to Christian imperial literature and question the underlying dynamics between Jews, Christians, and others, as I do in the Conclusion.

1

Julian’s Hellenizing Program and the Jews

For all Emperor Julian’s rhetoric, his Hellenizing program was not merely a return to traditional forms of worship. Julian dresses it up as a return to each ethnos’s ancestral laws. In fact, in his role of pontifex maximus, Julian interpreted ancestral laws using an interpretatio Graeca as a hermeneutical tool to ensure the “correct” worship of the gods. In this chapter Julian’s Hellenizing program, and his definition of Hellenes, Judeans, and Christians qua Galileans are examined and the place of Judeans within his program is elucidated. This analysis will be followed by a discussion of the emperor’s sources for his knowledge of Jews, as well as by a brief exploration of identity in Antioch. J U L IA N ’ S H E L L E N I Z I N G P R O G R A M

Julian was born a Christian into the Flavian family but turned to Hellenism in his teens after studying Neoplatonism with Aedesius’s students, especially the theurgic Neoplatonist Maximus of Ephesus, who initiated him into the Mystery of Mithras.1 Later he would study philosophy in Athens and be initiated into the cult of Eleusis. Julian’s studies were cut short by Emperor Constantius II, who raised him to the rank of Caesar and sent him to subdue the peoples of Gaul. Six years later, having met with success there, Julian, in an act of rebellion, claims to have been elevated by his troops to the status of emperor.2 Sprinting southeast through Europe, Julian prepares to meet his cousin, Emperor Constantius II, in battle. Before crossing over into Asia, Julian learns of Constantius’s sudden death and declares himself a Hellene openly for the first time and sacrifices to the gods.

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Julian’s Hellenizing Program and the Jews

In his Against Heraclius (Or. 7), written in Constantinople in early 362, Julian stakes his claim to rule on his Flavian dynastic heritage and on his assertion of divine favor.3 That dynasty had long been associated with Sol Invictus, also known as Helios. Not only did Julian declare his divine patron to be Helios, but he produced a myth that he was the son of Helios (229C), who raised him, gave him perfect wisdom, including a perfect understanding of the cosmos and all things, and sent him back to Earth to correct the errors of the Flavian Dynasty (234C). Constantine’s and Constantius II’s support of Christianity had mischaracterized the correct cosmic order, destroyed sacred temples (228C), and erected sepulchers. Having met Zeus, Helios, and other gods and received divine knowledge, Julian falls back to Earth with perfect philosophy to guide the Roman oikoumenē to health, security, and success.4 The knowledge that Julian obtains from Zeus, Helios, and the other gods in Against Heraclius is similar to that achieved by henōsis—unification with the One. Henōsis was the sought-after goal of Neoplatonist philosophers. Having gained this knowledge, Julian believes it is his divine mission to use his special knowledge to reestablish the correct cosmic order and with it correct divine worship in the Roman oikoumenē.5 This myth authorizes Julian’s Hellenizing program. Julian’s role as philosopher did not prevent him from engaging in political life, as scholars once believed.6 Philosophers of the school of Ammonius Saccas, Iamblichus of Chalcis among them, were taught that the high priest acting as a spiritual guide had a duty to ensure that their communities kept divine laws and, if they achieved divine union, they were obligated to shape the law of the politeia.7 As heir to this philosophical legacy and an acolyte of Iamblichus’s teachings, Julian saw no problem assuming a political role. However, it required extreme discipline. Iamblichus taught that strict asceticism and some distance from worldly matters allowed for participation in civic, religious and political life.8 This Julian achieved by adopting the Pythagorean life, growing his beard, donning the philosopher’s cloak, maintaining a strict diet, and sleeping on a pallet even as he stayed away from the games, the market, and the theater.9 As philosopher and emperor, Julian set out a program to repair the damage done by Constantine and Constantius II, just as Zeus and Helios had wanted. Susanna Elm articulately lays out the key aspects of Julian’s Hellenizing program. She writes:10 Roman universalism, Romanitas, properly understood, has many facets, not least the proper hierarchical arrangement of the various ethnicities Rome encompassed. What mixture of Greekness, or Hellenism, and Romanness best expressed Roman supremacy? Even more crucial, what constellation of (ethnically connoted) divinities had caused Rome’s greatness and was thus the guarantor of its security?

Acting as a philosopher imbued with divine knowledge, Julian set out to define both the correct ethnic divinities who secured the Roman oikoumenē and their

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proper worship. A number of Julian’s works specifically address the cosmic order. In March 362, immediately after publishing Against Heraclius, Julian publishes the Hymn to the Mother of the Gods, in which, as Elm explains, he sets out his “interpretation of the relationship of Greece, Rome, and the gods, and contrasts it with Constantius’s conception.”11 The Mother of the Gods is a “universal divinity, who subsumed in her divine person the expanse of the oikoumenē and the hierarchy of its ethnic composition.”12 She is first worshipped in Phrygia and has made her way to Rome and then on to Constantinople through Greece. Elm states that Julian’s explication of her path presents the emperor’s “personal understanding of Romanitas as the perfect mixture of divinely inspired, universal Greek and Roman wisdom,” which was anticipated by cosmology and was therefore “divinely authorized, and as such presumably universal and eternal.”13 In the Hymn to King Helios, published on December 25, 362, Julian lays out a cosmic order and positions Helios within it. Just as the emperor’s patron, Helios, mediates between the gods and the different cosmic realms, so too Julian is the center of the Roman oikoumenē, protecting it and bestowing his benevolence upon it. In Against Heraclius, Julian identifies his god-given role as protector of the Roman oikoumenē by safeguarding its laws. Indeed, the central piece of Julian’s Hellenizing program was his insistence that each people keep their ancestral laws (ta patria). In his effort to define the ancestral laws of the ethnē, Julian monopolized all the key roles and controlled all sources of divine wisdom. Not only did he have divine insight; he was pontifex maximus and prophet of Didymean Apollo, the most important oracle left on Earth by the gods. Given the inactive state of the oracles, Julian sought other sources of divine wisdom and found them in the texts and ancestral laws of certain wise barbarian ethnē. Traditionally, the pontifex maximus had been in charge of the cult in Rome, but Julian expanded his portfolio.14 He was now chief priest and interpreter of all the ancestral customs of the multitude of ethnē in his empire.15 This enabled him to determine the proper form of worship via the correct interpretation of ancestral laws and texts. He was therefore able to investigate Scripture, observe Judean practices, and expound on their true meaning, including their hidden theurgy. Of all the ethnē Julian was particularly interested in the Chaldeans, just as Iamblichus had been; but he also found wisdom in the ancestral laws of the Egyptians, Syrians, Phoenicians, and especially the Hebrews, all ethnē that Neoplatonist philosophers believed possessed divine wisdom.16 Embedded within these ancestral laws was mysterious divine wisdom, which when executed played a part in the ascent of the soul. Armed with divine wisdom and acting in his role as pontifex maximus, Julian set out to interpret the texts, laws, and practices of these ethnē.17 Their wisdom helped shape Hellenic identity and sometimes became sources for Julian’s Hellenizing efforts. Like Porphyry, Julian uses their wisdom as ethnic exempla to define Hellenes and to support his Neoplatonist goal of the ascent of

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Julian’s Hellenizing Program and the Jews

the Soul to the One. Aaron Johnson defines ethnic exempla as an author’s use of the practice or law of an ethnos to support some aspect of Hellenic identity.18 Only in Galileans do Julian’s Judeans move beyond ethnic exempla and begin to drive Julian’s argument defining Hellenic and Christian identities.19 At stake for Neoplatonist philosophers like Julian is the saving of people’s souls and through them the entire Roman oikoumenē. By the fourth century, the Neoplatonists were split between two opposing opinions of the titans of the Neoplatonist philosophical world on the nature of the Soul. Porphyry, born with the Syrian name Malchus in Tyre, Phoenicia, lived between approximately 234 and 305 c.e. He had studied with Longinus of Athens and then with Plotinus, considered the father of Neoplatonism, in Rome from 263 to 269 c.e. and followed his teachings until his death. He went on to become a key figure in the teaching of Neoplatonic thought, writing a Life of Plotinus and several other significant works, including the Philosophy from Oracles, On Abstinence, Life of Pythagoras, Letter to Gaurus, Letter to Anebo, On the Return of the Soul, Letter to Marcella, and Against the Christians. Porphyry’s Neoplatonism could be practiced successfully only by elite philosophers who, through superior knowledge, were able to achieve union with the gods and thereby achieve salvation. Porphyry’s student Iamblichus was born circa 250 c.e. in Chalcis, Coele Syria, and died around 330 c.e. In Syria he founded a philosophical school where he taught that there were many ways to achieve salvation. Iamblichus was the first Neoplatonist to displace Plotinus’s purely spiritual and intellectual mysticism in favor of theurgy, literally the “work of the gods.” In this strand of Neoplatonism, the theurge was a priest who possessed the skill (technē) needed to guide the soul to the gods. Though only his minor philosophical works have survived, the basic elements of Iamblichus’s system can be understood from the references to his teachings in the writings of the fifth-century philosopher, Proclus. A key work for our purposes is his On the Mysteries, but he also wrote On the Pythagorean Life; The Exhortation to Philosophy, or Protrepticus; On the General Science of Mathematics; On the Arithmetic of Nicomachus; and Theological Principles of Arithmetic. A key controversy between Porphyry and Iamblichus was how to achieve union (henōsis) with the One. The answer was dependent on where one stood in the debate between them on the state of the Soul. The argument between these two philosophers played out over the pages of Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo and Iamblichus’s response in On the Divine Mysteries, although Porphyry later added to the debate in On the Return of the Soul.20 Porphyry believed that the soul had not fully descended into the body. Therefore, blood sacrifice could only feed demons, who inhabited the world. Only philosophical contemplation could achieve henōsis and therefore salvation.21 Since only a tiny percentage of philosophers could achieve unification with the divine, most people were unable to be saved. On the other hand, Iamblichus believed that the soul, the lowest divine entity, had fully

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descended into the body. Because there was an unbroken continuity through the cosmos that linked the Demiurge with all divine beings, including descended souls, it was possible that they could be turned toward the divine and, releasing themselves from their material or corporeal bonds, begin their ascent to the One. The performance of theurgic ritual was essential to the project of salvation according to Iamblichus.22 Porphyry did concede that theurgy and divination might purify the lower soul and begin to lead it on a path toward the superlunary, ethereal realms where it could be granted visions of “marvelous things” but it could not achieve henōsis with the Demiurge.23 For Iamblichus, only theurgic ritual acts could cause the sunthēmata of the soul (the symbols or thoughts of the One present in every soul) to recognize its divine character and begin to ascend to the Demiurge. In his scheme, theurgy is the ritual manipulation of sunthēmata and sumbola (tokens), spread by the Demiurge throughout the cosmos, to enable the soul to ascend to the gods and thereby attain henōsis. In Iamblichus’s work, theurgy is a “technē or epistemē: a systematic body of knowledge and expertise with different sub-disciplines which the practitioner has to appropriate completely in order to achieve mastery of the whole art.”24 This involved “the perfect accomplishment of ineffable acts religiously performed and beyond all understanding.”25 It was the power of ineffable symbols that only the gods comprehended and not by intellectual acts that henōsis was achieved. Iamblichus drew on the special wisdom of the Chaldeans and Egyptians and specifically from the Chaldean Oracles. In his opinion, certain pure and perfect objects could act as receptacles capable of receiving the gods because they bore the sunthēmata of the gods. Through the appropriate use of the gods’ sunthēmata in nature, the soul could awaken its corresponding sunthēmata and free itself from its enslavement to the daimones.26 These sunthēmata could be activated in the soul by the chanting of the divine names in their original languages or by various other modes of theurgy.27 Suddenly alert to its divine character, the soul sought to return to the Demiurge of the intelligible world. Only a pure theurgist-priest had the technē to guide the soul to the Demiurge. Such theurgic activity need not become manifest only via rituals but could also by theology and by philosophical exegesis.28 Indeed, Iamblichus’s exegetical guidelines and his philosophical commentaries are also an expression of theurgy.29 The key difference between Porphyry and Iamblichus was that the latter believed that everyone could attain henōsis and therefore be saved whereas Porphyry reserved salvation to those very few elite philosophers. To create stable and uniform cultic elements of Hellenic identity, Julian draws on several philosophical principles, most especially from theurgic Neoplatonism.30 Scholars debate just how much Julian made Iamblichean theurgy a key part of his program.31 Julian’s knowledge of Iamblichus’s works was likely limited and relied on intermediaries such as Maximus.32 Although he declares himself an acolyte of Iamblichus, Julian draws on only one strand of Iamblichean theurgy.33 Ilinca

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Tanaseanu-Döbler demonstrates that Julian adopts Iamblichus’s religious expert as “exegete of divinely inspired wisdom and defender of theurgy.”34 Julian enters the debate between Porphyry of Tyre and Iamblichus of Chalcis over how souls may be saved for the first time in his Hymn to the Mother of the Gods. There Julian describes the role of the Sun and the precise time of the Roman festival of Meter as a “threefold anagogical hierarchy” activated by the Sun, including the everyday life, philosophy, and theurgical mystagogy.35 Theurgy here is presented as esoteric knowledge, “accessible only by the initiated few.”36 The Chaldeans chant it; the “blessed theurgists” know it, and the chant leads souls up to the seven-rayed god. Here, as in Iamblichus, it is the secret wisdom of theurgists that enables salvation. This theme of anagogy is picked up in the Hymn to King Helios, where Helios, in his noeric form, is responsible for the descent of souls and receives souls on their ascent. In other words, theurgy is necessary for salvation.37 Julian employs the Chaldean Oracles to support the effect of Metroac rites on the souls of the practitioners and links the process of the purified Soul’s ascent with the efforts of the pure theurgists.38 Tanaseanu-Döbler argues that Julian’s conception of theurgy is therefore “the highest degree of performance of whatever cultic activity, in the tradition of Iamblichus” and is associated with esoteric wisdom.39 It can be found in others cults as well. In fact, as she argues elsewhere, theurgy unites all the mystery cults by acting as a bridge through the rituals between “philosophical religion of Neoplatonism and Hellenic cult” and therefore completes Neoplatonism.40 Julian’s conception of theurgy is not limited to Hellenic cults but intersects with his ethnological arguments. One finds theurgy in his description of Hellenic tradition as well as in Abraham’s sacrificial practice because it is Chaldean, and in the Orphic myths. As we will see, Julian presents Judeans as a mystery cult in theurgic terms. Theurgy as mysterious divine wisdom can be found in the ancestral laws of certain ethnē, and this is why Julian wants people to observe their ancestral laws. In his Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, Julian describes both sacrifice and prayer as obligations required by “the law of our fathers.”41 Who are these lawgivers? At Epistle 89b.292B Julian calls them the “theurgists of earlier days” (tōn archaiōn hēmin theourgōn), who handed down the sacred traditions of the gods—by which he means laws and habits. Here he refers to the lawgivers, who came forth from the blood of Zeus and are therefore all related. These are not only the lawgivers of the Hellenes, but also the lawgivers of all peoples, which explains why Hellenic wisdom can be found in the ancestral laws of other ethnē. These lawgivers are not exactly Iamblichean theurgists guiding the soul through their theurgic crafts into union with the Demiurge. Rather they are the lawgivers of the ethnē whose laws contain mysterious wisdom. This use of theurgists coincides with Julian’s other uses of the term “theurgy” as mysterious wisdom. His use of “theurgy” as esoteric knowledge comes to the fore when Julian discusses Jews as Judeans in Galileans. The place of theurgy within Julian’s ethnological arguments requires us to under-

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stand how Julian wrote about and employed the ethnē in his empire. Defining the ethnē was an essential piece of Julian’s Hellenizing program, which sought to safeguard and save the Roman oikoumenē. It required that he establish the correct hierarchy of the ethnic divinities and ensure their appeasement by defining and enforcing orthopraxy. H E L L E N E S , J U D E A N S , A N D C H R I ST IA N S

Ethnos In recent years scholarship on ethnic identities has shifted from a focus on the content of the ethnic identity to an inquiry of how ethnic representations are crafted in specific situations to distinguish between peoples.42 We now look at how boundaries are formed through language, particularly by labeling, whether of peoples with ethnonyms, and/or their gods, and so forth. Ethnic identity, indeed all identities, are formed through discourse that emphasizes certain characteristics for one group and others for different groups. While ethnic groups existed in the Roman empire of Late Antiquity, our evidence shows that they were not static entities but were under constant cultural construction, deployed, positioned, and defined by a variety of authors for their own purposes.43 Therefore, we must read texts closely in order to identify where and how the author creates identity.44 Julian particularly uses the term ethnos to distinguish between groups, but other studies have demonstrated that genos (race) and laos (people) function in the same way.45 As it was used by Julian and other ancient writers, the term ethnos included a geographical territory, perceived common blood, a shared history, and a common culture, including language and dress, but also a god and a central cult with attendant religious practices and theological doctrines. Cult and theology were not disembedded entities from ethnicity until the Christianization of the empire, a process that had only recently begun by Julian’s time under his uncle Constantine and cousin Constantius II. Hellenes Julian’s Hellenizing program was not an esoteric endeavor relegated to the minds of philosophers. Nor was it narrowly conceived for the exclusive purview of Hellenic philosophers. Rather it had consequences for the people of the empire. Platonist philosophy never shed its ethnic thinking. Since the second century, philosophers believed that certain philosophical truths were embedded in the practices of the ethnē.46 These could be used to reconstitute Hellenic wisdom and could inform Hellenic practice. Julian’s Hellenizing program required Hellenes who practiced the principles Julian espoused to perform animal sacrifice and prayer but also philanthrōpia. The problem was: Julian’s Hellenes were an “imagined community,” the purview of philosophical minds.47 This was an identity almost without adher-

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Julian’s Hellenizing Program and the Jews

ents. There is no evidence that traditional practicing Romans self-identified as a homogeneous group sharing in a set of common cultic practices. Julian had to shape their identity. How should we understand Julian’s Hellenes? Scholars have long understood that long before Late Antiquity the meaning of “Hellene” expanded from its original use, denoting common blood relations, geography (Greece), the Greek language, Greek cult, and Greek culture, to one that focused mainly on culture.48 This expanded use grew as the Hellenistic empire spread its culture and language, and it was prolonged by the Romans, who shared in Hellenic culture and used it as a tool to integrate different ethnicities into their realm. By Late Antiquity, Hellenism represented the cultural force of Rome’s universal oikoumenē.49 Meanwhile, Hellenic civilization, as represented by Athens, was paideia that had prepared the oikoumenē for Roman domination.50 The emphasis on the cultic practices, philosophical principles, and theological beliefs among Hellenes is a development of the third century. It is first found among Neoplatonist philosophers, who, in response to Christian uses of the term “Hellenes” to denote pagans, used the term in a positive manner as a form of self-identification. This comes across in the epistolary of Iamblichus, Himerius, and others.51 There is no evidence that this identity was shared outside specific Neoplatonist circles. Traditionally, scholars of Julian have tended to emphasize the cultic aspects of his Hellenism, defining it primarily by blood sacrifice, polytheism, and ta patria.52 This has obvious implications for Hellenes, as adherents of Hellenism. In part, I believe that Gregory of Nazianzus and other Christian leaders have foisted this understanding upon us. In Oration 4.651C, Gregory asks Julian, “Do you own Hellenism?” He takes particular offense to Julian’s ban of Christian teachers who do not believe in the Hellenic myths of Homer and Hesiod, arguing that Hellenism is a language and a culture in which Christians share. On this basis, Vasiliki Limberis points to Julian’s Rescript against Christian Teachers (June 362) as a case in point of what she identifies as the religious nature of Julian’s Hellenizing program.53 Indeed Julian’s belief that paideia required belief in the gods is unusual. It is also consistent. His emphasis on ritual, practices, and temples is evident from the moment he becomes emperor. One of his first acts was to order the reopening of temples and the resumption of sacrifice. The emphasis on what most scholars call the “religious” trajectory of Julian’s overall Hellenizing program misses the many nuanced meanings present in Julian’s use of Hellenes. His program and fastidious sacrifice sometimes emphasize cult over other aspects of ethnicity such as geography, ethnicity, language, and culture, especially when compared with other authors. For example, it seems that anyone could become a Hellene by taking on the habits, paideia, and cultic rites of Hellenes. Julian writes of his friend Salutius, who once was a barbarian but became a Hellene.54 He even speaks of himself as a Thracian who has the habits of a

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Hellene.55 However, we should be cognizant of a natural bias inherent in our choice of a religious definition of Julian’s use of Hellenes and Hellenism. Julian’s Hellenizing program rises in the context of a Christian empire, and Christian apologists like Eusebius of Caesarea write about Hellenes in negative ways that emphasize their cultic content. Julian himself is embedded in this context. We should not forget that he was a Christian until he became an adult.56 Add to this that recent scholarship demonstrates the difficulties of using religion in premodern times.57 In Julian’s case, foregrounding the religious aspects of his program obscures the full body of his use of the term “Hellene,” which more often favors an ethnocultural meaning. Indeed, many scholars have taken note of Julian’s use of the term “Hellene.” Indepth studies by Florin Curta, Jean Bouffartigue, and Aaron Johnson demonstrate that Julian uses the term “Hellene” in a variety of ways, including in ethnic, cultural, geographical, linguistic, and cultic ways.58 The cultic sense of “Hellene” does appear in a limited number of places. Julian challenges Aristoxenes to show him that “genuine Hellenes” still live in Cappadocia (Ep. 78.375C). Elsewhere he complains that Athanasius dared to baptize Hellenic women of rank (Ep. 114.437C). In a letter to Libanius he characterizes Batnae in Syria as “Hellenic” because its inhabitants engage in frequent sacrifice (Ep. 98.400C). This limited use of the cultic meaning of “Hellene” is supported by the one instance when Julian uses the word Hellēnismos, in the Epistle to Arsacius, which now is widely accepted as a forgery. More often Julian uses “Hellene” in an ethnic or a cultural sense although he manipulates its meaning depending on whom he is writing to. For instance, the ethnic designation of "Hellene" is particularly present in works Julian writes for large audiences, including in Galileans, Hymn to King Helios, and Misopogon. So the people of Alexandria and Antioch are said to be Greek in origin (Misopogon 367C). In Galileans, “Hellene” is often an ethnic and a cultural term. Hellenes are wisest in healing (Galileans fr. 46 = 200B), and in music (Galileans fr. 38=178B). Julian also claims that they have skill in the mysteries and are theologians (Galileans fr. 37 =176C). It is their paideia that provides this advantage but also these are gifts bestowed on them by their gods. In this sense anyone can be a Hellene. Florin Curta notes that Julian’s ethnic Hellenism derives from his Neoplatonist interpretation of ethnic diversity, the theory that each ethnos is assigned an ethnic god by the Demiurge. We find that Julian uses the ethnic sense of “Hellene” particularly in Galileans when he describes the habits (ēthē) of various ethnic groups such as the Celts, the Germans, the Egyptians, and the Syrians in comparison with Hellenes and Romans (fr. 21 = 116A) and again when he discusses the different natures and political constitutions of the ethnē (ta politika tōn ethnōn in Galileans fr. 26 = 143D), which he accords to their different natures (phuseis tois ethnesi diaphorōs). In chapter 3 we will see that Julian is responding to both Origen’s excursus Against Celsus and to Eusebius of Caesarea’s ethnic legitimation of Christians in Preparation of the Gospels and Demonstration of

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the Gospels. Meanwhile, the religiocultic meaning of “Hellene” is favored in letters to his Neoplatonist friends, although here too ethnocultural uses are present.59 Jean Bouffartigue argues for a greater emphasis on the cultic use of “Hellene” in Julian’s work, but even he finds at least five different definitions for the term “Hellene,” including (1) a geographic territory, (2) the historical Greek nation, (3) the Greek ethnos, (4) cultural Hellenism, and (5) Roman paganism.60 To Aaron Johnson, Julian “maintained a full-bodied expression of Hellenicity” and his “scope for Hellenism was on a much grander scale and predicated upon concerns at all levels: imperial, civic, cultural, literary, spiritual and religious.”61 How should we make sense of the varieties of Julian’s usage of the term “Hellene”? First of all, characterizing certain usages of “Hellene” as religious is not helpful, as most of these do not exclude other parts of Hellenic ethnic identity. In this sense these are simply cultic aspects of ethnic identity, just as the cultural aspects of Hellenic identity can also be subsumed under ethnicity. In a recent article, Aaron Johnson suggests that we think of Hellenism as “a sort of rhetorical and conceptual toolbox from which the educated could draw in building their own visions of who they and others were.”62 Ancient authors who wrote about Hellenes and Hellenism used a number of tools, including various elements of religious cult, doctrine, dress, and “generic conceptual categories for classifying the world” such as ethnos, genos, and many others.63 This understanding of Hellenism is helpful if we are going to comprehend how Julian uses terms like “Hellene” and its derivatives. Indeed, Julian picks and chooses from a variety of definitions of Hellenes to make his point. This is why his more private letters to his fellow Neoplatonists stress the cultic aspects of the ethnic term “Hellene” even as he is comfortable emphasizing different aspects of the term in other contexts. Nevertheless, his most common usage of the term is his ethnic usage. This was the usage most recognizable to his larger audiences, who were accustomed to thinking in ethnological terms much like Platonic philosophers were used to thinking with the ethnē. One finds such uses in many places but especially in Galileans, where Julian’s ethnological reasoning drives his argument. As Julian defines his ethnically constituted empire, he slots in Jews as Judeans, Christians as Galileans, and Hellenes in their various ethnic varieties on his imperial map. Here, Julian’s Hellenes are a super-ethnos, a people who share in paideia and possess ancestral laws, notably laws of animal sacrifice and prayer in temples. They are far more similar to Eusebius’s description of Christians as a triton genos in the sense that they float above traditional ethnic boundaries. They are Greeks from Greece but may include any other person who chooses to adopt their customs. At times this super-ethnos breaks down into a number of constituent ethnē (fr. 21 = 116A and fr. 26 = 143D), but using the example of Salutius, these differences dissolve when someone takes on the habits of a Hellene. After all, the lawgivers were theurgists formed from the same blood of Zeus, and therefore all peoples are related (sungeneis, Ep. 89b.292A–B). Aaron

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Johnson’s utilitarian exposition of Hellenism helpfully explains Julian’s strategic use of ethnē. Julian’s ethnē are to be defined not by their constituent elements but rather by how Julian employs them. The current scholarly consensus is in agreement. This understanding of ethnos is particularly useful if we are to comprehend Julian’s Hellenizing program and his use of Jews in an attempt to get these people to self-identify as Hellenes and distinguish themselves from others. Judeans Julian’s ethnographic argument, explored more fully in chapter 3, also applies to Jews, whom he calls “Judeans.” Within Julian’s Platonic ethnarchic theology in Galileans, Jews as Judeans are a legitimate ethnos and therefore fit onto Julian’s ethnically conceived map, which is modeled on his cosmic order. Julian goes out of his way to link the Judeans to their ancestors, the Hebrews. Porphyry implied that Jews were the descendants of the Hebrews and were essentially the same people. To respond in part to Eusebius of Caesarea’s attempt to ethnically legitimate Christians as the true successors to the Hebrews (Preparation of the Gospels), Julian uses ethnic language and markers to reconnect them. This also allows Julian to mine Jewish Scripture and Jewish practices and heroes, since their ancestors, the Hebrews, are widely recognized as a wise people. In one bizarre instance, using ethnic markers of geography Julian refers to the Hebrews as “the Hebrews of Judea,” an anachronism given that Judea is the name of the land of the Judeans, who postdate their Hebrew ancestors (Galileans fr. 25 = 141C). Later in the polemic Julian demonstrates that current Judean private sacrifice is much closer to Hebrew sacrifice on the Day of Atonement than to the Eucharist, which he denigrates as a “new sacrifice” (kainē thusian: Galileans frs. 67– 72 = 291A–306A). Judeans are even a priestly ethnos. Such ethnographic thinking is also present in his other writings to or about Jews. Employing and expanding what we will soon define as Porphyry’s Neoplatonic tactic of using Jews as ethnic exempla and Jewish wisdom as a source for Hellenic wisdom, Julian offers up Judeans as a paradigmatic ethnos, possessing all the markers Julian finds important to ethnic identity, including a homeland bearing the name of the ethnos’s eponymous ancestor and a god who bestowed a politeia consisting of laws, temples, sacrifice, prayer, priests, and purifications (Galileans fr. 72 = 306B). Indeed, not only does Julian mention the land of Judea (fr. 141C), as well as Jerusalem and the Temple (fr. 72 = 306A) but as we will see in chapter 3, he also emphasizes Jewish ancestral laws. Julian discusses circumcision (fr. 85 = 351A–B), Passover (fr. 86 = 354A–B), the festivals of the Judeans (fr. 86 = 354A– B), and sacrifice and prayer (fr. 72 = 306A–B). He applies specific legal language emphasizing Judean laws. For instance, in fragment 72 (= 306A) Julian talks about the customs of the Judeans (tois Ioudaious nenomismenōn). Cyril records Julian’s claim that Judeans and Hellenes observe similar laws (nomois) (Against Julian 9.13.7– 20). The emperor emphasizes these ethnic characteristics at the very moment

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Julian’s Hellenizing Program and the Jews

he pursues these same themes for Hellenes in the Fragment of a Letter to a Priest and in the Letter to Theodorus. In Julian’s hands, Judeans become a hermeneutic by which Hellenes can comprehend his Hellenizing program. Much of this argument occurs within an anti-Christian argument located in the final section of Galileans. As we will see in chapter 4, here Judeans stand in for Hellenes. Not only are Judeans an ethnos, but their Scripture and practices bear mysterious divine wisdom. As successors to the ancient wise Hebrews, Jews as Judeans possess theurgic or mysterious divine wisdom. This recalls Iamblichus’s use of the theurgist as the interpreter of divine wisdom. Julian sees Judean Scripture and practices as texts to be mined and interpreted for mysterious divine wisdom, and he offers an interpretatio Graeca of these Judean practices and institutions, readings that are better than those of the Judeans, who do not have his divine knowledge.64 This special knowledge allows him to model Judean ancestral laws and practices for Hellenes. Although Julian’s comments about Judeans are brief and scattered over several letters, this same hermeneutic is repeated in Julian’s other works, especially in his Letter to Theodorus, his Hellenic priest and a theurgic Neoplatonist by training, where we would not expect them to appear. The source of Judean divine wisdom comes from the patriarchs, who were Chaldeans.65 Meanwhile, the Egyptians taught the Judeans circumcision. In Iamblichus’s estimation, the Chaldeans and Egyptians were the two most important and theurgically talented of the ethnē. This is not lost on Julian, who labels Abraham a Chaldean and likens his sacrifice and divination to their Hellenic counterparts. If Judeans lost the theurgic skills of their forefathers, that was because they read the Bible literally and their Prophets and exegetes were not purified enough to truly understand their Scripture. Julian leaves wide open the possibility that the Bible contains mysterious theurgic wisdom, which he can interpret in his capacity of pontifex maximus and by using the divine wisdom he received from Helios and Zeus. He offers an Iamblichean explanation of why God favored Abel’s sacrifice, claiming that God, as the cause of life, prefers animated beings because they participate in life.66 Hebrew and later Judean theurgy is not always present. For example, King Solomon may have possessed theurgy, though Julian argues that he received it not from his tradition but owing to the influence of his pagan wives.67 Nevertheless, we will see in future chapters that the theurgy of their Hebrew ancestors is passed down to the Judeans, whose sacrificial ritual contains theurgic prayer, even if they do not know it themselves.68 As we will see in chapter 4, Julian even suggests that Judeans are a Mystery cult, the exact place where one would find theurgy.69 The emperor’s presentation of Judeans as a Mystery cult fits right in with what Tanaseanu-Döbler argues is his use of theurgy as an umbrella concept in which Chaldean and other traditions shrouded in mystery are integrated via the interpretation of ancestral laws.70 It connects all Mystery cults and, when properly understood, acts as a form of divine communication.71 Julian’s writings about

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Judeans show that he extends their use to shape Hellenes even when his Hellenic program has little to do with theurgic Neoplatonism. For instance, Julian admires Judean modes of fundraising for their priesthood and even offers Judean priests as an example of the standing he would like to accord his priests. Using Jews qua Judeans as ethnic exempla of Hellenic wisdom is a Neoplatonist tactic Julian learned from reading Porphyry of Tyre, who mined Jewish practices to shape Hellenic identity. In his earlier works, Philosophy from Oracles and On Abstinence, Porphyry looks to the philosophies and histories of Jews and other foreign ethnē in what Jeremy Schott calls a “cross-cultural” project to reconstruct Hellenism.72 His was an imperial project that combined cult and philosophy in a manner that joined the traditional cults of the empire’s ethnē with philosophical religion, transcending local variation in belief and practice in service of Romanitas and imperial Rome.73 Here the Hebrews are one of six nations whose ancestral laws preserve ancient Hellenic wisdom lost after Plato’s death, and Porphyry turns especially to the texts of the Hebrews and the Chaldeans to recover authoritative truth about philosophy and theology.74 Aaron Johnson argues that Porphyry’s project was actually engaged in the definition of Hellenes for an elite group of philosophers rather than for a wider group of people.75 Julian, on the other hand, defines Hellenes for a much wider population. Porphyry searches for particularistic philosophical ethics such as asceticism in barbarian wisdom, collates them, and uses them as sources for Hellenic wisdom.76 Mining sources is inherently an interpretive process. Porphyry employed specific interpretive strategies employing “figurative reading of texts and intellectualization of traditional cult” to distinguish between universal truths and culturally specific content.77 This project does not discount literal readings of texts. Rather, figurative readings of texts simply reveal more authentic meanings.78 Julian implies that Jewish Scripture has hidden meaning. He might be the right person to reveal its truths. Julian moves beyond Porphyry’s use of ethnic exempla in the final part of Galileans employing Jews qua Judeans as a driving argument in the shaping of Hellenic identity. Not only are Judeans examples of ethnic behavior for Hellenes, but in the instance of dietary laws they may even be a source for Hellenic ancestral laws (Ep. 89a.453D). Julian does not offer figurative readings of Scripture in Galileans, but he does not rule out such readings’ capacity to uncover universal truths. In fact, he blames Judean prophets and exegetes for not being pure enough to see God and attain true wisdom.79 Instead, Julian reads the Bible literally to demonstrate the incoherence of Christian ethnic claims and to shape Hellenic orthopraxy. In its anti-Christian outlook, Galileans is simply not the place to engage in extensive figurative readings of Scriptures to uncover universal truths, especially as he is comparing the Bible negatively with Plato.80 Judean Scripture and practices may not only or always be sources for Hellenic wisdom, but as Julian interprets them, they often

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help shape Hellenic orthopraxy, either by modeling practices for Hellenes or, sometimes, by acting as negative examples. Sometimes, as in the Letter to Theodorus, he makes this explicit. Other times he merely demonstrates that Judeans perform the same practices as Hellenes. Rather than describe Hellenic orthopraxy, he describes Judean practice. Like Porphyry, Julian assumes a position of superiority, explaining that he understands things Judean interpreters cannot. As we will see in chapter 4, by explaining their practices, Julian demonstrates mastery and control over ethnic Judeans. Only a properly trained philosopher could understand ancestral laws. This position authorizes his broader project of synthesizing all ancestral laws to cohere with a set of Neoplatonist principles such as private and public sacrifice accompanied by theurgic prayer and dietary laws. As we will see in chapter 7, Julian adopts a set of practices of reading Scriptures popular in Antioch in order to persuade Christians that his interpretations are correct. Even as Judeans are offered as a paradigmatic ethnos in the empire, Julian cannot hold them too close. As an author, Julian participates in and helps shape imperial knowledge of Hebrews, Jews as Judeans, and Christians as Galileans, as rhetorical tools wielded for the express purpose of defining Hellenes. Holding out Judeans as alluring models to shape Hellenic identity creates some ambivalence for Julian, as he must also struggle with differentiating Hellenes from Judeans. So although Judeans are examples of Hellenic orthopraxy, Julian simultaneously adopts the Hellenic polemical practice of attacking Jewish practices as the source for Christian apostasy. We will see examples of the emperor’s ambivalence toward Jews in his multiple and often contradictory characterizations of the Judean god and in his accusation that Christians learned to worship at tombs from Judeans. Christians The effect of Julian’s use of Jews as Judeans has severe repercussions for Christians. The extent to which Julian’s anti-Christian animus drove his program remains an issue in modern scholarship on Julian.81 The anti-Christian nature of Julian’s use of Judeans relies on the anti-Christian bias of Galileans and on the biases of Christian Church leaders who highlight the attempt to rebuild the Temple as an anti-Christian act. If Julian intended Galileans as a solely anti-Christian work, he need not have identified the Judean practice of sacrifice and prayer as containing theurgy. Rather he might have simply rebuilt the Temple. One cannot negate the anti-Christian aims of Galileans or the anticipated anti-Christian impact of Julian’s rebuilding the Temple. In this sense, Judeans were used as bludgeons with which to attack Christianity, but I agree with Elm to the extent that Julian sought to bring Christians back to their ancestral traditions. In this regard, one cannot ignore the place of Galileans within Julian’s Hellenizing program. Along with the Hymn to the Mother of the Gods and the Hymn to King Helios, Galileans seeks to safeguard the Roman oikoumenē by

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identifying and worshipping the correct gods and by establishing the correct worship of the gods. In the next chapter, we will see that Julian directs himself to Hellenes when he discusses Judeans in the final part of Galileans, and this also explains why they appear in the Letter to Theodorus, his chief priest of Asia.82 And yet, Julian’s use of Jews qua Judeans, is also an anti-Christian gambit. One cannot ignore the fact that Julian did not seek to rebuild the Jerusalem temple in early 362, when he began his temple-restoration project. It is only in early 363, as he faces off against Christian opposition in the city of Antioch, that he utilizes the Jews both to attack Christianity and to define Hellenes. It is then that he reads Celsus via Origen, Eusebius, and Porphyry and learns how Jews might be utilized to attack Christians but also to define Hellenes. Notably, Julian does not delegitimize Judeans as Celsus had, by claiming that they are renegade Egyptians. Rather he seeks to uphold the viability of the Hebrew cum Judean ethnos so that he can draw on its wisdom in his definition of Hellenes in the final part of Galileans and in his other writings about Judeans. This tactic is particularly effective given the social circumstances present in the city of Antioch, where Jewish institutions, Jewish Scripture, Jewish heroes, and the Jewish God occupy important spaces in the life of all Antiochenes. Julian’s ethnological arguments defining Jews as the Judean ethnos links Jews to Judea and to Jerusalem, thereby displacing Christians, who also claimed Jerusalem. This also means that the emperor reinscribes Jews as Judeans on his imperial ethnic map, and this in part explains why he attempted to rebuild the Temple and intended to repopulate Jerusalem with Jews. Meanwhile, by controlling the Judean ethnos he can label Christians “Galileans,” naming them after a region that was never identified with a single ethnos and was without a central city, temple, cult, or god, all essential ethnic markers for a legitimate ethnos in Julian’s empire. Nor did the Galilee bear the Christian name. Therefore, labeling Christians “Galileans” highlights the absurdity of Christian ethnic claims.83 Effectively, Julian writes Christians off his imperial map and out of the empire. What made the Jews as Judeans an ideal tool in the emperor’s Hellenizing project and in the Antiochene context? Processes of Hellenization are not simply a matter of a dominant culture imposing itself on a local culture. Nor is Hellenization experienced and accepted the same way in all parts of a province. Like recent articulations of Romanization, this process was inherently local, negotiated rather than imposed, and ongoing in nature.84 Part of the reason for the failure of Julian’s program was that he sought to impose a polarizing form of Hellenic identity, accepted only by a tiny group of philosophers, on a cosmopolitan city.85 Julian’s late efforts to use Judeans to define Hellenic identity may be understood as a negotiated attempt to define Hellenism by using local Jewish idioms valued by many Antiochenes. His attenuated uses of Hellenes as ethnocultural people and his cloaked use of innovative theurgic Neoplatonism under the guise of traditional cult can be explained as a more nuanced approach to persuade Antiochenes to accept his program.

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Julian’s Hellenizing Program and the Jews J U L IA N ’ S S OU R C E S A B OU T J EWS

Julian gained knowledge of Jews through a variety of sources. Most often he is assumed to know Jews from Scripture.86 As a former reader in the Church, he possessed keen knowledge of its contents, quoting from them at will. In addition, before writing Galileans he obtained the library of his former teacher, George of Cappadocia, the bishop of Alexandria, who was lynched by a mob in Julian’s first month in office. From this library, he read Origen’s Against Celsus, Porphyry’s On Abstinence and Philosophy from Oracles, and likely Against the Christians,87 Eusebius’s Preparation of the Gospels and Book 1 of the Demonstration of the Gospels. The emperor’s experience in Antioch was also a source for his observations about Jews and an inspiration for his Jewish gambit. Syrian Antioch was home to a large and ancient Jewish community. Julian either met Jews as John Chrysostom (Jud. 5.11) suggests or had bona fide knowledge about Jews and their practices from the rhetor Libanius, who employed Jews in his fields and is later known to have had a friendly relationship with the Jewish Patriarch, even teaching his son.88 Julian’s description of Judean private sacrifice is unmatched in any other Hellenic or Christian source and although it corresponds to Deuteronomy 18:3 no Christian had ever commented on this verse. This is a practice that Julian or a colleague would almost certainly have observed. Julian’s Jewish gambit is born in late 362 or early 363 c.e., after Julian suffers a few serious setbacks to his program while living in Syrian Antioch and in the shadow of his upcoming war against Persia, where he would lose his life. Victory there would bring an end to the Flavian Dynasty’s ongoing wars with Persia and set right the cosmic order mischaracterized by his uncle Constantine. Success in Persia required the identification of the correct gods who guaranteed the security of Rome as well as an articulation of the correct set of practices that would propitiate the gods and secure their beneficence.89 Each of these issues was central to Julian’s definition of Hellenes. I D E N T I T Y I N A N T IO C H

Julian’s Jewish gambit can be understood only in the context of his experiences in Antioch. Jews had been in Antioch since its founding, so long in fact that they had become an embedded and to some extent an undifferentiated part of Antiochene culture.90 Isabella Sandwell uses Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus to explain that the people of Antioch had a natural sense of how to deal with issues of religious difference. In the cosmopolitan city of Antioch, where many different people mixed well, tolerating others, and where borders between groups sometimes blurred, people did not inquire about cultic allegiance.91 Rather they were comfortable taking on a number of identities that were never static but constantly

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changing. Not only were identities fluid, but the borders between Christians, Jews, and Hellenes were blurred in fourth-century Antioch.92 Indeed Antioch was a cosmopolitan city with hybrid identities.93 Its people were proud Antiochenes, citizens of Rome, and shared in a universal Hellenic culture that transcended regional particularism even as they were also shaped by local culture. In addition, they may have identified as Jews, Christians, Manicheans, and traditionalists who followed their own ancestral laws. However, there was not simply one way of being a Christian or a traditionalist, and we can only guess that the same was true for Jews as well. Rather, identities were constantly changing and under construction.94 The nature of Antiochene society was such that Jews could be tied closely to Hellenes, or Christians, or both. Antiochenes were flexible in their views on practices and rejected polarizing programs. In his attempt to promote the cultic aspects of Hellenic identity and to separate Christians (and Jews) from their Hellenic cultural heritage, Julian forced a program that fell outside the habitus and therefore caused turmoil and resulted in resistance. Under these circumstances, Antiochenes showed no interest in his sacrificial program, nor did they share his divisive definitions of purity and impurity. Julian’s use of Jews represents a new stage in the emperor’s attempt to Hellenize the empire in early 363, one far more nuanced than before. It is to mid-fourth-century Antioch that we now turn in order to understand the landscape that Julian encountered when he arrived and that informed his experiences and program.

2

Setting the Stage Hellenes, Christians, and Jews in Cosmopolitan Antioch

Julian’s experiences in Antioch and that city’s cultural milieu are crucial to understanding his use of Jews. Unfortunately, the archaeological state of the evidence is extremely poor, a result of the earthquake that destroyed the city in 562 and the fire that followed it.1 As a result, Jewish remains are scant.2 On the other hand, we have a rich trove of literary evidence to inform us about life in Antioch in the fourth century.3 Jews in Antioch were not easily distinguishable. They walked, dressed, worked, and behaved like many of their non-Jewish neighbors.4 They attended the theater and the baths just like their neighbors. Yet, as I will argue in this chapter, some literary evidence is less opaque than the rest.5 Where possible I bring together literary evidence—from Chrysostom, the Apostolic Constitutions, John Malalas, Libanius, Church canon law, and rabbinic evidence—with material evidence of the Jews from inscriptions.6 The rhetorical aims of the authors make it impossible to derive historical reality from this literature.7 Nevertheless, Christine Shepardson demonstrates that some of John Chrysostom’s descriptions of “Jews,” particularly those that use the adverb “now” and are not known from Scripture, may depict current Jewish practices.8 Rabbinic literature presents even greater challenges. It is literary and didactic and thus presents enormous challenges to read as history. Nevertheless, scholars have read these sources against the grain to distill more historically reliable moments and have even found code words that indicate a presentation of an event with some historical value. Libanius’s evidence about Jews bears less polemic and is less literary. Yet we are forced to consider precisely who he thought “Jews” were. From these sources, we learn that Jews were highly valued in the cultural and religious economy of Antioch and in the Province of Syria at large. Josephus, the first-century-c.e. Jewish historian, reports that Jews lived all over in the Diaspora 28

Setting the Stage

29

but had particularly large populations in Syria and especially in Antioch.9 To understand the place of Jews in the Antiochene landscape in mid-362 just prior to Julian’s arrival, we will move through the landscape of the city, out through the southwestern gates, and make our way to the upscale neighborhood of Daphne, stopping at various points to discuss the cultural and historical significance of these sites in Antiochene culture. Mid-fourth-century Antioch was a landscape like no other.10 The city sat in the Amuk Valley between the eastern offshoot of the Orontes River and Mount Silpius, which hugged the city’s eastern border.11 The river supported many farms.12 Under the Seleucids the city began to expand beyond the river. This New City was contained between both parts of the Orontes and was connected to the Old City by a series of bridges. Antioch was a meeting place of East and West. Its highways extended out from the city’s gates to the northeast and the southwest, linking the Parthian empire and the Far East with the Roman empire. Its territory was vast. As befit the leading city in its tetrapolis, Antioch’s territory stretched out toward Apamea in the south, toward Seleucia in the east, and toward Laodicea on the Mediterranean Sea.13 Exotic goods flowed into Antioch, bringing with them traders from a variety of different ethnē, many of whom immigrated to the city and its surrounding territory.14 Antioch was also home to military men and leading dignitaries in the imperial bureaucracy. Greeks, Jews, Christians, Bardaisanites, Manichees, and many others called Antioch home.15 Libanius describes the cosmopolitan character of Antioch this way: “If [a person] sat down in our market square here he will scrape acquaintance with every city in the world, so numerous will be the people from all quarters with whom he will come into contact.”16 Entering from the northeastern gate, a visitor would be greeted by a sea of people making their way down one of the city’s two main streets.17 Heavy traffic of horses, donkeys, chariots, litters, and pedestrians could always be seen.18 The streets’ marbled stone had been financed by Herod the Great, the Judean clientking of the first century b.c.e., who adorned it with colonnades on either side.19 Over 3,200 colonnades supported porticoes enabling commerce and socialization the year round.20 Streetlights ensured that the city’s streets remained lit twentyfour hours, enabling commerce and socialization all day and night.21 Within Antioch itself, Jews walked undifferentiated among the city’s thoroughfares speaking Greek and Syriac, among a cacophony of languages spoken in the city.22 They came from all walks of life and lived all over the territory. They were mainly Syrians dressed in Greek wear.23 Perhaps greater concentrations of Jews lived within the city in the Kerateion, in the upscale neighborhood of Daphne, and in the Hulta Valley, likely located to the northeast of the city. Most likely Jews lived all over the city.24 They took their places among the vendors pestering the passersby with their wares. In other parts of Syria, inscriptions mention that Jews

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were perfume makers, goldsmiths, manufacturers of or traders in silk.25 They worked as tenant farmers growing rice in the part of the Amuk Valley known as Hulta in rabbinic sources, where wealthy city landowners employed them to work their lands.26 They were also watchmen, clerks in the market, workers in municipal waterworks, police officers, and served in the military.27 Inscriptions paid for by wealthy Antiochene Jews can be found in an Apamean synagogue at the end of the fourth century and in the necropolis of Beth Shearim in the Galilee. These demonstrate the wealth of some Jews in the city.28 As vendors and shoppers Jews argued, haggled, socialized, and laughed with their fellow Antiochenes. Stalls of vendors interspersed with private houses, which were located between the columns on the side of the road.29 Of late the luster of the Hellenic temples had diminished. Although Antiochenes continued to gather there for celebratory meals on traditional festival days, aside from some old priests, few frequented their sacred enclosures.30 Fewer still came to sacrifice.31 The physical façades of the buildings were in a state of decay. The paint was fading, and the structures’ golden trimmings had recently been ripped away.32 Other temples, such as Tyche’s, had been repurposed and turned into classrooms or used as meeting places to file grievances.33 All traffic came to nearly a standstill as one approached the center of town, where the two main streets met. The Nymphaeum with its famed fountain dominated the square.34 Above, the porticoes began to split up: some, moving forward, continued toward one of Antioch’s main markets, just below where the slopes of Mount Silpius rose up in the distance hugging the eastern edge of the city, while others turned west toward the New City, which lay between the two parts of the Orontes River. Farther down on each side alleys broke off from the main streets like the spokes of a wheel, entering the heart of the city’s living quarters. Several feet beyond this intersection was one of Antioch’s many markets.35 Crowds of people were ever present, especially at the end of a work day or on festivals. On one end stood the bouleutērion, which was the city council chamber, and the house of the Comes Orientis.36 On the other end was a shrine to the Muses. Entertainers wowed the crowds with their theatrical stunts. A group of attendants ran before the governor walking down the square.37 Beggars harassed passersby for some food.38 Later in the fourth century, the Church Father Theodoret, describes a hermit proclaiming special knowledge he learned from divine oracles to crowds that gathered around him.39 During many festivals Antiochenes could be seen dancing in processions through the marketplaces. Once a central feature of these festivals, sacrifices and banquets had been removed from the rituals in the third century.40 The presence of the gods was similarly diminished. This enabled all Antiochenes to participate in the festivals.41 By the early 360s Antioch had as many Christian inhabitants as it did Hellenes. These festivals could now be celebrated as joyous secular festivals, even as Hellenes were still perfectly capable of identifying their religious charac-

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ter.42 In fact, many families were of mixed faiths, an increasingly prevalent phenomenon as more Antiochenes had converted to Christianity in recent decades. They attended church and Bible-study classes, but we have no evidence that this resulted in social isolation. All shared a love for the city and considered themselves Hellenes and Romans. The New Year festival known as the Kalends lasted several days, featured processions through the city wearing masks of the gods,43 jesting, feasting, drinking, dancing, torchlit scenes, speeches, chariot racing, gladiatorial contests, and public bathing.44 In May the populace enjoyed the Festival of Artemis45 and the Maiouma,46 in honor of Dionysus47 and Aphrodite, which was celebrated with nocturnal stage shows and water displays in Daphne.48 Later in July came the Festival of Adonis.49 The Festival of Apollo closed out the summer.50 Alongside the empirewide festivals, many Antiochenes celebrated the festivals associated with the Jewish New Year. John Chrysostom complains that some Christians danced with Jews barefoot in the market.51 Meanwhile, local heroes, like the Maccabean Martyrs, reportedly buried in Antioch, were beginning to be honored by some of the Christians.52 In a few years a citywide procession would take place in their honor.53 It was also not uncommon for Christian funeral processions to pass through the marketplace as they wound their way through the crowded streets of the city.54 The sight of Christians carrying their dead on a bier through the streets was accompanied by Christians singing hymns. People made way for the processions, careful not to come into contact with the dead. Most people shared a natural revulsion for the dead, believing that such contact contaminated. In 362, annual commemorations of martyrs like the ones described by John Chrysostom twenty years hence had probably not yet begun.55 If one looked off to the west one might see the top of the golden octagonal dome of the church. The location of Antioch’s newest edifice in New Antioch has recently been challenged and cannot be verified because of a lack of material remains, but it has been traditionally placed in New Antioch.56 Commissioned by Constantine but dedicated in 341 by Constantius II, the new, magnificent octagonal gold church, known as the Octagonal or Golden Church, was patronized by emperors, Caesars, and likely other senior Roman officials. It could be reached by walking west from the Nymphaeum and crossing over the Orontes via one of Antioch’s five bridges.57 Christianity had a long and storied history in Antioch. It was the site of one of the first missions after Jesus’s death58 and was the city where the term “Christian” was first used (Acts 11:26). Paul and Peter are reported to have clashed over the conversion of Gentiles, which led to the Apostolic Decree (Acts 15:1–21; Gal. 2:1– 11.)59 Christianity’s situation in Antioch in mid-362 was complicated.60 There were three different bishops serving coterminously during Julian’s stay in Antioch

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including the homoian bishop Euzoius and two homoousian bishops: Meletius, who returned to the city with Julian’s recall of homoousian bishops in later 361, and Paulinus. Since its dedication, the Golden Church had been in the hands of homoian bishops, whom Constantius II had supported.61 Homoians believed that the Son was subordinate to and, therefore, different from God, the Father, whereas the homoousian Creed of Nicea claimed that the Son was consubstantial with God, the Father. Meletius’s congregants likely continued to occupy the old Apostolic Church in the Old City in his absence. After years of support by Constantius II, the homoians were likely the most powerful group, and their occupation of the Golden Church symbolized their status. The hippodrome, which was situated in New Antioch, was a popular site of entertainment in the city. The Antiochenes loved their games. When in Antioch, Constantius II had often sat in his seat in the hippodrome watching over his beloved games and happily greeting his well-wishers as he acknowledged the cheers from the crowd.62 Other officials were also regularly in attendance. The Syriarch, responsible for the province’s games, had a special seat in the hippodrome, as did the Praetorian Prefect of the East, who was the governor of the Province of Syria, as well as his two civilian governors who served under him, and members of the city council.63 Also in attendance were many members of the army, whose base was located on the outskirts of Antioch. Antiochenes also enjoyed their entertainment. Aside from the hippodrome there was a variety of other theaters including one of Dionysius and another of Zeus. The emperor was often seen at the theater, where he interacted with the populace. His imperial letters and decrees were read aloud there and in the marketplaces.64 Theaters held athletic contests as well as contests between men and beasts.65 Every fourth year the only Olympic Games held outside Greece were held in the summer at Daphne and dedicated to Zeus. Meanwhile, Antiochenes entertained themselves by watching mimes in the marketplace and by drinking in taverns.66 T H E J EWS O F A N T IO C H

Walking southwest from the city’s center, where its two main streets intersected, one would eventually reach its southwestern gate. On the left-hand side, just outside Seleucus I’s walls but inside Tiberius’s and hugging the western slopes of Mount Silpius, was possibly the city’s oldest synagogue, located in the Kerateion. Evidence that a synagogue existed there is late and therefore uncertain.67 John Malalas claims that the Seleucid king Demetrius buried the Maccabean Martyrs in the Kerateion in the late second century b.c.e., and he associates the place with a synagogue.68 A medieval Arabic description of Antioch claims that this synagogue was called Asmunit and that it had become a church.69 These claims suggest that the church contained the bones of the Maccabean Martyrs, who were killed rather

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than violate their dietary laws during Antiochus IV’s persecution of Jews in the second century b.c.e. In this case, the synagogue also would have been built over the crypt. This claim has stirred controversy.70 If true, this would have violated rabbinic law, which holds that the dead contaminate and must be buried outside the city, although more recent evidence suggests that some Jewish synagogues included human bones, possibly for apotropaic purposes.71 Scholars now question the lateness and Tendenz of the sources professing a synagogue on the site. It now seems unlikely that the Church of the Maccabean Martyrs was built over a synagogue at all;72 it appears that it was not in the Kerateion. Hellenic cities simply did not allow bones within the walls of a city. Even if the Kerateion lay initially outside the city walls, by the first century it would have found itself within the city. I will soon argue that the relics of the Maccabean Martyrs were likely buried in the Antiochene suburb of Daphne. Jews had lived in Antioch for nearly six centuries, brought there by the city’s Seleucid founder.73 Very quickly it had become one of the largest Jewish communities in the Roman world.74 It was said that Jews were so well regarded that their Hellenic neighbors shielded them from anti-Jewish riots during the Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 c.e.).75 If it was written in Antioch, as many suspect, 4 Maccabees is our only Jewish literary production from that city.76 Early on the community was granted rights equal to those of the Greeks, and allowed Jews to govern themselves in accordance with their ancestral laws.77 They were led by a governing council consisting of representatives from the city’s synagogues and headed by the gerousiarch. In the mid-fourth century, the experience of Jews was one of coexistence and competition with other religious groups.78 John Chrysostom’s more historically reliable statements about Jews include79 statements that Jews observed the Sabbath (In Ioh. hom. 68.1; In Titum hom. 3.2; In Gal. comm. 1.6–7, 2.6, 4.3) and did not carry burdens on the Sabbath (Adv. Jud. 6.3). They kept the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkoth (Adv. Jud. 1.1, 1.7; PG 48.844, 853), and Passover (Adv. Jud. 3.2; PG 48.864). They practiced circumcision (Adv. Jud. 2.1; PG 48.858), abstained from eating blood (Adv. Jud. 6.3; PG 48.907), practiced ritual washing (In Ioh. hom. 70.2; In II Tim. hom. 6.4; Catech. 9.16),80 including sometimes after coming into contact with a corpse (In I Cor. hom. 20.4; Catech. 9.16). They tithed to the synagogue (In I Cor. hom. 43.5)81 and kept the Law generally (In Ioh. hom. 68.1; In Titum hom. 3.2; In Gal. comm. 2.6–7). They wore scriptural texts sewn into their clothing (In Ioh. hom. 53.3; PG 59.296). Finally, Jews were renowned for their ability to heal the sick.82 Chrysostom describes Jewish sorcerers who visit the Christian sick in their homes with healing potions,83 and he castigates Christians for attending synagogues to gain healing from amulets84 as well as for attending a Jewish “synagogue” in Daphne called Matrona’s Cave for incubation.85 The Jews of Antioch seem to have had close relations with other Jews in the Galilee and particularly with the Jewish Patriarch, who lived in Tiberias. We find

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that Aidesios, one of the wealthiest Antiochene Jews, purchased a plot and was buried in the necropolis in Beth Shearim to be close to the Patriarch, Rabbi Judah.86 A second funerary inscription in Tiberias, the seat of the Patriarchate located in the Galilee, belongs to Leontine the wife of Thamasios, a leader of the Antiochene Jewish community. Rabbinic literature also claims that the Patriarch traveled to Antioch to deal with the Roman legate of Palestine.87 The rabbinic movement also claimed to have close ties with the Jews of Antioch. Antioch was so close to Palestine that the rabbis deliberated over whether the boundaries of the land of Israel reached Antioch (t. Demai 2.1.) There are several reports of Palestinian rabbis visiting the Hulta Valley just outside Antioch to collect money.88 In Genesis Rabbah 19.4, Rabbi Tanhuma bar Abba, who lived in the late fourth century, came to Antioch to engage in a dispute with Christians about the nature of God in Genesis 3:5. These rabbinic reports cannot be confirmed, but there is evidence that a connection between Antioch and Palestine existed, and this evidence makes rabbinic contact with Antioch plausible. Such contact is supported by evidence of an Antiochene family’s burial in Beth Shearim. I would add that references in the third-century “Christian” document the Didascalia Apostolorum to the deuterōsis, thought to be rabbinic Oral Law, suggest that rabbinic interpretation met with some success in eastern Syria, where this work is thought to have been written.89 Deuterōsis appears again in the fourth-century Antiochene “Christian” document the Apostolic Constitutions, written in the 380s, most likely in Antioch. The conditions that produced this document likely prevailed in the 360s as well, which means the Jewish community in Antioch in 362/3 likely had contact with rabbis. The rabbinic movement itself also claims to have drawn some of its talent from Jewish Antioch. In the fourth century Antiochene rabbis included Isaac Nappaha and Ephas.90 At least by the fourth century c.e. the Jewish community was integrated into the local hierarchies of patronage. Libanius was the most celebrated rhetor of his gen´rion, eration and ran a world-class school of rhetoric in Antioch out of the bouleute¯ 91 where the who’s-who of the Roman world studied under his tutelage. Wellrespected, he wielded considerable influence and, on occasion, advocated on the Jewish community’s behalf with senior people in the Roman administration.92 He also maintained close relations with the Jewish Patriarch, even numbering the Patriarch’s son among his students.93 The synagogue was a popular destination for many Antiochenes. It is conceivable that on any given Sabbath or Jewish festival a great crowd of people descended on the synagogues in Antioch.94 It may have been difficult to differentiate between Jews, believers in Christ, and Hellenes. This situation appears to have existed in the first century c.e.: Josephus reports that Hellenes in Antioch were attracted to Jewish religious ceremonies.95 These Hellenes might loosely be associated with “Godfearers,” a group of people on the borders of the Jewish community who observed some Jewish Law but rarely crossed the line to become Jews.96 In recent years scholars

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have argued that the boundaries between groups are blurry in antiquity until Christianization becomes entrenched in the fifth century. In this milieu, a person might share in a number of festivals or rites of more than one group or over the course of a lifetime adopt different customs while shedding others.97 This seems to be particularly true of some Christians and possibly some Hellenes in the fourth century. There is no evidence that Jews kept “Christian” rites or “Hellenic” religious rites, although they likely took part in local civic life, including festivals, the theater, and the games. Even though we have no material evidence for the existence of these groups in Antioch in the second and the third century, both Julian and John Chrysostom offer us anecdotal evidence that Hellenes continued to be attracted to Jewish festivals there. According to Chrysostom a large crowd of Antiochenes joined the Jews in their boisterous parties on the Jewish holidays (Adv. Jud. 1.1). Some of the attendees were likely Hellenes, although Chrysostom does not identify them specifically. Julian offers us a complicated passage that, I believe, points to Hellenes celebrating Jewish festivals in Antioch. In the midst of addressing Christians in Galileans fragment 86 (= 354A–B), the emperor makes the peculiar remark that “even I am not among those who celebrate the festivals with the Judeans.” This remark makes little sense if directed at Christians, who well know that Julian does not identify with them. Rather he is more likely addressing Hellenes, especially since he follows up with a statement of his devotion to the Jewish God, whom he identifies as “a mighty god,” a sentiment with which many Hellenes in the Roman East and possibly also in Antioch would have identified.98 Whether some of or all these Hellenes kept other Jewish practices is beyond our evidence but it does affirm that Julian aimed his treatise at Hellenes as much as at Christians. There is a possibility that Hypsistarians also lived in Antioch.99 This group was part of the ancient world’s wider phenomenon of “pagan monotheism,” which was inspired by early Greek philosophy that taught of a single active principle among the gods.100 Hypsistarians worshipped the Jewish God as Theos Hypsistos (“Most High God”) together with His angels, associating Him with light, fire, and the Sun.101 They kept the Jewish Sabbath, lit lamps, kept Jewish fasts and kept many of the dietary laws.102 Their cult focused on prayer and prohibited animal sacrifice. It therefore arose out of a Hellenic milieu but contained elements of Judaism and was attracted to it.103 Stephen Mitchell goes so far as to say that this cult had room for both Hellenes and Jews.104 Unfortunately, there is no inscriptional or other evidence that Hypsistarians lived in Antioch, although they are known to have existed in Syria.105 Nevertheless, Stephen Mitchell argues convincingly that because they lived near large Jewish communities it is highly likely they lived in Antioch.106 However, without clear evidence this proposition must remain suggestive. There is far more evidence of Christians attending synagogues and keeping festivals with Jews and various Jewish practices. Indeed, a constellation of

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Jesus-believing folk sat on the borders of the Jewish community in Antioch defining themselves in relation to Jews and specifically Jewish Law.107 The best source for this phenomenon is the late fourth-century Church leader John Chrysostom, who grew up in Antioch during Julian’s reign, and in 386 became priest of the Meletian homoousian Church in that city. His works include a series of homilies Against the Judaizers, designed to discourage Christians from keeping Jewish practices. The phenomenon of Christians keeping Jewish Law exercised Chrysostom. In his Homily on Titus 3.2, he criticizes those who keep Jewish Law and specifically complains that they observe Jewish fasts, keep their Sabbath, and go to their consecrated places. Similar but more detailed complaints appear in his Against the Judaizers sermons of 386. There he refutes the idea of some Christians who believe that the synagogue is a holy place because the Law and the books of the Prophets are stored there.108 Apparently, one Christian man forced a Christian woman to swear an oath in the synagogue because he believed it to be more holy.109 A number of Chrysostom’s comments are complaints that some Christians celebrate the Jewish festivals in the autumn with Jews and observe Jewish fasts with Jews.110 He warns them not to rush to celebrate the festival of Rosh Hashanah with the Jews,111 not to take off their sandals and walk with Jews in the agora112, and to avoid “the tents, which at this moment are pitched” for Sukkoth.113 He orders them not to observe Pascha according to the Jewish dating of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.114 He offers practical advice suggesting that Christians force their friends and family members to break a “Jewish” fast by sharing a meal with them at home. Despite the twenty-year gap between Julian and Chrysostom’s homilies Against the Judaizers, there is every reason to think that Jewish Law and institutions were as popular during Julian’s reign as they were in the 380s. The Council of Laodicea was held in Asia Minor in 364 and prohibited Christian attendance at synagogues (canon 29), the celebration of Jewish festivals (canon 37), accepting unleavened bread (canon 37), and reading from the Old Testament on the Sabbath (canon 16). Similar “Judaizing” practices were prohibited in the Apostolic Constitutions, which is widely believed to have been written in Antioch in the 380s.115 Marcie Lenk highlights the “Jewish” content of the Constitutions and persuasively argues that the compiler accepts a number of “Jewish” laws, including the observance of the Sabbath, and some purity laws, and even adopts prayers from the synagogue.116 At the same time, he rejects the deuterōsis, a term that refers to rabbinic extrabiblical teaching and which is a calque of “Mishnah.”117 The polemic of the Constitutions and particularly the adoption of “Jewish” prayers indicates that these “Christians” were comfortable in the synagogue and that the Church was attempting to lure them away from there to a church where they could feel comfortable.118 Even as the compiler accepts certain Jewish laws, he works hard to separate “Christians” from “Jews.” Dominique Coté argues that the compiler of the Constitutions

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was responding to the Homilies of the Pseudo-Clementine literature that she claims was circulating in Antioch in the 380s.119 The redactor of the Homilies identifies as a Godfearer rather than as a Christian and accepts that observance of Jewish Law and belief in Jesus were two valid and sometimes separate paths to salvation. In response, the Constitutions labeled laws that it rejected “Jewish” even as it argued for keeping certain laws. The compiler even integrates biblical law on temples and sacrifices, something one finds only in rabbinic law in the post-Temple world.120 What we find here is that there were a number of believers in Jesus in Antioch who defined themselves based on how much “Jewish” Law they accepted. The Constitutions also highlights the interest in the interpretation of the Old Testament in Antioch.121 Marcie Lenk demonstrates the importance of the Hebrew Scripture of the Old Testament to derive its teachings even as it endeavors to have Christians also read from Paul and the Gospels.122 The special interest in Hebrew Scripture in Antioch and elsewhere presented a problem for Church leaders.123 In a city where Jews were also offering interpretations of the same Scripture, it is conceivable that many believers in Jesus might shop around for different interpretations and find those of Jewish synagogal leaders, and possibly even of rabbis, persuasive. This was a direct threat to the authority of the bishops and priests in the city.124 In this environment the Constitutions made the ability to distinguish Christian from Jewish Law the most important requirement for a priest.125 We cannot be sure that this led to actual disputations over Scripture of the kind recorded by rabbinic literature, although the argument against the deuterōsis allows that possibility.126 However, we can assume that some Christians in Antioch would have heard interpretations from both Jewish and Christian leaders of the synagogue and the church, respectively, as they attended both.127 One work that appears to have been redacted outside Antioch but seems to have had some importance to certain Christian Antiochenes is the third-century Didascalia Apostolorum. This work’s provenance is not securely located, but its origins appear to have been somewhere between Antioch and Edessa in Syria in the third century.128 Its redactor claims apostolic authorship and includes an account of the Council of Jerusalem as its setting. Through this framework he addresses his concern that Christians of Jewish descent continue to keep laws of purification, baptism, the Sabbath, and diet, and he seeks to weaken their observance of Jewish ritual law.129 “Jewish Law,” therefore, is presented negatively as a curse that led the Jews to the destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e., and the author argues strenuously against the deuterōsis, a term that many define as Jewish extrabiblical teaching.130 Charlotte Fonrobert argues that the Didascalia Apostolorum demonstrates an awareness of rabbinic law in the Mishnah and Tosefta, the first rabbinic books of Oral Law compiled in the third century, and shows how the Didascalia and Tannaitic literature employ similar exegetical techniques.131 Yet even as the redactor speaks negatively about Jewish Law, or deuterōsis, he wants his

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community to keep the laws of the Ten Commandments. The author’s rhetoric is formulated against a group of “Christians” who kept many of the laws of the Old Testament, including the festivals, the Sabbath, purity laws, and dietary laws, some of them even accepting rabbinic interpretation of the Law. Yet they believed in Jesus.132 Not only does this demonstrate the fluidity of Christian borders in eastern Syria,133 but the fact that the compiler of the Constitutions draws so heavily from the Didascalia suggests that there was a community in Antioch that would have identified with it likely in the mid-fourth century. Another body of work, the Pseudo-Clementine literature, is comprised of the Homilies and the Recognitions, along with pseudepigraphical letters of James and Clement. The work appears to have been redacted in the first half of the fourth century in Syria, likely in Edessa, although some scholars believe it circulated all the way to Antioch.134 The redactor identifies his flock as “Godfearers” rather than as Christians, notwithstanding his belief in Jesus, and accepts far more Jewish Law than the author of the Didascalia.135 For instance, the redactor of the Homilies acknowledges that the Law requires dietary restrictions and ritual purity involving menstrual separation and washing after intercourse and seminal emissions.136 He even rather remarkably renders observance of Jewish Law as an equally viable path to salvation along with belief in Jesus for Gentiles.137 Ideally Jews would believe in Jesus, but they are not denigrated for failing to do so. The Law itself is characterized broadly and includes the Law of Moses as well as that handed down to the seventy wise men “so that the government might be carried on by succession.”138 Albert Baumgarten argues that the authors of this text shared a similar view of the Jewish past with the rabbis.139 The main distinction between the redactor’s position toward Jewish Law and Jews is his distancing from the Temple cult and especially from sacrifice.140 Perhaps these “Godfearers” had their own synagogue, but there can be little doubt that they would have felt comfortable in a synagogue service in Antioch. Whether some members of this group lived in Antioch or not, one can say that they would have been at home in Antioch’s cultural milieu. Back on the streets of the Kerateion one might have come across Jewish vendors selling magic bowls and amulets containing incantations written in Hebrew and adjuring the Jewish God. There is no archaeological evidence for the presence of magic bowls or amulets in Antioch containing the name of the Jewish God or the Hebrew language, although we do have the evidence of a single amulet.141 Yet we do have literary evidence from Libanius and John Chrysostom attesting to such items’ popularity there. In Against the Judaizers, Chrysostom chastises his audience for bringing in old sorcerer women, in this context likely Jewish women skilled in witchcraft, to sell them amulets and incantations,142 and he labels amulets and incantations “idolatry.”143 While not denying the efficacy of Jewish healers, he claims that they channel demonic power and that Christians who accept these cures risk their own salvation.144 Libanius also uses amulets for his personal

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needs.145 We may imagine then that merchants on the side of the road did a brisk business selling amulets containing the powerful name of the Jewish God to Jews, Christians, and Hellenes.146 These would have been sold not only in the Kerateion but all over Antioch. Some may have been written in the Hebrew language.147 Others sold magic bowls with potent magical spells designed to cure, bless, or curse.148 “Jewish” products may have been considered especially potent, since Jews were thought to be experts at expelling demons and healing the sick.149 For extra potency they may have been stored in synagogues next to the ark, which radiated holiness because of the Scriptures it contained.150 Just outside the city’s southwestern gates lay a vast cemetery, the koimētērion. The Necropolis of Mnemosyne could be found southeast of the Daphne Gate.151 Turning right, a traveler began a nine-kilometer trek up to the nearby neighborhood of Daphne, a major attraction for Hellenes, Jews, and Christians. Piercing howls of wailing cried out with steady frequency from the nearby cemetery as the Christian faithful gathered there to pray at the shrines of their martyrs. This was the same cemetery where Jews and Hellenes buried their dead.152 Christians lay prostrate at the freshly interred Shrine of Saint Babylas in the cemetery. A local martyr of the Decian Persecution (250 c.e.) in the mid-third century, Babylas had refused to comply with the emperor’s demand to sacrifice to a Hellenic god and was killed in his church. In mid-362 Babylas’s remains were the subject of elevated tensions between homoian Christians who had been loyal to Constantius II, and the new emperor, Julian, who had ordered his uncle, the Comes of the East by the same name, to remove the remains and to rebuild the Temple of Apollo.153 Only a decade earlier Julian’s half-brother, Gallus, had reinterred Babylas’s remains in the prestigious neighborhood of Daphne in the temenos of Apollo’s temple, a major temple in the Antiochene landscape said to boast an oracle of the god. Julian’s order signaled strife. The Christian group associated with Babylas, formerly supported by Emperor Constantius II, had carried the remains of their hero back to its original resting place in the koimētērion outside Antioch, singing psalms.154 Libanius describes the path from Antioch to Daphne this way: “This road, leading from the city to the suburb I would confidently describe as the tassel of the aegis, with which Homer arms Athena. It is all golden, and ends at the golden summit of all things, Daphne.”155 Daphne was the wealthiest suburb of Antioch. Its streams, pools, groves, and shaded gardens made this a temperate and calm suburb, a desired neighborhood for the city’s wealthy class and a favored destination.156 Nearby was the Olympic stadium, named in honor of Zeus; Antioch was the only site outside Greece to celebrate an Olympiad. The most prominent edifice as one approached the neighborhood was the Temple of Apollo. The oracle’s voice had long gone silent, but it had become a pilgrimage site for Neoplatonist philosophers who had sought to restore the oracle ever since Iamblichus of Chalcis had spent time there in the early fourth century.157 In

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Elizabeth DePalma Digeser’s opinion, the temple also had political significance for Hellenes and Christians in the fourth century. She argues that Diocletian consulted its priests, a consultation that led to the persecution of Christians.158 Gallus’s desecration of Apollo’s temple must have symbolized homoian Christianity’s triumph over Hellenic oppression. It was said that Julian had high hopes of restoring the temple as a site of Neoplatonist pilgrimage and had sent a priest to prepare for Apollo’s festival. Jews also had a long history in Daphne. As far back as the second century b.c.e. the embattled Jewish High Priest Onias fled the Jerusalem Temple and took refuge in a temple in Daphne.159 Even the rabbis imagined that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar met the Sanhedrin there.160 There may have been a synagogue in Daphne. In the fourth century, Chrysostom mentions a place called Matrona’s Cave, which he calls a “synagogue” in Against the Judaizers 1.6.2 (PG 48.852), claiming that Christians lay down there to incubate. Indeed, Chrysostom’s characterization of Matrona’s Cave as a “synagogue” appears in only one of his three references, and it looks tendentious. The other two instances, Against the Judaizers 1.8.1 and the Epistle to Titus 3.3, do not associate the site with a synagogue. Therefore, the use of “synagogue” in Against the Judaizers 1.6.2 and its association with a “wicked place of perdition” is an example of what Christine Shepardson calls topophobia, a tactic designed to keep Judaizing Christians away from the site.161 Some scholars believe Matrona’s Cave was associated with the Maccabean Martyrs as either the site of the church dedicated to them or that of their reliquary.162 My reading of the evidence suggests that there was a reliquary based in a cave called Matrona’s as Chrysostom describes it. Plaguing this issue have been inconclusive and contradictory sources. It is not at all clear where the Church of the Maccabean Martyrs was located, how many Maccabean churches there were, or whether the relics of the martyrs were in Daphne or in the Kerateion. Nor is it clear whether there was a Jewish cult of the Maccabean Martyrs that preceded it or any sort of Jewish worship of these martyrs whatsoever. Augustine attests a Church of the Maccabean Martyrs in Antioch, and Malalas (Chron. 8) places it in the Kerateion, as does the Syrian calendar of 411/12. Unfortunately, there are no remains of the church, but there are enough attestations to suggest it existed. Whether this church contained the relics of the Maccabean Martyrs is another matter. As discussed earlier, the likelihood that the Church of the Maccabean Martyrs built in the Kerateion was built over a synagogue is questionable.163 At the same time, it is unlikely that Christians would have invented out of whole cloth a tradition that the Maccabean Martyrs were buried in the territory of Antioch.164 There likely was some Jewish tradition that held that they were buried there. In my view, Martha Vinson offers the most plausible answer to these problems.165 She concludes that the original reliquary was located in Daphne, in a house of prayer, which she says may or may not have been associated with a synagogue.166

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Vinson’s analysis of the existence of a Maccabean reliquary at the site in Daphne relies mostly on her reading of the codex Vaticanus arabicus 286, written in the sixth century, and on John Chrysostom’s Against the Judaizers 1.6.2, his most detailed description of the site. Vaticanus arabicus 286 claims that a Church of Saint Asmunit stood over a Jewish house of prayer that was located near the summit of the mountain on the west side. It mentions a chamber containing the tombs of the martyrs. Similarly, Chrysostom’s reference to Matrona’s synagogue likely means Hasmōnīth, which is similar to the feminine name mentioned by two sources of the Armenian life of Saint Marutha (late sixth century) and by the eleventh-century Book of Comfort by Nissim Ibn Shahin. Chrysostom also describes “going up” to the synagogue (anabainein), a verb that must mean the edifice was located on a hill or a mountain. He also mentions a pit (to barathron), which is probably a crypt that Chrysostom wants the Judaizers to avoid.167 More recently, Lothar Triebel has argued that the late date of the sources and the Tendenz of Vaticanus arabicus 286 diminish that source’s reliability, concluding that the site had never been associated with the Jews.168 Like Pauline Allen and Wendy Mayer, I see no reason to discount its reliability as less than any other source.169 However, Triebel’s argument that the Syrian calendar of 411/12 places the Maccabean relics in the Kerateion is more serious. I suspect that the calendar follows potential parallel homoousian claims that the bones were now buried in the basilica church under homoousian control in the Kerateion. It is possible some or all of the bones were reinterred there in the late fourth century as homoousians and possibly homoians or other groups claimed different sites for the burial of the Maccabean Martyrs. Vinson concludes that John Malalas confused the basilica church built in the Kerateion by Chrysostom’s time and associated it with homoousians, which is known to us from Augustine in the early fifth century. He sought to stop Christians from attending a Jewish site, which Vinson claims was frequented by homoians, while encouraging them to attend the church in the Kerateion. Chrysostom complains that Christians attend the site of Matrona’s Cave to incubate. A reliquary of martyrs would have been a logical site for Christians to incubate in. Attention to the Maccabean Martyrs as proto-Christian martyrs is found in Origen. These martyrs represented local heroes associated with Antioch and would have been the pride of Antiochene Jewry and alluring figures to Christians. Although Gregory Nazianzen downplays the cult as minor, it seems this cult was active during Julian’s time in Antioch or not long before his reign.170 It is more helpful to think of a number of Christian groups on the borders of the Jewish community who valued Jewish Law. These Christians would have greatly admired Jews who had died for their laws. Since at least some Syrian Christians in the third century kept dietary laws (Didascalia 26) and the Pseudo-Clementine literature suggests that this observance might have continued among some believers in Jesus into the fourth century, it is possible that many Christians admired and worshipped the

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Maccabean Martyrs. These martyrs represented local heroes associated with Antioch and would have been the pride of Antiochene Jewry. Chrysostom’s association of the site with Jews also may indicate that his audience recognized it as Jewish, especially given the offhand manner in which he associates the site as Jewish in Against the Judaizers 1.8.1, as if everyone identifies it is as such. While a full-blown Jewish cult of the Maccabean Martyrs is unlikely to have preceded the Christian cult, it is conceivable that Jews prayed at the site of the reliquary, just as Jews had prayed at the tombs of the Prophets in the Second Temple Period and pilgrimaged to Jewish holy sites in Egypt.171 Jews’ reputation as skilled dream interpreters in the ancient world would have made them excellent interpreters at the site of a reliquary that some of them considered holy.172 Whether Jews incubated there as well is beyond our evidence. E M P E R O R J U L IA N I N A N T IO C H

By a stroke of luck Julian (r. November 361–June 363) became emperor after his cousin Constantius II (337–361), suddenly died on route to check the former’s rebellious forces. He spent his first six months in Constantine’s capital, Constantinople, before leaving for Antioch. In Julian’s mind, Antioch offered a more favorable landscape for the advancement of his Hellenizing program.173 Antioch had a long and storied Hellenic history. It boasted one of the holiest sites in the Temple of Apollo in Daphne, which contained an important oracle, and had been visited by Iamblichus of Chalcis. He therefore expected to find a “Hellenic” city proud of its ancestral customs and anxious to restore its storied traditions. The imperial train reached Antioch in late July 362. Julian’s adventus was celebrated with the usual public prayers, acclamations, and well-wishers.174 Ammianus Marcellinus’s claim that wailing from the Festival of Adonis cast bad omens over the event is nothing more than a rhetorical device used to explain Julian’s misfortunes there and eventual failure in Persia ex eventu.175 There is no reason to believe that Julian’s entry into Antioch was anything but smooth. Once there, Julian set to work strengthening the city and its institutions. This effort corresponded with his attempt to revive the Hellenic culture of Eastern cities based on Hellenic paideia.176 He canceled the city’s tax arrears, cut taxes by one-fifth,177 and added many spots to the city council to support the city’s funding.178 These efforts failed when the wealthy shirked their duties and found poor candidates to serve on the council. Next Julian completely mishandled the famine in Antioch. Soon after he arrived he appeared in the theater, where people complained about the steep prices of food.179 At first, he had several tons of grain shipped to the city from Chalcis and Hierapolis, which he sold at deflated prices. Then he brought food in from his own properties in Egypt. But he failed to ration the food and speculators purchased all

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the grain and sold it at higher prices. Similarly, when he made three thousand lots of Antioch’s land available for cultivation, the wealthy bought them up.180 Culturally, Julian appeared to be out of step with the people of Antioch. Antioch was a city that reveled in its common festivals and enjoyed its games. The people basked in the emperor’s support for their culture. But Julian failed to attend the theater181 and limited his time at the horse races.182 He ignored the mimes and dancers183 and attended too many temples.184 In their eyes his asceticism drove him to odd behavior. He dressed shabbily,185 slept on a hard bed,186 kept a strict diet,187 and sported a philosopher’s beard.188 He complained of entertainment most Antiochenes enjoyed and became irritated with the lack of respect many had for the temples. When Libanius performed a panegyric on the Kalends of 363, Julian “jumped from his throne and threw out his arms, opening his cloak wide.”189 Libanius claims the emperor was letting his soul soar, which likely indicates that not everyone was happy with such displays by the emperor. Julian hoped to revive the cults of the temples so that people would correctly worship the gods and gain their beneficence. The revival of Hellenic festivals with their sacrifices and banquets, and the constant presence of the gods, was antiquarian to many Antiochenes and threatened to undermine the common cosmopolitan cultural traditions of the city, which allowed everyone to participate in citywide festivals. Julian often attended temples in Antioch and offered animal sacrifice with members of his army in tow. He sacrificed twice a day and turned his imperial gardens and palace into a Hellenic temple.190 Libanius writes that the emperor’s fingers were stained red by blood because of the great number of animals he sacrificed.191 It must have been particularly offensive that men were gorging on the meat of sacrifices and getting drunk at a time when a famine had hold of the city.192 Ammianus unusually castigates Julian for these actions. Julian worshipped at the temples of Zeus Philios, Zeus Kasios, Tyche, Ares, Demeter, Pan, Kalliope, Hermes, Isis, and Hekate.193 Libanius even reports that Julian had a discussion with and received advice from Zeus on Mount Kasios, which Dayna S. Kalleres correctly calls a ritualization process.194 Julian’s frequent rigor of sacrifice was out of step with the practices of the populace, who all seemed to have shared either a disdain for or disinterest in animal sacrifice. Ammianus stresses how unusual it was that anyone claiming any skill in divination could inspect the entrails of the sacrifice in order to foretell future events, a practice banned by Constantine and Constantius II.195 He sought oracles and signs for guidance and kept books on the proper interpretation of prophetic revelation, including the Tarquitian Books On Signs from Heaven and Etruscan books On War.196 Antiochenes could not understand the emperor’s complaint about their lack of decorum in temples. Meanwhile Julian surrounded himself with a coterie of loyalists who included his doctor and friend Oribasius, his trusted friend the Neoplatonist philosopher

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Priscus, and Maximus of Ephesus, the theurge and Neoplatonist philosopher responsible for initiating Julian into the Mysteries of Mithraism.197 Maximus went to work trying to animate the statue of Apollo in place of the ancient oracle in the Temple of Apollo in Daphne. Libanius joined Julian’s circle of friends in Antioch. The emperor also stayed abreast of Christian controversies, corresponding with Photinus, who stirred controversy when he rejected Jesus’s godly nature while he was a man, and with many other Christian leaders.198 At least passive resistance to Julian’s program can be detected from the people’s failure to attend the Temple of Apollo in Daphne on that god’s festival. Not only had the emperor refurbished the temple, but he had sent a priest in advance of his arrival in Antioch to prepare the ritual. No one showed up. All the priest had to offer was a single goose for sacrifice, hardly fitting for the greatness of the god and the festival.199 The incident appears to have shaken Julian and enlivened him to the reality of Hellenic life in Antioch. Matters were made much worse on October 22, 362, when the Temple of Apollo burned to the ground. Julian suspected Christian sabotage and closed the Golden Church in Antioch.200 A commission, convened to find out the cause of the disaster, blamed not Christians but rather a fellow traditional worshipper, a philosopher and devotee of the gods whose carelessness caused the conflagration.201 The emperor would have none of it, continuing to blame Christians for the catastrophe. Julian’s public façade claiming to brook no intolerance against Christians was undermined by consistent reports of his tacit support for Hellenic aggression on Christians, their tombs, and their possessions. He increasingly discriminated against Christians and failed to discourage Hellenic acts of terror. Ammianus’s claims of Julian’s justice and temperate nature are undermined by numerous such reports. In the Syrian city of Edessa, Julian responded to a dispute among Christians by confiscating all the Christians’ property there.202 A few months earlier, in Alexandria, he failed to bring justice to a mob who lynched the homoian bishop George of Cappadocia and two Christians who were killed horribly.203 He encouraged Hellenes to set fire to Christian tombs.204 To the people of Antioch, where Christians and Hellenes intermarried and shared in a common culture, such acts threatened to tear their world apart. No wonder they shouted that Julian turned their world upside down.205 As the calendar turned from 362 to 363, Julian planned his attack on Persia by day and wrote several works reinforcing his Hellenizing program by night. Among these works, Against the Galileans defined the correct worship of the gods even as it undermined Christians. Here Julian set out to pull apart Hellenic, Christian, and Jewish identities and thereby disturb the harmonious life of Antiochenes who saw no contradiction in holding multiple identities at the same time. Julian employed ethnic argumentation, using Jews qua Judeans both to undermine Christians and to define Hellenes. It is to the dynamics of this work that we now turn.

3

Hebrews, Jews, and Judeans Julian’s Ethnographic Arguments and His Hellenizing Campaign

Antioch is the intellectual and cultural background for all of Julian’s works written in late 362 through early 363 c.e. Of these works, Against the Galileans serves as ground zero for Julian’s thinking about and presentation of Jews. It functions as a linchpin that connects and organizes all Julian’s works written about or to Jews and provides his blueprint for how Jews will be used in these works. At the same time Susanna Elm describes Galileans as one book in a triptych of works, along with the Hymn to King Helios and the Hymn to the Mother of the Gods, designed to define the emperor’s Hellenizing program in order to save the Roman oikoumenē.1 It follows, then, that Galileans is part of a network of texts that indirectly links works such as the Letter to the Community of the Jews with the Hymn to King Helios. One ought, then, to look to Galileans to understand Julian’s articulation of Hellenic identity as much as one would look to it to find his definition of Christian identity. Julian’s ethnographic characterization of Jews as Judeans in Galileans and in the Letter to Theodorus is at the center of both these endeavors and is the focus of this chapter. The chapter begins with an examination of the critical issues related to the text of Galileans, and its key source, Cyril of Alexandria’s Against Julian, will be explored. To flush out Julian’s ethnographic arguments I next will examine how the emperor’s sources including Celsus, Origen, Porphyry, and Eusebius of Caesarea used Jews in their polemical and apologetic arguments. As Julian engages with his Hellenizing efforts of early 363, he enters a field of polemical and apologetic discourse that uses ethnographic knowledge to control subject peoples in an imperial context. Julian employs ethnic argumentation defined by Aaron Johnson as “the concern to strategically formulate ethnic identities as the basis for an apologetic argument,”2 45

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and strategically deploys Jews qua ethnic Judeans, positioning this ethnos between Hellenes and Christians to define each. In so doing, Julian thinks and writes using ethnography. Ethnological arguments are not only adopted as a response to Eusebius’s own use of ethnic argumentation to legitimize Christians but, surprisingly, are also used to shape Hellenic identity.3 Our examination of Julian’s sources in writing Galileans will lend insight into Julian’s choice to present Jews as ethnic Judeans. The chapter will end with an examination of Julian’s ethnological arguments in his Letter to Theodorus, written within a month of Galileans, and will show how his ethnographic thinking infused even his priestly Hellenic program. E S TA B L I SH I N G T H E T E X T O F G A L I L E A N S

The first step to understanding Julian’s use of ethnic argumentation to define Hellenes is to establish the texts of Against the Galileans. This is no easy task. We possess only one out of three books. The number is the subject of some debate. Jerome, in two works, alludes to seven books.4 Karl Neumann, however, assumes that Jerome was referring not to the script by Julian but rather to that of a witness like Theodore of Mopsuestia or Philip of Side. The second manuscript of Monacensis 65(B), and the translator from 1500, Oecolampadius, in Cyril’s introductory dedication to Theodosius II, refer to a composition in three books.5 This is not a problem that can easily be resolved. However, we do know that Julian himself states that there was more than one book. Unfortunately, the text of Galileans does not reach us directly from Julian. We possess fragments, most of which are provided by the fifth-century bishop Cyril of Alexandria, who in the course of refuting the emperor in Against Julian quotes or paraphrases the first book of Galileans. Most of the first book is intact. On the other hand, only limited fragments remain of the second book, which come from Theodore of Mopsuestia’s response to Julian.6 Meanwhile, Book 3 of Galileans is utterly lost. Besides what little we have of Theodore’s work, most of what is known about these two latter books come from inferences from Book 1.7 These reveal that Book 2 dealt with the person of Jesus and the accounts of the Evangelists about his miracles as well as the assertion of his divine nature.8 Book 3 examines the Apostles and the letters of Paul. My work follows the edition of Emanuela Masaracchia, whose Italian edition is considered the most reliable.9 Not only is Galileans fragmentary and difficult to date,10 but its key source, Cyril’s Against Julian, is itself also a fragmentary work, so that we are dealing with fragments upon fragments, making it difficult, to say the least, to determine the correct restoration of that work and the nature of Julian’s anti-Christian, proHellene polemic. The loss of these works can be attributed to Theodosius II and to Justinian, both of whom promulgated laws consigning Julian’s books to the fire— in 448 and sometime between 529 and 534, respectively.11

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Cyril of Alexandria’s Against Julian The first step in establishing the text of Galileans requires an examination of Cyril’s Against Julian. Altogether we have the first ten books of this work, which together contain all of Julian’s first book. They are collected in pentads, and each book within the pentad is numbered 1 through 5. Only pentads 1–3 (to Book 14) are reliably documented, after which only fragments with successive numbers exist up to Book 19. Wolfram Kinzig postulates that there were four pentads in all, consisting of a total of twenty books, although other scholars have suggested that there may have been as many as thirty.12 The organization of Book 1 of Against Julian is quite different from the following books. It offers a thematic organization of Julian’s work. In the remaining books, Cyril rebuts Julian verse by verse,13 often focusing on single words, sentence elements, or whole sentences of Julian’s.14 Against Julian also has a long and complicated edition history.15 A recent edition by Christopher Riedweg and Wolfram Kinzig highlights the difficulty of establishing the most reliable manuscripts at different places in this edition.16 Riedweg suggests that it is often difficult to determine the textual form of Cyril’s quotations and warns against the danger of anachronistically normalizing any deviation of Cyril’s from the established direct transmission of Julian’s standard text and adjusting Cyril’s quotations to fit it. In each instance, he is forced to consider whether the transmission of Against Julian is faulty or if Cyril himself has quoted a deviating text.17 This makes it difficult to determine an accurate text for Against Julian, on which Galileans relies. Against the Galileans Once the text of Cyril’s Against Julian is established, we are then faced with another momentous task—attempting to reconstruct Julian’s Galileans. Trying to establish the flow of Julian’s arguments or to recover all his arguments is a daunting task. Cyril has made this much more difficult by his admittedly severe shortening and transmission of Julian’s arguments (Against Julian 3.37). He lays the blame for this squarely on Julian. As far as he is concerned, the emperor’s repetitiveness and disorganized presentation forces him to reorganize Julian’s work.18 As a consequence of Cyril’s reorganization, it is impossible to be certain if we have the correct progression of Julian’s arguments. In addition, Cyril took offense to Julian’s slandering of Jesus and therefore excised these arguments altogether.19 Cyril’s editing leaves us with a number of deficiencies in the text of Galileans. For instance, when Julian contrasts Genesis with Plato’s Timaeus, he seems to have left commentary alongside his quotations, which Cyril failed to transmit. Examples of this problem include: in fragment 6 (Against Julian 2.18–19), where Julian quotes Genesis 1:1–6a, 8a, 9a, 11a, 14a, 17–18a, and then follows up with a list of problems in Moses’s account but leaves out commentary on the origin of the abyss,

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the darkness, the water, or angels; in fragment 8 (Against Julian 2.31), Julian’s quotations of Plato are not followed by any comments, but Riedweg reasonably argues we should assume that Julian would have praised Plato’s higher thinking. In fragment 9 (Against Julian 2.32–44), Genesis 1:26–28 is stylized as a Mosaic counterpart to Plato’s discussion of the gods in the Timaeus 41a7–d3. Based on Cyril’s response, it seems that Julian commented on the inferior nature of Moses’s account. Instead Cyril only paraphrases and omits pieces of Julian’s writings.20 Given Cyril’s heavy editing and excisions from Julian’s text, one would assume that both the content and the order of the existing Galileans would be suspect. Fortunately, Julian himself describes its organization (fr. 3, 1–8 [42E–43A]) at the very outset of the work and then by and large follows it.21 Christoph Riedweg lays out Julian’s agenda as follows:22 (1) A very short exposition of how humans arrive at an image of God (fr. 4–11 = 42E = 69D); (2) a juxtaposition of the Hellenic (Plato’s Timaeus) and Hebrew assertions about the divine (fr. 13–48 = 74B–206B; I label these two enumerated sections as Part One); (3) Julian considers why the Christians seceded from the traditions of the Hellenes (fr. 49–57 = 209D–235D; I label these sections Part Two); and (4) why, having chosen the Judean tradition, the Christians do not observe their ancestral laws (fr. 58–88 = 238A–359A; I label these sections Part Three). By combining the first two of Julian’s arguments, which Riedweg outlines above, I follow most other scholars, who reduce these four arguments to three.23 Where exactly each part begins and ends is not easy to determine, particularly in the final section, where Julian attacks Christians for not following Judean ancestral laws.24 Masaracchia places the beginning of this third and final part at fragment 47.2 (201E), where Julian, speaking of Asclepius, says first that the Judeans cannot claim to have had any such gift from God, and he then adds that if the Christians had continued to follow the Judean cult, they would certainly be in an acceptable condition, because they would have worshipped only one god and not a dead man (Jesus) or more hapless men. Both Riedweg and I place the beginning of the final part at fragment 58 (238A), where Julian asks why Christians do not follow Judean ancestral laws. This is the most direct reference to the final theme as outlined in fragment 3. By dividing Galileans into three parts I am not suggesting that this work is not a unitary whole or that there is no flow between its various parts. Rather, I simply follow the different goals of each part of the work as set out by Julian. As we will see, despite the unity of Galileans, Julian’s attitude toward Judeans changes markedly in this final part. While the name of the work, Against the Galileans, suggests it is an anti-Christian polemic, there are several indications that Julian was concerned with defining Hellenic cultic practice and therefore also meant this work for an audience of Hellenes.25 Julian aimed Galileans at an audience of Hellenes and Christians. They listened as his work was read outside the

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bouleutērion, as it was studied among Hellenic philosophers, and as it was lambasted by Church leaders inside churches. We can begin to understand how Julian’s arguments may have spread throughout Antioch and how his rhetoric functioned in multiple audiences.26 Audiences listened as Julian referred to Hellenes as “we” and to Christians as “you.”27 Hypsistarians and Hellenic believers in a single supreme god whom they identified as Iao noticed that Julian addressed them in the midst of addressing Christians in Galileans fragment 86 (= 354A–B), where he remarks that “even I am not among those who celebrate the festivals with the Judeans,” and they nodded approvingly as he praised the Judean God as “a mighty God.” Julian’s ethnographic rhetoric functioned to identify, hierarchize, and order relations between people. In cosmopolitan Antioch, where the steady penetration of Christianity progressed and where peoples of different faiths mixed well, such polarizing rhetoric was bound to cause discomfort.28 As we will now see, the genesis of Julian’s ethnological arguments comes from a number of sources he read about Hebrews and Jews. H E B R EWS , J EWS A N D J U D E A N S , C H R I S T IA N S , A N D H E L L E N E S A M O N G J U L IA N ’ S I N T E R L O C U T O R S

Before writing Galileans Julian read a series of works that he acquired from the library of George of Cappadocia, the recently murdered bishop of Alexandria and his former teacher at Macellum. Among these works were Origen’s Against Celsus, Porphyry’s On Abstinence, Philosophy from Oracles, possibly Against the Christians,29 Eusebius’s Preparation of the Gospels, Book 1 of the Demonstration of the Gospels, and likely his Commentary on Isaiah as well.30 Many of these, particularly Celsus’s True Doctrine, which Julian accessed through Origen, and Eusebius’s Preparation and Demonstration, employed ethnic argumentation in their attacks on Christians and Hellenes.31 These authors were unable to extricate themselves from the ethnological discourse common in the Roman world. What these works offered him was a way of approaching anti-Christian polemic that employed ethnic argumentation as a mode of strengthening and justifying one identity while delegitimizing another in an imperial context. The place of Hebrews and their descendants, the Jews, often thought of as an ethnos and therefore as ethnic Judeans, occupied an important place in these works and Julian gained a mode of thinking about Jews which was inherently relational and which could be positioned between Christians and Hellenes in a variety of ways to achieve his goals. Both Origen and Eusebius placed Jews in relation to Christians and Hellenes. They supported the legitimacy of Hebrews or Jews (or both) to the extent that their own legitimacy depended on their ethnic legitimation. At the same time, they would attack Jews as defunct, unable to practice their ancestral laws in the absence of their Temple, while simultaneously claiming that Christians displaced Jews as the

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beneficiaries of God’s covenant with Abraham. Meanwhile, Hellenic polemicists exhibited a more coherent approach to Jews. Celsus attacked Jews as Judeans. They were the forerunners of Christians while keeping Judeans a legitimate if inferior ethnos. As a Neoplatonist, Porphyry raised the Judean ethnos from the status that Celsus had assigned it, because Hebrews (sometimes Judeans) were sources of ancient Hellenic wisdom. Julian leavened these approaches with his experience of the place of Jews among Christians and Hellenes in Antioch. Approaching Julian’s use of the Judean ethnos and its relationship with the Hebrew ethnos and the Christian qua Galilean ethnos can be mediated only by an understanding of his sources and their uses of Jews to burnish or delegitimize Hellenic or Christian identity. Celsus, Origen, and the Judeans One of Julian’s chief interlocutors is the second-century Hellenic Middle Neoplatonist, Celsus, who wrote the True Doctrine around 170 c.e. His work is preserved by the third-century Christian exegete Origen, who wrote Against Celsus.32 Celsus’s chief concern in True Doctrine is the preservation of the empire’s health, which depended on each nation’s observance of its ancestral laws. In his view, the failure of Christians to keep their ancestral customs was an act of sedition that could lead to the abandonment of traditional practice and therefore to the demise of the empire.33 In his endeavor to counter this tendency, Celsus uses ethnic argumentation and specifically the relationship between Judeans and Christians to attack the latter.34 Celsus’s Jews are Judeans. They have a land, a god, a lawgiver (6.29) and ancestral laws. Celsus designates them an ethnos immediately at the beginning of his On the True Doctrine (1.2) and again in 5.25 and claims they have teachings or doctrines (didaskein in 1.26). Unlike Origen, Porphyry, and Eusebius, Celsus never uses the word “Hebrews” to describe Judeans, referring to them only as Ioudaioi even when he speaks of antiquity. For him defining Jews as Judeans is normal, rather than forced. However, it is strategic. It allows him to attack his true target, Christian universalism by limiting Christians to a small part of Syria and disqualifying them for their failure to follow their ancestral laws. To delegitimize Christians, Celsus castigates Judean ethnic markers as weak. He argues that Ioudaioi are one of the most unimpressive people among the nations in the empire; he even categorizes them as Egyptian renegades. Drawing on Plato, Celsus also employs satrap theology to explain the diversity of nations in the empire.35 In this system, the Creator assigns to each people a god who bestows laws on its respective people, and it is the duty of each people to keep them. The god of the Ioudaioi, as one among a sea of gods all subject to a higher god, is limited to the boundaries of Judea.36 But He is weak and has bestowed few accomplishments on his people, a point reinforced by the destruction of their land. Nevertheless. Celsus must deal with inherited philosophical wisdom claiming that the Judean God is the Supreme God, and he attempts to limit Him.37

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Recent scholarship demonstrates that Julian knew of Celsus’s True Doctrine only from reading Origen’s Against Celsus.38 In his response to Celsus, Origen restores Jewish honor in order to restore the place of Christians in the empire. He achieves this by restoring the link between the ancient Hebrews and their Jewish descendants although he later attacks Jews for denying Jesus as the messiah.39 Marie-Odile Boulnois demonstrates that Julian’s theory of ethnic diversity—in which the differences among nations are explained by the nature of their gods as assigned to them by the Creator—answers Origen’s attempt to relegate city laws to a secondary status and elevate natural law followed by Christians as divine and of a higher order. Although Julian likely responds to Origen, his ethnic argument represents far more than a response to the third-century Church leader.40 Satrapal theology is only a minor argument in the True Doctrine, whereas Julian’s ethnarchic theology occupies the entirety of Book 4 of Cyril’s Against Julian and therefore has a central place in Julian’s argument. We will see that Julian’s ethnological argument is meant to have consequences throughout Galileans in ways that will later respond to Eusebius and will shape his entire anti-Christian and Hellenizing agenda. Julian’s response to Origen then is instrumental to his larger goals that not only seek to contain Christian universalism but also to tie Hebrews to Judeans. Porphyry of Tyre The late third- and early fourth-century Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry of Tyre looms large in Julian’s Galileans. Soon after Julian’s death, Libanius reports that the emperor sought to outdo “the old man of Tyre” in his attack against the Christians.41 As a result, scholars have assumed that Julian relied on Porphyry’s Against the Christians.42 It is clear that Julian either read or had indirect knowledge of Porphyry’s Philosophy from Oracles and On Abstinence. However, recent scholarship on Against the Christians calls into questions both its content and even its existence. In turn, this impacts how we ought to read Galileans. We may no longer merely assume that a work entitled Against the Christians existed in fifteen books.43 The only proof of a work by that name comes from the Suda, a late work. It is perhaps just as likely that someone collected his anti-Christian arguments. Now the question becomes, Did Julian read Against the Christians? And, if the answer is yes, What did that Porphyrian work contain? We cannot know for certain if a work with this title existed, or if instead there were simply anti-Christian arguments scattered over various works. It seems likely that Julian read something of Porphyry’s work (or works) against Christians that could have come from Philosophy from Oracles, or Against the Christians, or Eusebius’s now-lost work Against Porphyry, or all these.44 Even if Against the Christians existed, the content of the work, has been a matter of some debate. Adolf Harnack’s once authoritative edition of it has been subjected to considerable scrutiny.45 Whereas we once thought we possessed ninety-seven fragments of Against the Christians and possibly more if we counted fragments

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proposed after Harnack, the status of many of these has been impugned. Indeed, several new editions of Against the Christians have been published in less than a decade. At the heart of the matter is the question of what may reliably be considered a “fragment,” a word that has been redefined.46 A minimalist approach offered by Aaron Johnson, Matthias Becker, G. Muscalino, and, to a lesser extent, Sébastien Morlet would reduce the number of fragments considerably, removing all Macarius Magnes’s testimonies of an unnamed Hellenic philosopher who Harnack assumed to be Porphyry unless it could be independently verified by more certain fragments of Porphyry, as well as many of Harnack’s fragments that are not quotations and are not explicitly attributed to Porphyry.47 Indeed, Becker labels all Macarius Magnes’s fragments as D for dubia or unreliable. This is no small matter if we are to ascertain Julian’s sources for Galileans. As Susanna Elm points out, Julian’s fragment 3 demonstrates that Julian was familiar with Porphyry’s anti-Christian polemic in general and with apologetic responses.48 It has long been assumed that Julian took the argument that Christianity is a double apostasy—from Jews and Hellenes (Galileans fr. 3 = 42E-43A)—from Porphyry’s statement in Harnack’s fragment 1, taken from Eusebius’s Preparation 1.2.3–5.49 In the past this fragment was thought to be an introduction to Porphyry’s Against the Christians and thus a key interpretive feature of that work. However, Eusebius attributes the double-apostasy argument to nonspecific anti-Christian authors, convincing Johnson and other minimalists that the fragment is unreliable.50 Sébastien Morlet demonstrates that its content answers Celsus more than Porphyry, whereas Johnson argues that the language of the fragment is found more often in the work of Eusebius and almost never in Porphyry.51 Nor could Johnson find clear connections between ideas put forward by Eusebius here and those expressed by Porphyry’s more secure fragments. Porphyry’s connection to the fragment is therefore dubious in Johnson’s and Becker’s eyes and cannot be relied upon as a source for Julian. Although their approach is prudent the matter of fragment 1’s authenticity is hardly settled. Consider that Harnack’s fragment 1 can be validated if its arguments are supported by confirmed fragments of Porphyry’s Against the Christians. There is some support for the idea that Christians are double apostates in Harnack’s fragment 39, which quotes Porphyry and is therefore deemed a fragment by Becker and others. Without saying so explicitly, Origen claims that all well-educated Christians are apostates from their Jewish and Hellenic origins.52 In addition, Ariane Magny rightly criticizes Morlet for failing to take into account Sabrina Inowlocki’s argument that Eusebius rewrote his sources and disagrees with Johnson, who argues that the use of apostasy in fragment 1 means withdrawing from the public sphere rather than from ancestral laws. I am reluctant, however, to restore Harnack’s fragment 1 to the level of a fragment, because the ideas are just different enough. Yet it is hard to accept that the doubleapostasy argument is absent from Against the Christians.

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Fortunately, it may not matter. Even if this conclusion is in doubt, it is also possible that Julian never read Porphyry’s Against the Christians directly. We know he read Eusebius’s Preparation and Demonstration Book 1. It is entirely possible that Porphyry’s Against the Christians was filtered for Julian through these works.53 Julian may also have been under the impression (as so many scholars were until recently) that Preparation and Demonstration responded primarily to Against the Christians. Further, he may have possessed Eusebius’s Against Porphyry, in which Porphyry would have been quoted at length. We can tie ourselves in knots trying to understand whether Julian primarily picked up on Celsus or on Porphyry or on some measure of both. I tend to think it is the latter, even though he clearly read Celsus via Origen and responded to him. Libanius’s testimony suggests Julian responded to Porphyry as well. Regardless of the questionable connection of fragment 1 to Porphyry, Julian responds to the cultural issues that the fragment raised via Eusebius, and it hardly matters whether he believed it to be Porphyry’s or Celsus’s or someone else’s. What concerns us now is how Porphyry used Jews in his works especially in works we can be more certain Julian read Jews in Porphyry’s Works Porphyry does not clearly reference Jews as Judeans. Jews appear in his works in two different contexts. In his earlier works, Philosophy from Oracles and On Abstinence, Porphyry looks to the philosophies and histories of Jews, focusing especially on Hebrews and other foreign ethnē in what Jeremy Schott calls a “crosscultural” project to reconstruct Hellenism.54 In this sense Hebrews and Jews can be compared to other barbarian ethnē, although again Porphyry does not explicitly characterize them as such. Both Hebrews and Jews are regarded positively in these works.55 His was an imperial project that combined cult and philosophy in a manner that joined the traditional cults of the empire’s ethnē with philosophical cultic practice transcending local variation in belief and practice in service of Romanitas and imperial Rome.56 Porphyry uses both Hebrews and Jews as examples of peoples who support his philosophical argument.57 Here the Hebrews are one of six barbarian ethnē whose ancestral laws preserve ancient Hellenic wisdom lost after Plato’s death, and Porphyry turns especially to the texts of the Hebrews and their descendants, the Jews, as well as to the Chaldeans to recover authoritative truth about Hellenic philosophy and theology.58 In Philosophy from Oracles Porphyry focuses on the Jewish God without using any language of ethnos, genos, or laos. This begins to change in On Abstinence, where Jews begin to look more like Judeans. Here Porphyry focuses on Hebrew dietary laws (2.61) and pauses on the Essenes, whom he labels “Judeans by race” (genos; see De Abst. 4.11). The distinction between Hebrews and Judeans does not seem to be temporal.59 Aside from brief references to Hebrews in his other works, the ethnonym “Hebrews” is used only in the Philosophy from Oracles.60 In summary, we can say that Porphyry’s Jews

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look ethnic in the sense that they refer to a people but do not bear ethnic language in Philosophy from Oracles, although even that is mediated by On Abstinence, where Jews become ethnic Judeans. In On Abstinence Jewish Law and practices, constituent elements of an ethnos, become ethnic exempla, tools used to further Porphyry’s universalist Hellenic project, and Porphyry mines these Jewish qua Judean sources to find practices that would lead to universal salvation and strengthen the Roman empire.61 Porphyry’s positive opinion of Hebrews and Judeans does not mean that they were superior to Hellenes.62 On the contrary, Judeans are a lesser people that had valuable sources for Hellenes. Johnson demonstrates that a key marker of the ethnos was its “legislative ordering of communal lives.”63 Porphyry admires the Judeans’ steadfastness to their ancestral laws.64 Sometimes ethnic sources could be sources for Hellenic philosophy. Schott demonstrates that Porphyry adopts a specific set of reading practices that extracts authentic Judean wisdom from texts. Meanwhile, Johnson explains that as a philosopher, Porphyry exegetically unpacked meanings of ethnic texts that he then used to support his Hellenic philosophy. Where it suits these needs, Porphyry prefers to read the Bible contextually, while adopting only a figurative reading in cases where its meaning was difficult to grasp and where it offers “ecumenical wisdom that can be separated from its “foreign” context.”65 Porphyry’s attitude toward Judeans in Against the Christians is muddied by the state of the evidence. Traditionally, based on Harnack’s fragments of Against the Christians, it has been assumed that Porphyry attacks Jews in order to weaken the foundation of Christianity. In this vein, like Celsus and later Julian, Porphyry is thought to have limited Jews to a small corner of Syria, thereby demonstrating their insignificance. At the same time, they were also extolled for following their God and His ancestral laws, as compared to Christians, who rejected them. However, Aaron Johnson now demonstrates that a minimalist approach to Porphyry’s fragments removes most of the negative statements about Jews, especially his criticisms of the Old Testament.66 The result leads to a cohesive set of positive statements about Jews, including the positive statements about Genesis in his On Abstinence.67 Certainly Jews receive far better treatment in Porphyry’s works than in Celsus’s True Doctrine. Porphyry lauds Jews for their adherence to their laws and even suggests that Hellenes may share some of these doctrines. Meanwhile, he attacks Christian reading practices in order to undermine Christian philosophy and claims to universality.68 He also reads Jewish texts as full of philosophical wisdom.69 This is notably similar to Julian. Much as Julian will do, Porphyry uses the Bible as a tool with which to legitimize Hellenic ancestral traditions and to root out Christian innovation. At the same time, he employs exegetical technique to limit the scope of the Bible to the first five books of Moses, and using philology and contextual readings of Scripture he demonstrates

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that the Prophets are late and therefore lack authority,70 thereby weakening Christian claims of Jesus’s legitimacy as Messiah. Finally, Porphyry closes off allegorical interpretation to Christians,71 forcing them to confront their failure to follow Jewish Law. Hebrews and Judeans in the Works of Eusebius of Caesarea Porphyry’s anti-Christian arguments troubled generations of Christians and generated several responses. The fourth-century Christian bishop Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea, wrote one of them. In Eusebius’s corpus, Jews are defunct ethnic Judeans. They had a land, a temple, a god, and ancestral laws. However, in the absence of Jerusalem and the Temple their laws cannot be executed. Jean Bouffartigue correctly points out that Julian responds to Eusebius of Caesarea’s alignment of Hebrews with Christians in the Preparation and the delegitimation of Judeans as a defunct ethnos in Book 1 of the Demonstration.72 Not only is Eusebius the only Church leader Julian mentions in Galileans (fr. 53 = 222A), but the emperor expressly states that a goal of the third part of that work is to test the Christian argument that Christians are the “true Israel” (fr. 62 = 253A).73 A central issue for both Eusebius and Julian is the efficacy of Judean laws. Without efficacious Law, Judeans are historicized, becoming relics of an ancient ethnos.74 Eusebius can then manipulate them as tools to define and justify Christian imperial identity. In a world that defined itself ethnically, Christians—who made universalist claims and rejected Judean ancestral laws yet claimed to be the true Israel—struggled to define and legitimize themselves in the eyes of other peoples. To bridge this divide and offer Christians a way forward in the Roman world’s ethnological universe, Eusebius uses ethnic argumentation.75 He solidifies the ethnic bona fides of Christians by explicitly identifying them as the successors of the ancient Hebrews.76 To ethnically legitimize Christians, Eusebius creates rhetorical difference between Hebrews and Judeans in ways that Porphyry and other Church leaders had not previously considered. He adopts a triangulating framework of HelleneJudean-Christian in order to authenticate Christian claims of ethnic legitimacy.77 In order to construct Christian ethnic bona fides, Eusebius fixes Christians as the descendants of the Hebrews, a people commonly respected by Hellenic philosophers like Numenius of Apamea and Porphyry, and most often believed to be the ancestors of the Judeans. In effect, he extols the primacy of Hebrew wisdom and then appropriates that identity in order to legitimate and ground Christian ethnic claims in antiquity.78 In this argument Christians are a third race (triton genos), which is the direct successor of the ancient Hebrews. As Edward Iricinschi writes: “the discourse on triton genos enabled Eusebius to employ the rhetoric of appropriation and displacement of the Jewish past” in order to justify its own place in the Roman oikoumenē.79 Effectively, Eusebius peels Hebrews away from the

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Judeans in Preparation so that Christians could fill the shoes of the Hebrews while Judeans were shorn of their ethnic roots and rendered defunct, unable to practice their ancestral laws in the absence of their Temple. Eusebius’s characterization of Christians as the Hebrews ran against common knowledge that Jews were the ancient Hebrews.80 Such a claim required justification. He therefore gave a history of this transformation. Hebrews, he argues, were the Patriarchs whose family descended to Egypt in a time of famine. They were ur-monotheists, in contrast to polytheistic Hellenes.81 When they descended to Egypt and became slaves, they lost their way of life and became Judeans. Nevertheless, Hebrew wisdom was retained among certain individuals such as Moses, the Maccabees, the Essenes, and Philo, who were coterminously “Hebrews” by virtue of their embodiment and understanding of the true philosophy.82 The remainder, a majority of Judeans, were literal followers of Judean Law. When Jesus came and revealed this wisdom, Christians became the spiritual successors to the Hebrews. Meanwhile, Eusebius went on to argue in Demonstration Book 1 that Judean Law is rendered inefficacious in the aftermath of the Temple’s destruction, because it could be practiced only in the Jerusalem Temple.83 Julian is aware of this argument (Galileans fr. 75 = 319D). In effect, Eusebius argues that Jews are the Judean ethnos, which requires the Temple and its cult to practice its ancestral laws. The present templeless and landless reality left Judean Law inefficacious, leaving Judeans remnants of a defunct ethnos. Christians therefore need not and should not practice Judean Law. In effect, Eusebius neutralizes the Jewish threat using ethnological discourse that labeled Jews as Judeans and through what Andrew Jacobs calls a process of “historicization.” Jews as Judeans became historical artefacts. Without their land, it was impossible to practice their ancestral laws. Effectively, Eusebius removes Jews from the Hellenic arsenal. Now Jews were ghosts, to be used by Christians for their own purposes.84 The delegitimation of the Judean ethnos allows the Christian ethnos to claim the mantle of the Hebrews. By historicizing the Jews and their laws, Eusebius retains the value of Hebrew wisdom and Scripture while claiming that Christians are the true successors of the Patriarchs. Judean Law is replaced by perfect Hebrew-cumChristian law, the same law practiced by the Patriarchs, the wisest of people.85 Not only could Christians claim a universal message by virtue of their Hebrew heritage, they became a supraethnic category, cutting across all ethnē in an emerging postethnic era.86 Andrew Jacobs writes that Eusebius’s “terminological fuzziness” when writing about Hebrews and Jews allows him to “construct and historicize Jews,” while lauding Hebrew culture.87 As he argues, “ ‘Hebrews’ for Eusebius are Jews insofar as they relate to Christian identity.”88 The danger of claiming the death of the Jewish ethnos was that it remained vulnerable to the vicissitudes of political power, which might shift at any time and prove Eusebius wrong.

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GENERAL ROLE OF THE JUDEANS I N J U L IA N ’ S G A L I L E A N S

Julian positions Hebrews and Jews choosing from a constellation of opinions by earlier philosophers and Church leaders to undermine Christianity and to construct Hellenism. Not only is Julian’s goal to refute Eusebius’s ethnological argument that Christians are the successors of the Hebrews, but by establishing Judeans as the successors of the Hebrew ethnos he is able to use them as ethnic examples for Hellenes in his effort to establish orthopraxy.89 While the tone of the first part of Galileans is decidedly negative toward the Hebrew ethnos and their Judean descendants, Julian does not delegitimize Jews. Indeed, Hebrews and Jews, qua Judeans, possess all the aspects one would expect from an ethnos. They may not be an impressive ethnos. Their God may be only one of a host of ethnarchai assigned by the Demiurge severally over every people. Nevertheless, they have a god, a land, and, most important, ancestral laws. Julian is primarily interested in the Judean ethnos’s ancestral laws. These become his focus especially in the final part of Galileans and in his other works.90 Judeans falter because they believe their God is the universal God, that they are chosen above other peoples, and, as we will see later in Galileans and in the Letter to Theodorus, because they refuse to worship other gods. Even though the stories of the Bible are attacked as fantastical and wholly inadequate when compared to Plato’s Timaeus, Julian still does not expressly rule out that there is wisdom within its pages, which is notably similar to Porphyry.91 While Julian’s arguments attacking the Creation myth, the Garden of Eden, and the Tower of Babel early in Galileans seem to suggest otherwise, his subsequent demonstration that Mosaic laws on temples, sacrifice, and purity are identical to those of Hellenes,92 his argument that the wisdom of the greater part of the Decalogue (with some exceptions)93 is shared among all peoples, and his statement that Judean Prophets and interpreters do not understand their God94 suggest he finds value in Jewish Scripture. Most revealing in this regard is his statement that he believes Scripture has secret or hidden meanings.95 Although Julian does not use the word “theurgy” in fragment 17 (= 94A), “hidden meanings” is synonymous with it. We will see that elsewhere, in fragment 72 (= 305D), Julian suggests that Judean private sacrifice has a hidden meaning as well. This suggests that Julian believed Judean Scripture and practices possessed hidden wisdom that Judeans themselves may not have been aware of. Like Porphyry, Julian applied particularistic ethnic wisdom to support his universal Neoplatonist order.96 In fragment 86 (= 354B) Julian indirectly explains that the Patriarchs are in fact Chaldeans skilled in theurgy. Therefore, it is possible that Judean Scripture and practices retain vestiges of wisdom because of their ancestral knowledge. As pontifex maximus and a philosopher with divine knowledge, Julian is able to correctly interpret both

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Judean texts and Judean practices better than Judean Prophets and interpreters, who have not achieved divine knowledge.97 This posture vis-à-vis Jews allows Julian the opportunity to define the Judean God within his empire and to find wisdom from Judean practices. Throughout this book, we will see that in each part of Galileans, he does not merely follow his sources but changes them to address specific issues in Antioch and to respond to his interlocutors. In each case, Julian clearly hopes that his rhetoric will lead to social changes on the ground in Antioch. Jews, Judeans, and Hebrews in Part One of Against the Galileans Julian begins Galileans by investigating how man acquires his knowledge of the divine and by comparing Plato’s Timaeus with Hebrew Scriptural conceptions of the divine. The tactic is adopted by Porphyry in Against the Christians but borrows heavily from Celsus while rebutting the more detailed Scriptural proofs in Origen’s response.98 Julian subjects this ethnic framework to a steady interchange of the terms Ioudaioi and Hebraioi. Johannes Hahn observes that Julian uses “Hebrews” and “Jews” interchangeably.99 Indeed, Julian interweaves his use of “Hebrews” with “Judeans” in Part One. In fragment 11 (= 69B) Julian compares how Hellenes and Hebrews pray with outstretched hands to heaven. Yet only a few passages later, in fragment 13 (= 75A), he compares Hellenic myths about the gods with Judean teachings about the Garden of Eden. Later, in fragment 18 (= 96C), he mentions Judean beliefs about God, comparing them to Hellenic beliefs. Then in fragment 10 (= 66A) and fragment 19 (= 99E), when he examines the election of the people, he uses the Hebrew ethnos, and then in fragment 19 (= 100A) it is the Judeans of Judea whom Moses, Jesus, and Paul assert are the chosen people. This phenomenon continues throughout Part One in fragment 20 (= 106A, 106B, 106C), where “Judeans” is used, whereas in fragment 19 (= 100C) “God” is the God of the Hebrews, and most oddly in fragment 25 (= 141C) Julian writes about the “Hebrews” of Judea.100 Despite Hahn’s argument, there is a method here. When Julian closely follows Celsus or is speaking in the present, he adopts the term Ioudaioi.101 Otherwise when he refers to the biblical people and their beliefs and especially when he quotes or paraphrases the Bible he prefers the designation Hebraioi.102 This has two consequences. It allows him later to employ Porphyry’s Neoplatonist strategy, which draws on Hebrew ancient wisdom and Judean Law and practices for source material for Hellenic wisdom. At the same time, he begins his larger argument, which plays out over all of Galileans, that, contrary to Eusebius, Judeans are the same people and successors to the Hebrews. As we will see momentarily, this argument reaches its climax in fragment 72 (= 306A), located in the third part of Galileans, where he completes his comparison of Hebrew ancestral law with Judean practices. A logical conclusion of Julian’s ethnic argumentation is that the Judeans must

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be restored to their city-state of Jerusalem, where they can worship their God around their Temple in accordance with their ancestral laws. Even as Julian argues against Origen’s explanation of divine providence and responds to his theory of ethnic diversity as explained by the Tower of Babel story, he builds his case by borrowing Celsus’s cosmological order, which is itself Platonic. Julian takes Celsus’s cosmological order, in which each nation is appointed a satrap daemon by the Creator,103 in order to attack Christian universalism and adjusts it to fit his ethnological argument.104 Instead of Celsus’s use of a satrap to describe each people’s god, Julian renames the assigned gods “ethnarchs,” overtly emphasizing their ethnic characteristics beyond Celsus’s understated ethnic usage of Jews as Judeans.105 This allows him to overlay a more ethnarchic order, in which each ethnos is to worship its god in its temple. Like Celsus, Julian employs a Platonist divine order, in which the Creator assigns ethnarchic gods.106 In both Celsus’s and Julian’s arguments, the divine origin of the laws requires veneration and should be preserved. This cosmological structure maps on to Julian’s geographical empire and serves to justify each ethnos each under the rule of the Demiurge – the Roman god, Helios. In this regime, Julian characterizes the Judean God as a local ethnarchic god, driving home the point that his Ioudaioi are Judeans rather than Jews. As an ethnos, Judeans have a land, a god, a temple, a cult, and ancestral laws. They are one ethnos among a wide variety of ethnē living as provincials under the Roman empire. This argument naturalizes Judeans in Julian’s empire and seeks to limit them to Judea. Celsus also uses ethnic arguments about Jews likely referring to them as Judeans. They are geographically bounded, as is their God.107 In this part of Galileans, Julian similarly focuses only on the land and the God of the Hebrews. The full ethnographic description of Julian’s Judeans comes out in the rest of Galileans, where he also discusses their cult, their Temple, and especially their ancestral laws, along with some further comments about the Judean God. Effectively, Julian embeds the ethnos with its god and ancestral laws as the key element for explanation and legitimation in the empire. As befits his anti-Christian polemic in which Christian universalism is contained, the Judean ethnos appropriately has a sectional and unimpressive god who offers Hebrews nothing of value (fr. 28 = 148C) and therefore should not be worshipped as the Supreme God.108 And yet, as we will see in chapter 6, Julian plays with the idea that the Judean God may be the Demiurge.109 What appears to everyone else as an anti-Jewish characterization of the Judean God actually demonstrates some ambivalence, which serves Julian’s malleable use of Jews to support his goals in any given argument. Even as he seems to reject the idea that the Judean God is the Demiurge here, this possibility is made a reality to a degree in Galileans fragment 86 (= 354A), in the Letter to Theodorus, in the Letter to the Community of the Jews, and in the fragment of a letter to the Jews.

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There is also an inherent ambivalence in Julian’s portrayal of the Judean God when contrasted with his explanation of the diversity of nations. According to Julian, the Demiurge has assigned each people a god fitting its nature. Each people excels at a different thing: the Greeks and the Romans at government, the Egyptians at science, and so on.110 Under such a system it makes little sense for any one nation to be inferior to any other. The portrayal of the Judean ethnos as inferior stands in contradiction to Julian’s theory of the diversity of nations and may be a source of some ambivalence, although it is one that Julian ultimately attributes to the failure of Judean Prophets and interpreters, to understand Scripture.111 As we saw in chapter 1, imperial geographic knowledge placing Jews qua Judeans in the tiny confines of Judea has inescapable consequences for Christians. Christian ethnic indeterminacy is highlighted by Julian’s labeling Christians “Galileans.”112 For Julian’s ethnic rationalization means that Galileans are from the geographic area of the Galilee. This will play out to greater effect in the final part of Galileans, where Christians’ ethnic bona fides is attacked. It is present when Julian mocks Christian claims to Jerusalem because they fail to follow their (Judean) ethnic ancestral laws.113 The emperor plays with this contradiction in Galileans to highlight that Christians lack a place and a cult in the empire. When comparing Christian “sacrifice” to Judean sacrifice in fragment 72 (= 306A), Julian claims Christian “new” sacrifice has no need for Jerusalem. But later, in fragment 76 (= 324C), he argues that Christians do claim to need Jerusalem to sacrifice. The instability in Christian claims with respect to Jerusalem demonstrates the unusual nature of Christians, who have no geographical central cult or ancestral laws. Indeed, by labeling Christians “Galileans,” Julian points to the Galilee as their ancestral home. Yet the Galilee was never considered a discrete Roman provincial territory affiliated with a particular people and cult. It further highlights the absurdity of Christians’ need for Jerusalem, which was the capital of Judea. This persistent ethnological logic renders Christians an invalid ethnos, which has no place on the emperor’s imperial map. Thus in the logic of Galileans, the Christians are a people without a history, without a mother city, or a temple, or a central cult, and without antiquity.114 Ultimately, Julian will attempt to Judeanize Jerusalem and implicitly render the Church of the Holy Sepulcher meaningless, a symbol of Constantine’s cosmic error. Hebrews, Judeans and Christians in the Final Section of Galileans Julian’s central goal in the final section of Galileans is to inquire why Christians have stopped keeping Judean ancestral laws. It is Judean Law and practices that are most prominently used here and again in the Letter to Theodorus to undermine Christianity. The efficacy of Judean Law is a vital piece of Julian’s response to Eusebius’s ethnic legitimation of Christians in Preparation and Demonstration and is an organizing principle of the final section of Galileans. Its continuity with Hebrew

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Law proves that, contrary to Eusebius, Judeans are the Hebrews of old, and their Law is efficacious. Since for Julian observance of one’s ancestral laws is essential to the well-being of the empire, Christians’ failure to observe their ancestral Judean Law is damning.115 Julian’s portrayal of Judean practice in the final part of Galileans also defines Hellenic practice and is therefore an important factor in forming Hellenic identity. Along with the Letter to Theodorus, Galileans is the only place where Julian addresses Hellenic orthopraxy. Even as Julian answers Eusebius in this section, he employs Porphyry’s Neoplatonist tactic of mining Jewish sources for Hellenic wisdom and stretches it to use Judean Law to set an example for Hellenic orthopraxy. Hellenic orthopraxy itself is not directly discussed in Galileans. Rather Judeans are compared and found identical to Hellenes except for the former’s refusal to conciliate other gods. Julian’s first step in this part is to solidify his identification of the Judeans as the Hebrews of old. This he does by comparing Hebrew sacrificial law with its modern analog of private sacrifice in fragment 72 (= 305D–306A). The opening section of the key passage I will analyze in my next chapter, which begins in fragment 69 (= 298A–C), is a section Cyril quotes in the name of Julian in his commentary.116 Here the emperor claims that Hellenes and Judeans share many practices in common, including sacrifices of atonement and purification.117 Fragments 69 and 70 are linked by the idea that Moses made apotropaic sacrifices to God. Julian continues in fragments 70 and 71 (= 299B–305B) with a description of Leviticus 16:5–8, which describes the atonement sacrifice designed to keep evil away. Then in fragment 72 (= 305D–306A) Julian reaches the climax of his proof that Christians are not Hebrews by pointing out that Judeans continue to engage in blood sacrifice just like Moses and Aaron and that Christian sacrifice—the Eucharist—is new and has nothing to do with Hebrew sacrifice. This section is then followed up again by Julian’s claim in fragment 72 (= 306B) that Judeans share common teachings about temples, sanctuaries, altars, purifications, and certain commandments. The entire set of passages (fragments 69–72) on sacrifice, temples, and priests is thus framed by statements that Judeans share these practices with Hellenes. Since Julian does not present Hellenic practices elsewhere in Galileans, these statements of Judean practices stand in for Hellenic practices and therefore offer models for Hellenic orthopraxy. Julian next attacks Christians for failing to keep a slew of other Mosaic laws. Even though Julian follows Porphyry’s premise of Christian double apostasy and employs his methodology of reading wisdom out of Judean practices and texts, his choice of the Judean laws he promotes are not dictated by Porphyry but rather are programmatically chosen to advance Julian’s Hellenizing program, particularly in the context of the challenges he faced in Antioch.118 With the possible exception of circumcision in fragment 85 (= 351A–D), the practices he chooses—including

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dietary laws in fragment 74 (= 314C–E)119 and the eating of unleavened bread on Passover in fragment 86 (= 354A)—are likely practices kept by Judaizing Christians in Antioch or in wider Syria. A variety of Church synods from the third and fourth centuries all over the Roman East, including in Syria, banned Christians from eating unleavened bread, as did John Chrysostom in Antioch only twenty years after Julian wrote Galileans. Similarly, the third-century Didascalia Apostolorum 26, of Syrian provenance, criticizes Christians for keeping the dietary laws, and it is possible this practice continued in Antioch. Chrysostom’s Judaizers and the community of the future Apostolic Constitutions, which must have existed already in Julian’s day, argued over how much “Jewish” Law they should accept, often not characterizing as “Jewish” what they kept. Julian enters this conversation on his own terms. Christians should keep all Judean laws, but he focuses particularly on certain laws, including sacrifice, temples, priests, dietary laws, eating of unleavened bread, and circumcision. Sacrifices, temples, priests, and dietary laws were also important elements of Julian’s Hellenizing program. As we will soon see, dietary laws were a matter of interest to Neoplatonists, who believed that wisdom could be attained only by keeping a Pythagorean way of life, which meant, in part, abstaining from certain foods. In his Letter to Theodorus, Julian entertains the idea that Judean dietary laws may, in fact, have an analog in Hellenic wisdom, lost after the death of Plato. In his Hymn to the Mother of the Gods 177C, he demonstrates that he is careful not to eat certain food himself. Therefore, it seems that Judean practices in this part of Galileans also shape Hellenic orthopraxy. Julian engages in a process of ritualization of Judean Law that allows him to model orthodox Hellenic practices. Ritualization was a process in which Julian modeled practices for Hellenes on the basis of his knowledge of Jewish practices gleaned from the Septuagint and likely from his encounters with Jews in Antioch or from those of Libanius. Hypsistarians of the early fourth century, described by Gregory Nazianzen, and the Godfearers described by Josephus in the first century, were Hellenes who kept dietary laws. Julian’s choice to highlight these practices and his use of the Bible to justify their observance reveal that he was encouraging Judaizing Christians and attempting to convince other Christians to keep Jewish qua Judean laws. By attacking Christians as Galileans, a non-ethnos, he implicitly argues that they are really ethnic Judeans and that they, therefore, should act like them and keep their ancestral laws. This struck at Christianity’s weakest point. Since Christians claimed Hebrew Scripture as their own, they were often asked why they did not keep their laws. Their failure to keep the Law was even more pronounced in places like Antioch, where some Christians did keep Jewish Law. Julian is attempting to sow chaos among Christians and to split the Church. As we will see in chapter 7, Julian could also use Judeans as negative exempla.120 In Galileans fragment 81 (= 335C) Julian seeks to undermine the growing

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phenomenon of martyr worship, which threatens the purity of Hellenes on their way to sacrifice in the temples. He draws on Isaiah (65:4), who castigates the ancient Judeans for practicing illicit rituals of sleeping over at tombs to incubate. Judeans themselves are not negative except when they sin. We will see that Julian here employs Scriptural exegesis popular in Antioch at the time to influence how Christians perceive of their martyred dead. The only place Julian truly differs from his Judeans is with their unwillingness to worship other gods. Just as Julian controls the practices of Judeans, he also demonstrates that he can master their origins. Perhaps the ultimate passage in which his anti-Eusebian and pro-Hellenic agenda come together is found in fragment 86 (= 354A). Here he agrees with Eusebius that the Patriarchs, the earliest Hebrews, were wise. However, Julian reaches farther back in primordial history tracing the origins of the Hebrews to the Chaldeans.121 Not only does this align the Patriarchs with the Judeans and give primacy to his own argument over Eusebius’s, but it places the Hebrews’ descendants, the Judeans, as one of the most treasured ethnē among the barbarian nations, and this strengthens his argument that Judean Law can be used to shape orthodoxy for Hellenes and, therefore, to define his Hellenizing program. The Chaldeans are considered the best source for Hellenic wisdom in the opinion of Julian’s Neoplatonist father, Iamblichus. In this way Julian fully controls the Jews in a way Eusebius could not. He can now point to practices kept by the Patriarchs to fill out those of the Judeans and to truly model orthodoxy for Hellenes. He demonstrates that Abraham adhered to the very practices that he himself favors, such as augury and divination, and worshipped a great God, whom the emperor also worships, in many places. Nevertheless, it seems that contemporary Judean Law suffices as a model for Hellenes, in my opinion likely because of the value Jews have as persuasive tools in Antioch. Julian’s ethnological arguments persist beyond Galileans. They appear in all Julian’s writings about Jews. E T H N O G R A P H IC A R G UM E N T S I N T H E L ET T E R T O T H E OD ORU S

The Letter to Theodorus, a manual to a Hellenic priest written within a month of Galileans’ publication, offers another instantiation of Julian’s ethnographic discourse to shape Hellenes, Jews, and Christians. Here, as well, Jewish ancestral law is a focal point for the definition of these ethnic groups. In chapter 7 I argue that the structure and arguments of a long passage in this letter either appeared in a nowlost part of Galileans or was perhaps left on the floor of Julian’s epistolary workshop. Julian’s Letter to Theodorus is the first part (Ep. 89a) of a two-part letter, the other being preserved as a Fragment of a Letter to a Priest (Ep. 89b).122 Here Julian switches from the polemical tone of Galileans to an instructional tone as he writes his manual for Hellenic priests. Just as in the third part of Galileans, he also defines correct

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worship and conduct for Hellenes. The letter appoints Theodorus, a fellow theurgic Neoplatonist who, like Julian, studied with Maximus of Ephesus, to be high priest of Asia and explains to him the essential responsibilities of the role.123 The central thesis of the Letter to Theodorus is that “we,” meaning Hellenes, ought to keep all the laws that have come down from the ancestors, because these were given by the gods.124 Here we see how Julian shapes Hellenes. Not surprisingly, this triggers ethnographic discourse in which Julian triangulates Hellenes with Judeans and Galileans. In the Letter to Theodorus 453C–D Julian laments the Hellenes’ neglect of their laws. He then begins a long comparison of Hellenes with Judeans, who are willing to die for their laws.125 The central point of the comparison is found in 454A, where Julian says that Jews act properly by keeping their ancestral laws. The example Julian uses is the Judeans’ willingness to die for their dietary laws. That Julian’s Jews qua Judeans are offered as examples of a people who hold true to their doctrine (scholē) is noteworthy, especially as it appears in a letter to a fellow Neoplatonist and his chief priest of Asia. Like Porphyry, Julian uses ethnic doctrines (doxa) to support a broader philosophical or cultic argument.126 Not only are Judeans an example of a people faithful to their laws, but Julian suggests that they may have something to teach Hellenes about their dietary practices. This highlights the power of Jews in convincing Neoplatonist priests, who likely would have been familiar with the tactic of using Jews as sources for Hellenic wisdom. In this context, it is noteworthy that this is one of two places where Julian explicitly suggests that Judean Law (dietary law) may be a source for Hellenic wisdom. As we will see in chapter 7, the nature of the passage cited above strongly suggests that we are looking at a passage that has been lost from Galileans. Its most striking feature is the way it fits in more fully into the logic of Galileans. There is the framework of this section itself: Julian triangulates Hellenes with Galileans and Judeans and uses them in the same way as he does in Galileans. Julian seems to borrow Porphyry’s use of Hebrews as an ethnic example for Hellenic dietary laws (On Abstinence 2.161). However, he changes “Hebrews” to “Judeans” in order to model their practices for Hellenes. It seems that Julian is following his ethnographic argument in Galileans that Jews are Judeans. Just as Judeans share with Hellenes matters pertaining to sacrifice, temples, altars, and purifications in Galileans fragment 72 (= 306B), so too in the Letter to Theodorus Julian suggests that Hellenes may have an analog to Judean dietary laws that they have simply forgotten.127 In each case, Judean legal practices shape Hellenic practice, and Judean steadfastness to their laws is to be emulated by Hellenes. At the same time Julian blasts Judeans for their refusal to worship other gods. Here Julian’s Judeans are regularly distinguished from Hellenes and kept firmly at a distance. This usage of Jews might be persuasive not only to a Neoplatonist priest like Theodorus but perhaps also to some Hellenes in Antioch who worship the Jewish God as the Supreme God and keep Jewish festivals or the Sabbath and dietary laws. In chapter 7 I argue that it would likely be persuasive

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to Christians as well, since Julian employs language of the Apostolic Decree in Acts 15:20, an important passage among certain Christian groups in Antioch and in wider Syria. C O N C LU S I O N

To conclude, Julian’s works of early 363 draw on his knowledge about Jews from a field of polemical and apologetic discourse that uses ethnographic knowledge to control subject peoples in an imperial context. By dint of a Neoplatonist tactic that holds that Jews contain ancient wisdom, properly placed within his imperial territory Jews qua Judeans are newly reinstated provincials who can be used as tools in his Hellenizing program. An unusual feature of the emperor’s Judeans is that he offers them as examples in order to define Hellenes. This is most obvious in the case of sacrifice in Galileans, to which we will now turn, but it also appears in the case of dietary laws in the Letter to Theodorus and is present in other cases as well. Therefore, we err when we consider only how Julian uses Jews to delegitimize Christians. Julian’s positioning of ethnic Jews is far more dynamic than previously thought. In fact, Julian extends the Neoplatonist tactic of using Jews as ethnic exempla to recreate Hellenic wisdom by employing Jews as Judeans to drive his argument. In the Letter to Theodorus Julian even suggests that there may be an analog to Judean dietary laws for Hellenes. This may be particularly persuasive in Antioch, where some Hellenes and Christians practice Jewish Law. The next chapter explores the most important example of Julian’s use of Jews to shape Hellenic identity and orthopraxy, namely sacrifice. Sacrifice was the most important aspect of Julian’s Hellenizing program, because only sacrificial ritual combined with prayer could appease the gods and achieve henōsis. Now we will see how Julian uses Judean sacrifice to model behavior for Hellenes and to delegitimize Christian sacrificial practice.

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Propitiating the Gods, Saving the Empire The Place of Jewish Sacrifice in Emperor Julian’s Hellenizing Program

As philosopher-king and pontifex maximus Julian set out to determine the correct constellation of ethnic divinities who had guaranteed Rome’s safety and success and their correct worship.1 What kind of worship did Julian think would propitiate the gods? Sacrifice and prayer were central elements of Julian’s program. Yet his exuberant admiration for Iamblichus’s teachings notwithstanding, his request that priests sacrifice and pray regularly do not on their face have theurgic markers. Without them, such worship was rather common, as sacrifice and prayer were staple parts of traditional worship of the gods.2 A review of Julian’s works—his Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, his Letter to Libanius (ep. 98), written while on his way to the Persian front, his brief mention of sacrifice in Misopogon—does not offer clear answers. His description of Judean sacrifice and prayer may be of assistance. By virtue of belonging to an ancient, wise ethnos related to the Chaldeans (fr. 86), Hebrew and therefore Judean texts and practices could be a source or at least an example that could be used to shape Hellenic practice. As such, Julian’s description of Jewish as Judean sacrificial practice begs to be interpreted. To evaluate Julian’s description of Judean sacrifice we will first discuss Neoplatonist sacrifice and the evidence for Julian’s sacrificial program, before analyzing his description of Judean prayer and sacrifice in Galileans and in his Letter to the Community of the Jews. After demonstrating how Judean sacrificial acts offered Hellenes an example for sacrificial orthopraxy, we will consider how Julian’s presentation of Judean sacrifice undermines Christian ethnic claims to be successors to the Hebrews. The final part of the chapter examines the potential impact of Julian’s presentation of Judean sacrifice on Jewish and Christian discourses on sacrifice.

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N E O P L AT O N I S T S AC R I F IC E

Julian’s sacrificial program can be understood best in the context of the debate between Porphyry and Iamblichus on the proper worship of the gods, already discussed in chapter 1. The debate centered on the state of the Soul, a divine entity, and its return to the One (henōsis), which achieved salvation. For Porphyry only philosophical contemplation and contemplative sacrifice could achieve salvation. Only a handful of people were philosophically talented enough to achieve henōsis. For the vast majority of people, salvation remained out of reach. Iamblichus’s theory of the fully descended soul meant that only theurgic rites could tap into the divine power contained within the Soul, which linked it with the Demiurge and would allow it to participate in its divine cosmogenesis. When the Soul descended, it became embodied with matter and lost its divine identity. To recognize its sunthēmata or its immaterial essence placed there by the Demiurge, the Soul had to be cleansed of the matter with which it had become entangled upon its descent.3 Only then could the Soul communicate with the gods. Such purification could be achieved by means of sacrificial fire, which imitated the divine fire.4 Theurgic rites redirected souls to their divine nature. Iamblichus believed that the gods had established these rituals and that they could be found preserved in the traditions of the Egyptians and the Chaldeans, which he connected with Platonic philosophy.5 The use of particular objects like animals or incantations of ineffable names in theurgic rituals was premised on the notion that they could act as receptacles.6 These objects or incantations could then be used to awaken the corresponding symbols within the Soul causing it to recognize its divine nature and to free itself from the daimones contained in matter and to rise through the celestial spheres to its meeting with the One.7 Theurgic prayer was a crucial element in Iamblichus’s soteriology. Sacrifice coupled with theurgic prayer could awaken the divine elements of the Soul (the sunthēmata) and return it to the divine.8 The Soul’s awakening to its divine identity led it to recognize its lower status, causing it to pray. By praying the Soul participated in its union with the Demiurge of the Intelligible realm.9 It therefore animated and completed the sacrifice. The fire of the sacrifice was another indispensable piece of this process. It turned the sacrifice into a pure substance that together with prayer acted to awaken the material images of the gods on Earth and to perfect the sacrifice.10 Whereas Porphyry had claimed that the smoke rising from the sacrifices could pollute, Iamblichus argued that the fire purified the sacrificial matter, turning it into an immaterial substance.11 In this way, sacrifice could achieve expiation. When people performed evil deeds, their souls, which shared kinship with the gods, turned away from them, making it impossible for the gods to receive their likeness.12 Sacrifice

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reminded the soul of the beneficent care of the gods and turned the soul back toward them and was therefore expiatory.13 Iamblichus preferred a higher incorporeal cult carried out by theurgists, who purified themselves and through theurgy detached themselves from all matter and guided the Soul to the One in an effort to attain true wisdom.14 Only they had the technē or special knowledge to avoid the dangers involved in the ascent of the Soul.15 This type of sacrifice was often carried out in mystery cults and led by a theurgist.16 Different forms of theurgic rituals were required for three different types of souls. Most people had material souls and therefore required material forms of sacrifice. In general, appropriate sacrifices were to be offered in accordance with the order of the gods.17 Material (encosmic) gods required material sacrifices, because human bodies were corporeal.18 Those souls who had risen to the divine Nous above nature were to perform “all parts of theurgy with the intellectual and incorporeal law of the hieratic art.”19 Only those very few who were capable of philosophical excellence and had achieved a high degree of purity could attain henōsis using immaterial sacrifice coupled with theurgy. Other souls, lying in between these two types, were to adopt an intermediate path. J U L IA N ’ S C O N C E P T IO N O F S AC R I F IC E

Julian was an acolyte of Iamblichus of Chalcis.20 Like his mentor, he believed the Soul had fully descended and sought to return to the One. This was the meaning of Attis’s descent from the Demiurge in Julian’s Hymn to the Mother of the Gods. He was also clearly aware of the philosophical debate over sacrifice.21 Yet his sacrificial program—as laid out in his Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, in Galileans, and to a very limited extent as mentioned in his Misopogon—entails only vague theurgic acts. Other than that, Julian merely requires frequent public and private sacrifice. The only exceptions to this can be found in his description of Judean sacrifice22 and in the work he commissions from Salutius, called On the Gods and the Universe, which offers a partially theurgic Neoplatonist conception of sacrifice. Julian’s sacrificial program and an understanding of his use of theurgy can be best understood within the context of his ethnological arguments. When Julian requires priests to offer public and private sacrifice three times a day23 but no less than at dawn and at twilight, he claims such acts are demanded by “the law of our fathers” given to us by the lawgivers,24 whom elsewhere he calls the “theurgists of earlier days” (tōn archaiōn hēmin theourgōn).25 Although Julian here refers to the lawgiver of the Hellenes, we can assume, based on statements he makes in Galileans, that his reasoning applies to the lawgivers of other special ethnē like the Hebrews and their descendants, the Judeans, as well as the Chaldeans.26 At first blush, these lawgivers are not exactly Iamblichean theurgists guiding the soul

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through their theurgic crafts into union with the Demiurge.27 Nor does Julian mention immaterial sacrifice or that the goal of sacrifice is henōsis. Rather Julian draws on the theurgists as religious experts who are wise exegetes of divine wisdom that can be found in Iamblichus.28 These lawgivers of the ethnē were such men, and their laws contain mysterious wisdom. Julian’s use of theurgists here coincides with his other uses of the term “theurgy” as mysterious wisdom, functioning as divine communication.29 The ethnological arguments continue elsewhere in Epistle 89b when he argues that cult images and altars were given by “our fathers”—read “lawgivers of the Hellenic ethnos”—as symbols for the presence of the gods, so that people could worship the gods through them and propitiate the gods even though they themselves were immaterial and had no need of sacrifice.30 Julian teases us with a seemingly Iamblichean idea that the images of the gods contain their sunthēmata, making them objects of worship. Although Julian emphasizes the connection of the images of the gods with the rank of gods in the heavens and through them to the invisible gods, this is less than a full-throated Iamblichean theurgic explanation.31 Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler correctly points out that Julian’s explanation why images of the gods ought to be worshipped does not mention the sunthēmata of the gods. Instead Julian argues that the images merely stand in for the gods.32 It is possible that Julian’s argument is the result of his incomplete knowledge of Neoplatonism, and his many contradictions may be owing to the alacrity with which he wrote his works of early 363. Ethnological discourse is also found in Misopogon 362D, where Julian demands both private and public worship from Hellenes (huper d’ humōn autōn kai tēs sōtērias tēs poleōs) “on your own behalf and on behalf of the city’s salvation.” Julian expects that the people of Antioch (Hellenes) would sacrifice, given their Hellenic ethnic heritage.33 Instead they flout the laws.34 If private sacrifice saves a person’s soul and public sacrifice saves the city, then he likely implies theurgic Neoplatonic practice.35 Besides Galileans, full expressions of theurgic Neoplatonic sacrifice appear in a work not written by him. Rather he commissions a work by his friend Salutius, who writes On the Gods and the Universe, a treatise that among other things explains what Julian never does—namely why prayer should accompany sacrifice.36 Ethnological arguments are left out of this work, but then it is not written by Julian and functions more as a theological treatise for the practice of sacrifice. Here we find a Neoplatonic explanation of the cosmos and human worship. God’s Providence reaches all areas of the universe and can be enjoyed through all things that are similar. For instance, temples, altars, prayers, magic symbols of the ineffable, plants and stones of matter, and sacrificial animals can all be used to achieve union with the One.37 He also offers a theurgic explanation that happiness and salvation come from perfection of anything that occurs by union with the One, which can occur only through likeness with the aid of an intermediary

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effecting union.38 The entire argument here derives directly or indirectly from Iamblichus’s discussion in On the Mysteries. In On the Gods section 16, Salutius writes:39 First, since we have received everything from the Gods, and it is right to pay the giver tithe of his gifts, we pay such a tithe of possessions in votive offering, of bodies in gifts of [hair and] adornment, and of life in sacrifices. Second, prayers without sacrifices are only words, with sacrifices they are live words; the word gives meaning to the life, while the life animates the word.

Salutius adopts a Neoplatonic outlook on the function of sacrifice and prayers. Like Julian (Ep. 89b.294A) and Iamblichus, Salutius argues that the gods need nothing. Rather these cultic acts heal people, allowing them to receive divine favor, an idea that finds an analog in Iamblichus.40 There are also hints of theurgy in Salutius’s explanation of sacrifice and prayer, although he never uses the word. Nor can theurgists be found in his work. However, his conception of sacrifice and prayer find parallels in Iamblichus’s On the Mysteries. In On the Gods and the Universe 16, prayers and sacrifice mutually enable each other. Prayer empowers the life of the sacrifice while the sacrifice ensouls the prayers, just as sacrifice and prayer mutually enrich and reinforce each other in On the Mysteries (4.23, 5.26).41 Human and divine lives need a similar intermediary to join with each other, and this need explains why animal sacrifices are necessary. While many of these diverse writings can be harmonized under a banner of theurgic Neoplatonism, Julian’s focus on ancestral law rather than on philosophical theurgy shows he picks up on one aspect of Iamblichean theurgy, the philosophical interpretation of the divine mysteries that he finds in ancestral laws and myths. They may also be influenced by the ethnological focus of his arguments. Moreover, Julian’s focus on ancestral laws rather than on overt theurgy can be explained by the different genres and intended audiences of each of these writings. Whereas the Fragment of a Letter to a Priest was addressed to his Neoplatonist high priests, Galileans and On the Gods and the Universe were written for the consumption of the Hellenic nonphilosophical masses. Theurgic Neoplatonism would have been both incomprehensible and odd to the vast majority of people. In addition, the need for a convincing explanatory framework for sacrifice was evident. In cosmopolitan Antioch, as in many parts of the Roman world, there was a trend away from animal sacrifice. Scott Bradbury comments on the social pressures militating against animal sacrifice in the Roman world during the reigns of Constantine and Constantius II.42 These pressures did not necessarily mean that sacrifice disappeared. Daniel Ullucci demonstrates that far from giving up on sacrifice, Christians continued to use the language of sacrifice to describe the Eucharist.43 Even Neoplatonists like Porphyry, who argued against animal sacrifice on philosophical grounds, encouraged some sacrifice.44 In some parts of the

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empire, animal sacrifice continued unabated.45 In Antioch, public sacrifice in the city and its territory was likely limited to priests and the occasional Hellenic intellectual visiting the Temple of Apollo on pilgrimage. Most people had turned away from public cultic practice and instead emphasized private prayer, used magical amulets, and attended temples of Asclepius for incubation. Even Christian and Hellenic groups who kept some Jewish Law polemicized against sacrifice and priests.46 For Julian, the reinstitution of public animal sacrifice promoted the cultic revival of the Eastern cities. Convincing people to engage in this type of sacrifice, particularly in Antioch, where animal sacrifice was shunned, required persuasion. Julian invested a lot of resources to revive sacrifice across the empire rebuilding altars and temples, formulating rituals, and reviving and even inventing ancient ceremonies. Still his ritualistic program was challenged by a landscape where the institutions of public sacrifice had withered over the course of a century and finally had been discouraged under Christian emperors. By the mid-fourth century, even those people who continued to sacrifice often did not perform the ritual in accordance with Julian’s prescriptions.47 Lacking institutional temple vitality as well as a dynamic priestly caste and models for theurgic Neoplatonism, Julian needed models to persuade Hellenes. Jews could be of help. In Galileans, Julian turned to the Jews to model sacrificial worship. In a city where everyone knew Jews ritually slaughtered their meat for the purposes of consumption and where some non-Jews kept the dietary laws, Julian sought to alter perceptions of Jewish private slaughter as sacrifice so as to convince Hellenes and Christians that they too should sacrifice. J U D E A N S AC R I F IC E I N AG A I N ST T H E G A L I L E A N S : A MODEL FOR HELLENES

We have seen that Julian intended Galileans to be as much a primer for Hellenes as it was an anti-Christian polemic. Here Jewish sacrifice becomes an instantiation of Julian’s Jewish gambit. He hopes that the power that Jewish Law and practices have on some Hellenic and Christian groups in Antioch may persuade them to sacrifice and pray like Jews in private and in public. To achieve this end Julian redefines Jewish ritual nonsacral slaughter as private sacrifice in the hope that Christians and Hellenes who keep the dietary laws and value Jewish Law and practices will reconsider their objections to sacrifice. For a number of reasons Julian’s use of Judean sacrifice to model Hellenic sacrifice is astonishing. Judean sacrifice appears in the third and final section of Galileans, a section devoted to proving that Christians are apostates for failing to keep Judean ancestral laws (fr. 3 = 42A). Julian’s main argument in this section seeks to prove false Eusebius’s claim that Christians are the true Israelites (fr. 62 = 253A).

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Prima facie, Hellenes should occupy no space in this section, particularly as Julian has just finished castigating Christians for failing to keep Hellenic ancestral law in the previous section. And yet, just as Julian is about to take on Christian qua Galilean sacrifice for its complete divergence from Judean ancestral sacrifice, he opens a new framework within his anti-Christian structure. Suddenly Hellenes are thrust back into the argument but only to inform his readers that Judeans and Hellenes share all matters related to sacrifice, temples, altars, and purification.48 Each of these is a major aspect of Julian’s program. We may add priests to this list based on his comment in Galileans fragment 58 (= 238C) that “Hebrews have precise laws concerning religious worship, customs, and many sacred things and observances that require the priestly life.” In case the audience hearing Julian’s work missed it, he repeats his claim twice: once in fragment 69 (= 298A–C), a passage not quoted as Julianic directly but nevertheless discussed in Cyril’s response, and then again in fragment 72 (= 306B; see Cyril, Against Julian, 9.13.7–17). These passages differ slightly in content but generally convey the same message. This structure, which equates Judean and Hellenic practices concerning temples, altars, priests, and purification, bookends his discussion on Hebrew and Judean sacrifice in Galileans fragments 69–72 (= 299B–306A) and draws attention to it. In other words, everything that Julian is about to claim about Hebrew and Judean sacrifice and priests in these passages matches Hellenic practice. Therefore, by comparing Hellenic and Judean sacrifice, Julian teaches Hellenes about proper sacrifice.49 Here we find a presentation of biblical sacrificial law that focuses on atonement sacrifices (fr. 69–72 = 299B–305B) and a comparison of this law with Jewish contemporary practices (fr. 72 = 305D–306A). To understand how these passages work together, we will now examine them in greater depth. The structure of the argument beginning with fragment 69, Cyril’s testimonial, commences with a comparison of Judean and Hellenic practices. Judeans and Hellenes share laws and customs, except that Hellenes worship more than one god and practice soothsaying. At the beginning of the pericope Hebrews are brought into the best class of the imperial family of nations. Hebrews, Egyptian priests, Chaldeans, and Saracens all practice circumcision, and all (now embracing Hellenes) offer various sorts of sacrifice, including ones for atonement and purification. This is the first attempt by Julian to link Hebrews with the Chaldeans, Julian’s favored barbarian nation, among whom can be found the Chaldean Oracles. This statement works to place Judeans among the most respected barbarian nations, and according to Neoplatonists they are the bearers of Hellenic wisdom, thus allowing Julian to model Jewish sacrifice for Hellenes. The comparison of sacrificial types, particularly those of atonement and purification, sets up what we expect is Julian’s comparison of Hebrew and then Judean sacrifice with Hellenic sacrifice (fr. 69–72 = 299B–306B). Instead Julian presents

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only Hebrew and Judean sacrificial practice as an example for Hellenic sacrifice. After opening the pericope, Julian begins with a recounting of Mosaic Law regarding sacrifices on the Day of Atonement (fr. 67–71 = 291A–305B; Leviticus 16:5–8, 15). These are expiatory sacrifices and they have salvific affect.50 The pericope builds toward its climax in fragment 72 (= 305D–306A):51 [305D] Now I should remind you of the things I said earlier and for what purpose I said those things. For why, after you have abandoned us, will you not accept the Law of the Judeans nor remain faithful to the teachings by that man [Moses]? Surely some sharp-witted person will say, “But the Judeans also do not sacrifice.” But I, for my part, will expose him, being terribly blind, for, first, you do not keep the customs of the Judeans. Second, they do sacrifice [thuousin] in private places [en adraktois]. [306A] Even now all things the Judeans eat are consecrated [hiera]; they pray before sacrificing, and they give the right shoulder [ton dexion ōmon] to the priests as first fruits [aparchas]. Having been deprived of the Temple, or as they customarily call it, their holy place [tou hagiasmatos], they abstain from offering to God the first fruits of the offerings. But you, why, having invented a new sacrifice [kainēn thusian], do you not sacrifice, since you do not need Jerusalem?

One of the key points here is that Judeans continue to practice sacrifice as mandated by their ancestral laws. These passages serve multiple functions. First, they are anti-Christian. Christian statements that Jews no longer sacrifice reeks of Eusebius’s argument that Christians are the “true Israel” (fr. 62 = 253A). Within Julian’s ethnological argument, he is delegitimizing and rejecting the Christian ethnos (Galileans) by demonstrating that their sacrificial law and practices of the Eucharist are not valid successors to Hebrew sacrifice. As such this is not a supersessionist argument but rather discredits the ethnic bona fides of Christians.52 Julian is out to prove Eusebius wrong and the Christian ethnos, the Galileans, false with his proof that Judeans are the same people as the Hebrews and that their cult remains efficacious. A second function that Judean sacrifice provides is to serve as an example of orthodox sacrificial practice for Hellenes. Here the emperor’s description of Judean sacrifice and priestly apportionment is meant to stand in for its orthodox Hellenic counterpart. Hellenic sacrifice is never described or mentioned on its own in Galileans. This description of Judean sacrifice is not simply Julian drawing on Porphyry’s Neoplatonic tactic of sifting through Hebrew wisdom to discover lost Hellenic wisdom, although passages like the testimonial following fragment 67 (= 291A) show that he is doing just that. This is Julian deploying and manipulating the well-known practices of a respected people among a considerable swath of the Antiochene population to persuade Hellenes to sacrifice and pray in private and in public. Here Jewish sacrifice helps shape Hellenic sacrifice.

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In her towering work Sons of Hellenism, Susanna Elm briefly queries whether Julian’s description of Judean sacrifice contains Neoplatonic elements.53 In fact, elements of Neoplatonic thought on sacrifice are laced through Julian’s presentation of Judean sacrifice. This presentation opens with a text on expiatory sacrifice on the Day of Atonement.54 Julian concludes that Moses was familiar with a variety of sacrificial techniques (fr. 71 = 305B).55 From a Hellenic perspective, this passage on expiatory sacrifice does not appear to have anything to do with Hellenic sacrifice. It is a particularly peculiar choice given Julian’s following claim that Judeans “even now” (kai nun) perform private sacrifice, an offering that seemingly has nothing to do with expiation and everything to do with consumption. As Julian himself says, everything they (Judeans) eat is sacred (panta esthiousin hiera.) But the meat of the atonement sacrifice was never consumed by the Israelites or by the Judeans. Consumption of sacrificial meat was reserved for the zebah. šlāmīm (the peace offering). In a Neoplatonist context, however, the choice of a biblical text on atonement is illuminating. Neoplatonist philosophers believed that sacrifice accompanied by prayer was needed to restore the soul’s ability to receive the beneficence of the gods. Human sin bent souls out of alignment with the good gods. The soul of the animal sacrifice, enabled, as it were, by prayer, allowed it to rise to the gods, thus restoring the human soul to its proper alignment with the gods. For Neoplatonists, then, sacrifice accompanied by prayer delivered human souls from wickedness, thereby enabling them to receive divine beneficence.56 Although Julian connects Judean private sacrifice with consecrating meat for consumption, he may be reading expiatory effects into these private Judean offerings. This would especially be true if one reads his framing of private Judean sacrifice as a continuation of public Judean sacrifice in the Temple. Julian does not expressly do so, but in the context of Christian counterclaims that Jews cannot sacrifice without their Temple, this reading is plausible. It is hard not to read Julian’s Neoplatonist Hellenizing agenda here. Correct worship of the gods is central to Julian’s Hellenizing program in early 363. We have seen the combination of sacrifice accompanied by prayer in Julian’s commissioned work, On the Gods and the Universe, and in his Fragment of a Letter to a Priest (Ep. 89b.302A–B), where Julian requires that priests sacrifice at least twice daily in accordance with the “law of our fathers” (302B). The same goes for prayer, with the added caveat that Julian would prefer that prayer be offered three times daily, although he would settle for two, and should be offered for private and for public purposes (Ep. 89b.302A). Although he does not link prayer with sacrifice explicitly, the two sections follow each other consecutively, and the same timing of dawn and evening are repeated as appropriate times for each. Many of Julian’s high priests were theurgists presumably familiar with Iamblichus’s On the Mysteries and therefore would have understood the connection between sacrifice and prayer. Notably, Galileans, Salutius’s On the Gods and

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the Universe, and the Letter to Theodorus, which included the Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, are the only works aimed at the public or the priests that deal with sacrifice. Judean prayer in Galileans fragment 72 (= 305D) does not bear any theurgic markers. This is consistent with Julian’s removal of Iamblichus’s theology in that work. For instance, as we saw in chapter 3, Julian’s cosmic order is Platonic in Galileans as compared with the mixed Middle and Neoplatonist vision of the cosmic order that appears in King Helios. One has to look to Julian’s Letter to the Community of the Jews to find Neoplatonist traces in Judean prayer.57 There Julian says that the removal of taxes is meant to encourage Judeans to offer prayer. Julian’s comment, “For it is natural that men who are distracted by any anxiety should be hampered and should not have so much confidence in raising their hands to pray” (pephuke gar tous en tini merikē exetazomenous perideisthai tēn dianoian kai mē tosouton eis tēn proseuchēn tas cheiras anateinein tolman), suggests that Judeans require extreme concentration when they pray, an aspect also found among theurgic Neoplatonists. In addition, the phrase hiketērious latreias (“supplicatory worship”), which appears almost immediately following the above phrase, suggests that prayer is incomplete without sacrifice. Not only is this a Neoplatonist sentiment, but it contains the same language of hiketeia (“supplication”) that Iamblichus uses to describe the supplicatory nature of hieratic theurgical prayer.58 Therefore, Judean prayer is a direct analog of Neoplatonist theurgic prayer. Julian’s separation of Judean private sacrifice from public sacrifice served several of his goals. Rhetorically, Julian demanded both private and public worship from Hellenes (Misopogon 362D) and from his priests (Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, Ep. 89b.302A). In these cases, “private” or “public” refers to the type of sacrifice offered. In Galileans fragment 72 (= 305D–306A) the private-public division refers to location. Prayer is a requirement for all forms of worship. Although theurgy is not mentioned directly in these passages, Julian’s broader definition of theurgy as secret mystery wisdom is present. Judeans are said to sacrifice en adraktois, a hapax legomenon59 meaning “someplace hidden or not seen or private.” Just as Julian argues that biblical myths are not understood and are poorly interpreted by the Prophets and by interpreters and suggests that they have a deeper hidden meaning, and that the Patriarchs possessed theurgy, again used to mean “divine mystery wisdom,” so too here Julian can be taken to suggest that Judean sacrifice has special wisdom akin to that found in a mystery cult, which is also celebrated in secret places. If “theurgy” in Julian refers to all communication from the gods that can be found in the myths and practices of ancient barbarian wise ethnē and among Hellenes, then Julian is reading Judean private sacrifice as possessing special wisdom. Judean practice, then, is either a source for Hellenic wisdom, or, more likely is an example of ethnic orthopraxy designed to shape Hellenic practice. Julian reads Judeans as a mystery cult, and we know he considered

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mystery cults important vehicles bearing special cosmic and ritual knowledge. Presenting Judeanness as a mystery infuses it with secret wisdom for many Neoplatonists and others. As pontifex maximus and as someone who has divine knowledge given by the gods, Julian has a true understanding of all myths and ancestral laws, including those of the Judeans, and therefore can provide a true interpretation. His interpretation demonstrates his knowledge of and mastery over the Judeans’ secret wisdom. His is a deep and thorough knowledge of Jewish sacrificial rites, because it takes place where most people cannot witness it. He knows what they do in private and can wield this knowledge to delegitimize Christian claims of being the “true Israel” and to model Jewish sacrificial practice for Hellenes. Mastery of Jewish secret knowledge allows Julian to present Judeans as objects of knowledge that he can wield against Christians, but also a knowledge with which he can shape Hellenes in Antioch, where Jewish practices and the Jewish God are respected. In this context, Jews qua Judeans are an example of an ethnos that remains faithful to its ancestral laws in private as well as in public. If Jewish knowledge is a valued commodity in Syria, as it seems to be for Neoplatonist philosophers, then Julian, as master interpreter of the Jews, displays power. Scholars have attempted to detect a Jewish ritual analog to Julian’s description in fragment 72 (= 305D–306A).60 Although Judean private sacrifice has an analog in Deuteronomy 12:2161 and 18:362, Julian was likely unfamiliar with these passages; otherwise he would have quoted them, as he quoted many other biblical passages in this part of Galileans, and he would not have left out certain elements of these passages. His lack of knowledge of these passages is hardly surprising, as Christians never commented on them. It is also possible that there were Jews in Antioch who actually sacrificed. We know little of the varieties of Jewish life in Antioch. However, before rabbinic Judaism moved from the margins of Jewish society to the center, Jews would have been free to practice as they saw fit. Certainly, some Jews did slaughter a lamb for Passover. They could have understood this act to be sacrifice. As we will soon see, the rabbis express concern that some Jews believe they are still sacrificing the Paschal lamb. Perhaps some Jews also understood the slaughter of nonsacral animals for consumption as sacrifice. More likely, Julian witnessed a Jewish practice of slaughter, a tradition arising out of Deuteronomy 12:21 and 18:3, which Jewish exegetes interpreted as taking place in the home.63 To understand how the practice of private sacrifice and the giving of first fruits to the priests may have developed, one must understand the history of biblical interpretation of these passages. These passages state (NRSV): [12:21] If the place where the Lord your God will choose to put his name is too far from you, and you may slaughter as I have commanded you any of your herd or flock that the Lord has given you, when you eat within your towns whenever you desire.

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[18:3] This shall be the priests’ due from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, whether an ox or sheep: they shall give to the priest the shoulder, and the two jowls and the stomach.

These were not passages Christians ever commented on and therefore were not live issues between Jews and Christians. Rather these were laws that provided the framework for Jews to eat meat in the Diaspora. They involved acts of ritual nonsacral slaughter allowing for the consumption of meat in places far from the Temple.64 We should expect that private Jewish slaughter would have borne all the signs of sacrifice. Although Deuteronomy 18:3 does not require it, third-century Rabbinic Law required that a blessing be recited with the slaughter ritual.65 It is entirely possible that some Jews in Antioch kept this practice, especially since we may tentatively conclude from the Didascalia Apostolorum and from the Apostolic Constitutions that Rabbinic Law had penetrated Syria by this time. Second Temple interpretation of Deuteronomy 18:3, a verse commonly read with 12:21, claims that such acts were slaughter rather than sacrifice (mē thrēskeias) and took place in the home (kat’ oikon), which explains Julian’s use of en adraktois, or “private [or: “hidden”]” sacrifice. Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian writes:66 Furthermore, any persons sacrificing [or: “slaughtering”] animals at their homes for their own good cheer and not for the ritual [mē thrēskeias] are bound to bring to the priests the maw, the jaw, and the right leg of the victim.

Josephus’s addition of mē thrēskeias offers clarity to the vague verb thu-, which can mean “sacrifice” or “slaughter.” Similarly, the rabbis divided sacrifice in the Temple (zebah. ) from ritual nonsacral slaughter in Deuteronomy 12 and 18:3 (hūllin). We have seen that Julian’s knowledge of this practice, which takes place en adraktois, enables him to demonstrate his mastery of Jewish secret knowledge and suggests Jews are a mystery cult with special wisdom. Other evidence could suggest he had bona fide knowledge of the slaughter of the Passover lamb.67 Working back to Galileans fragments 70–72 (= 299B–306A), Julian suggests that Jewish slaughter is sacrifice and that it has expiatory effect. Mastering Jewish private sacrifice would have helped Julian achieve an aspect of his program that was truly innovative and likely difficult to support. In Fragment of a Letter to a Priest Julian seeks to regulate the private lives of priests outside the Temple, including when they sacrifice, what they wear and read, and who they socialize with. For centuries Rome left private worship unregulated.68 People were free to pursue their personal interests and could interact with the gods as they deemed fit. Julian’s regulation of priestly private life is usefully viewed within the prism of the pursuance of orthodoxy. Kim Bowes argues that it was monotheistic Christianity that drove attempts to control private practice. Private practices

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became malleable tools often associated with heretical practices that made them objects to control.69 Like the later bishops, Julian sought to control private space, where heresies thrived. This was particularly useful for Julian’s Hellenizing project in Antioch. By the mid-fourth century about half and possibly more of Antioch’s population was Christian. Hellenes intermarried with Christians, and houses likely contained mixed practices. Julian seeks to control the family and prevent apostasy.70 For Julian the private sphere was both a source of danger and an opportunity to patrol the borders of Hellenic identity. Jewish private sacrifice could offer an example of how Hellenes ought to sacrifice in private. In Cyril’s testimonial (Against Julian 9, 13)71 Jews differed from Hellenes, Chaldeans, Saracens, and Egyptians in not practicing soothsaying. In Galileans fragment 86 (= 354A) Julian closes off this gap by arguing that Abraham, who was a Chaldean, had sacrificial practice down correctly. Hebrew practice under Abraham was initially theurgic but later became confused, though it remained efficacious.72 Abraham would sacrifice in any place where there was an altar, and he used augury and divination. Jan Stenger comments that Julian is looking to Jewish wisdom to justify his Hellenizing sacrificial program.73 This is best understood through Julian’s use of ethnic argumentation. Here Julian ethnographically links Hebrews and thereby Judeans with Chaldeans, the favored source among theurgic Neoplatonists. From this perspective Julian strengthens his use of Jews qua Judeans as examples for Hellenes. At the same time, he demonstrates that their Hebrew ancestors understood correct practices of theurgy, and elsewhere he argues that Jews lost their ability to engage theurgic practices because of their literal interpretation of Scripture. In this way, Julian employs his superior knowledge of Jewish practice and brings Jews fully into his Hellenizing empire in a manner that justifies his Hellenizing program for Hellenes. His use of Abraham here mirrors Eusebius’s, except that the Judeans are the Hebrews of old but have lost some of their true original practices. The Patriarchs, whom Eusebius called the true Hebrews, forerunners of the Christians, under Julian are now aligned with Jews and Chaldeans as possessing divine mystery wisdom, some of which has been passed down to the Jews. Finally, Judean public sacrifice in Galileans fragment 72 (= 306A) also models Hellenic civic cult. One of Julian’s biggest challenges was sparking not only sacrifice but sacrifice in temples. For instance, Julian praises the people of Batnae for their prodigious sacrifices but criticizes them for sacrificing everywhere indiscriminately.74 Jews offered an example of the type of civic cultic practice he sought throughout the empire. They sacrificed in a temple. Here too Julian showed his mastery of Jewish knowledge. He does not simply call the Jerusalem Temple the Judean temple but rather refers to how “they [Judeans] call it,” showing that he knows that Judeans call it their “holy place.”75 His statement educates Hellenes that temples are sacred and are the proper location for sacrifice. The emperor’s knowledge of the Temple also refers to Moses’s language in Leviticus 15:15, which he

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quotes, referring to sacrifice “for this holy place.” This allusion emphasizes that atonement sacrifice takes place in a temple. In sum, Jews qua Judeans help educate Hellenes not only on how to sacrifice and pray but also where such sacrifice ought to take place. C H R I ST IA N S AC R I F IC E : C OU N T E R I N G T H E E U C HA R I S T; S C A R I N G T H E C H R I S T IA N S

In the crowded field of discourse on sacrifice in Late Antiquity, Christianity took up the popular position that animal sacrifice was not needed and not desired. However, Church leaders did not give up on sacrifice altogether.76 Rather they continued to use sacrificial language and images of the Temple, sacrifice, and the priests to characterize the Eucharist. To counter Eusebius’s depiction of Christians as the “true Israel,” Julian highlighted the incongruence between the Eucharist and sacrifice in the Bible in the face of what he characterized as continuing Judean sacrifice, which resembled its ancient forerunner.77 Using ethnographic arguments, Julian is out to prove that the Eucharist is an illegitimate cultic practice of the purported Christian ethnos, which he seeks to delegitimize. By demonstrating that Judean sacrifice is the clear successor to Hebrew sacrifice Julian disqualifies the Christian Eucharist, thereby removing a crucial ethnic marker and a critical criterion in Julian’s definition of the ethnos. Julian’s discussion of Hebrew and Judean sacrifice in Galileans fragment 72 (= 305D–306B) leads to Julian’s delegitimizing statement in fragment 72 (= 306A) that Christians offer a “new” kind of sacrifice. Julian’s mastery of Judean secret knowledge of sacrifice demonstrates how false is the Christian Eucharist. The structure and content of these passages reveal how Julian builds his case that Judean sacrifice rather than “new” Christian sacrifice is the true successor to Hebrew sacrifice. As we have seen, these fragments represent the climax of the third part of Galileans, where Julian finally answers Eusebius of Caesarea’s claim in Galileans fragment 62 (= 253A) that Christians are the “true Israel.” It is followed by Julian’s attempt to disprove the connection between the Old Testament and the New Testament, specifically that Jesus’s coming is foretold in the Old Testament.78 Julian’s argument reaches its crescendo in fragment 72 (= 305D–306A). When he asks rhetorically why Christians fail to sacrifice like the Hebrews, the Christians answer that Judeans do not sacrifice. Julian pointedly proves Christians wrong, claiming that “even now” Judeans practice sacrifice. Not only did the Judeans of his day continue the sacrifice of the ancient Hebrews, but their sacrifices were efficacious even in the absence of the Temple, because the ritual consecrated the meat (panta esthiousin hiera). Thus, contrary to Eusebius’s claim in Book 1 of Demonstration, sacrifice could take place in the absence of the Temple. In fact, the efficacy of Judean private sacrifice is bound up in its consumption. This statement

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is meant to be read in conjunction with Galileans fragment 72 (= 305B), where Julian quotes Leviticus 16:15 to prove that Moses did not consider the meat of the sacrifice to be impure (akatharta). Julian thus removes one of the Christian grounds of objection to sacrifice. To prove Judean private sacrifice was equivalent to the Hebrew expiatory sacrifice of Moses and Aaron and superior to the Eucharist, Julian demonstrates that it achieves everything that the local Syrian Eucharist does, including expiation. Fourth-century Eucharistic liturgies from this region identify the Eucharist with the Hebrew kippur (“expiation”) and consider it a sacred mystery.79 In this case, the fact that Judean private sacrifice occurs en adraktois may be explained as a parallel to the mystery of the Eucharist. It also has parallels to the idea present in Aphrahat’s work that prayer is an offering that should be made in secret.80 Other aspects of the Eucharist also appear in Julian’s description of private Judean sacrifice. Cyprian of Carthage and later John Chrysostom argued that the Eucharist and its ministers were equivalent to sacrifices and priests of the Temple, respectively.81 Accompanying the Eucharist were prayers and first-fruits offerings.82 In the Eastern Church, the anaphora, or the prayer piece of the Eucharist, contained the word “offering.” Here the Syriac word for “sacrifice” (qorbana) is used.83 Julian’s addition of first-fruits offerings to the priests in Galileans fragment 72 (= 306A) parallels the first-fruits offering of the Eucharist and, as we will see in the next chapter, models proper treatment of priests for Hellenes. In addition, Giorgio Scrofani demonstrates that mid-fourth-century Church leaders often associated Temple imagery with the Eucharist, using terms like naos archiereus thusiastērion and hagia tōn hagiōn to support their arguments that the Eucharist was a true atonement sacrifice.84 He points out that this argument countered the practices of Judaizers who celebrated the Day of Atonement with the Jews. Real atonement, Christians argued, came from “attending Christian liturgies, confessing sins, celebrating the Eucharistic sacrifice, and by bearing witness through asceticism and martyrdom” and not by fasting with Jews, who were unable to achieve expiation without their Temple.85 It reminded Christians that the sacrifice of the Church was spiritual and full of mystery, and could be offered anywhere, not only in Jerusalem. Julian, in turn, suggested that Judeans attained expiation through sacrifice. Meanwhile, he characterized the Jerusalem Temple as tou naou, and “as the Judeans call it the most holy place” (tou hagiasmatos), to stress that the Temple in Jerusalem was the true center of the sacrificial cult and that the Eucharist could not replace it. In total, Julian showed that Judean private sacrifice performs all the functions of Moses and Aaron’s expiatory sacrifice and more closely resembled it than did the Eucharist, because it was animal sacrifice. As a result, Judean private sacrifice was the true successor to Hebrew sacrifice. Meanwhile, Julian called the Eucharist “new” and so denigrated it as something unconnected to the ancestral traditions of the Hebrew past.

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Julian acknowledges Eusebius’s claim in Demonstration that Jews can no longer sacrifice publicly in the absence of their Temple in Jerusalem. However, it matters little, since expiatory sacrifice can still be achieved privately. Therefore, the absence of the Temple is no longer a threat to Judeanness. In fact, as Julian makes clear in numerous other works, he intends to rebuild it and reconstitute the Jewish ethnos as Judeans to its former glory. Contrary to Eusebius, Julian argues that Judeans are not a defunct, illegitimate people whose practices were invalidated in the absence of the Temple. Rather they are the successors of the Hebrews and bearers of their wisdom. This wisdom includes theurgic acts like animal sacrifice, divination, and augury, all of which Abraham practiced—yet another reminder that the Patriarchs resemble Judeans more than Christians. Julian employs his ethnographic reasoning, arguing that since Christians as Galileans may offer the Eucharist anywhere (Gal. fr. 72 = 306B), they have no need for Jerusalem. T H E C O N SE Q U E N C E S O F J EW I SH S AC R I F IC E F O R C H R I S T IA N S A N D J EWS : J EW I SH A N D C H R I S T IA N C OU N T E R NA R R AT I V E S O N S AC R I F IC E

Christians Julian’s arguments about Judean private sacrifice would have presented both Christian and Jewish leaders with indigestion. Christian discourse on sacrifice was built on its estimation that Jewish sacrifice ceased after the destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e., a position that was crucial to Christian sacrificial substitution and to Christians’ self-understanding as successors to the ancient Hebrews. Thus, any lingering Jewish sacrifice was a source of anxiety for Church leaders, whose power was at stake. Julian played on this anxiety. The return of Jewish sacrifice could wreak havoc on Christian identity and influence more Christians on the boundaries of Judaism to leave Christianity altogether. By pointing to Jewish acts of ritual nonsacral slaughter and characterizing them as sacrifice Julian hoped to alter Christian perceptions of these acts and thereby enable Christian identification with Jews. Since Christians did not give up on sacrifice altogether after the loss of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 c.e., they began to enact rituals that they sometimes claimed were superior to Jewish animal sacrifice. It was particularly important for Christian leaders who wanted to claim the Old Testament as “Christian” to explain why they no longer kept its laws, including its commandments to sacrifice. As a result, Christian texts in antiquity make a variety of claims in relation to Jewish sacrifice.86 The result was a litany of Christian positions on sacrifice that were sometimes inconsistent.87 By the fourth century, Church leaders had argued not only that all Jewish sacrifice had ended but also that it had been replaced by other rituals such as the Eucharist. For Eusebius, Christian ethnic legitimacy was tenuous because of the

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newness of Christians. To address this problem, he tied Christians to the wellregarded Hebrew ethnos. Since most people recognized Jews as the successors to the Hebrew ethnos, Eusebius had to make innovative arguments that required him to delegitimize Jews as a now defunct Judean ethnos. His claim was made easier by the loss of Judea and the Temple—losses that, he claimed, made it impossible for Judeans to carry out their ancestral laws. Christians, he argued, were the true successors to the Hebrews and therefore inherited God’s Covenant with Abraham. Decades later, facing Christians who attended synagogue and kept Jewish practices, John Chrysostom portrayed Jews as invalid ethnic Judeans who, lacking their Temple, could no longer practice their ancestral laws. Jewish ritual was ineffective in these circumstances. He claimed that Jews had “no oil of anointing, no tablets of the Covenant [1 Kings 8:6–9], no Holy of Holies [1 Kings 6:19], no veil [Exod. 26:31–33], no High Priest, no incense, no holocaust, no sacrifice.”88 Whereas Chrysostom argued that Jewish sacrifice was impossible without the Temple, the compiler of the Apostolic Constitutions argued that a mindful sacrifice replaced blood sacrifice.89 These various Christian ethnic discourses, which depended on a defunct Jewish qua Judean ethnos, suggest that continued Jewish sacrifice would be a source of anxiety to be expunged. This explains the Christian overreaction to Augustine’s perceived claim that Jews continued to sacrifice. Perceived continuation of the Jewish sacrificial cult produced Christian anxiety. In his Genesis against the Manichees90 Augustine states: The Sixth Age. For God said on the sixth day: “Let the earth produce the living soul.” For He said on the fifth day: “Let the waters produce,” not a living soul, but “reptiles with living souls.” For bodies are reptiles, and that people, as in the sea of nations, was still serving the Law with bodily circumcision and sacrifices.

Although Augustine mentions the destruction of the Temple and the end of sacrifices, and even though the verb in the last sentence is in a past tense, it is apparent from his Retractions that some Christians thought he had claimed that Jews continued to sacrifice. So in his Retractions 1.10.2, Augustine withdrew and explained his claim of continued Jewish sacrifice.91 He writes: So too one may be upset by what I said concerning the people of Israel. . . . For they were unable to offer sacrifices among the nations, just as we see that they now remain without sacrifices, unless one may perhaps regard as a sacrifice the immolation of the lamb at the time of Passover.

Clearly, Augustine hit a nerve among Christians by claiming that Jews continued to sacrifice. Christian claims to have superseded Jews required constant reinforcement, particularly in parts of the empire where groups of Christians continued to revere and practice Jewish Law.

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Jews Continued Jewish sacrifice and the promised restoration of the Temple also threatened growing rabbinic authority. Scholars have shown that the rabbis operated on the margins of Jewish society at least until the middle of the fourth century.92 As we saw in chapter 2, some Judaizing Christians in Syria were familiar with a mishnah, if not the Mishnah, and responded with a countermishnah.93 It may be that the rabbis had some standing among Jews in Antioch. Therefore, there was much at stake in Julian’s presentation of private Jewish sacrifice. Presumably, the return of the sacrificial cult would empower the priests at the rabbis’ expense. Jewish sacrifice also threatened the rabbinic narrative about the rebuilding of the Temple. One way the rabbis had sought to extend their authority was by slowly extending their mastery over the Temple, its cult, and its priesthood, as they did over other areas of life.94 In response to the loss of the Temple the rabbis both historicized and futurized it while preserving its memory. On the one hand, they confronted the loss of the Temple and considered what might propitiate God in its absence. In general, they substituted prayer, good deeds, and the study of Torah for sacrifice and sometimes even expressed a preference for these over sacrifice.95 At the same time they continued to look forward to the time of the Messiah, when the Temple would be rebuilt and sacrifice would be restored. But that would not be for some time. In the meantime, the rabbis ritualized several acts designed to keep the memory of the Temple alive. A return of the sacrificial cult could potentially shortcircuit this process. For these reasons, the rabbis were sensitive to claims of continued sacrifice. Rabbinic literature claims that sacrifice continued after the destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e.96 Rabbinic anxiety over sacrifice tends to focus on the slaughter of the Passover lamb. In a number of Tannaitic sources (rabbis from the first through early third centuries) and some reworked Amoraic sources (rabbis from the later third through fifth centuries), the rabbis seek to control the range of meanings that Jews attribute to the slaughter of the Passover lamb, fearing that Jewish ritual around such slaughter bears the markers of sacrifice.97 A recurring story about “Theudas, the Roman,” a Jew whom the rabbis claim taught the Jews of Rome to eat their Passover lambs mequlas98 in a manner similar to the Paschal lamb sacrifice in the Temple reveals their concern that Theudas misled Roman Jews into believing they were engaged in sacrifice. This story reflects some anxiety that other Jews do not adhere to rabbinic orthodoxy.99 The story’s location in Rome provides the best testimony of a rabbinic understanding of far-flung Diaspora Jews who purchased lambs to roast on the nights of Passover.100 Jean Juster finds a number of other instances where Church leaders report Jews who immolated the Passover lamb.101 How widespread this practice may have been and whether it occurred in Antioch, where Julian wrote Galileans is impossible to confirm but seems very possible. Julian is familiar with Jewish slaughter (sacrifice?) of the Paschal lamb. He

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admonishes Christians, who do not “sacrifice/slaughter the lamb in the Jewish manner, nor do they eat the unleavened bread.”102 Whether he witnessed this practice or picked up on a Christian trope is impossible to determine. Julian’s argument of continued Jewish sacrifice would have been met with a variety of responses in Antioch. It is unclear whether some or most Jews in Antioch slaughtered the Passover lamb, as we find in other parts of the empire. Nor do we know whether Jews or other Antiochenes considered such acts to be sacrifice. On the other hand, many Hellenes would have known that Jews slaughtered meat for purposes of consumption and would have identified this as necessary to keeping the dietary laws, but they likely had never stopped to consider whether Jewish slaughter of animals for the purpose of consumption was sacrifice. For those Hellenes in Antioch who kept Jewish festivals, and for Hypsistarians who may have resided in Antioch and would have kept Jewish dietary laws, Julian’s presentation of Jewish private sacrifice may have spurred a reconsideration of their opposition to sacrifice.103 Meanwhile, the few Neoplatonist philosophers who had congregated around Julian’s court in Antioch would have recognized and approved of Julian’s attempt to mine Jewish sources to reveal ancient Hellenic wisdom. Julian’s description of Judean private sacrifice shared many similarities with the Eucharist. If Jewish sacrifice remained viable, Julian’s claims would have raised doubts about Church leaders’ arguments that Jewish Law was ineffective in the absence of the Temple, about the legitimacy of the Eucharist as a substitute for sacrifice, and ultimately raised questions about the identity of the “true Israel.” Christians probably did not know of Deuteronomy 18:3, since there is no record that Christian leaders ever interpreted that verse. Therefore, they never stopped to consider that Jewish slaughter of animals for consumption was a form of sacrifice. Those Christians living on the borders of the Jewish community in Antioch, some of whom may have observed the dietary laws, may have found Julian’s argument of interest and likely sent them scrambling to their Old Testament for support of Julian’s claim. One may imagine that this would have set off a discussion in churches and synagogues about the nature of Jewish slaughter and that Christians would have been interested in the various interpretations of the Law. C O N C LU S I O N

All together, Julian’s description of Judean sacrifice and its use in defining Hellenic sacrifice demonstrates that he sides with Iamblichus on the importance of theurgy, though his use of theurgy focuses on only part of Iamblichus’s definition of that term. Judean sacrifice offers Julian a tool with which he forms Hellenic orthopraxy. In this regard, he fashions a specific description of the Judean ethnic cultic practice that will help shape Hellenic sacrifice, one that occurs often with prayer in private and in public at temples. Most likely, Julian’s arguments about Judean

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sacrifice would have raised anxieties among orthodox Christian leaders as it ran into the Christian narrative on the Eucharist, which was basically Christian ethnic sacrifice. Julian’s argument highlighted the efficacy of Jewish Law to Christian audiences and to the general Christian populace, who already looked upon Jews as authentic purveyors of their Hebrew past and therefore weakened Christianity’s claim to be the “true Israel.” By linking present Jewish practice with biblical prescriptions, and, more important, later on with Patriarchal sacrifice, Julian dislodges Eusebius’s attempt to link Christians with the Patriarchs, and unmoors them from any claim of ethnic belonging. Julian hoped to raise doubts in the minds of Christians about whether they were the true Israelites. This doubt was the flame that Julian nurtured and hoped would consume Christianity once he finished rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem. By making this argument, Julian also waded into the Christians’ debate over their response to the Jewish sacrificial tradition. Aside from the chiliasts, all Christians seem to have rejected the Jewish cult of sacrifice and the priesthood. Even the Homilies in the Pseudo-Clementine literature polemicize against the Jerusalem Temple and its priesthood.104 There Aaron is condemned as a false prophet while Moses and Israel are distanced from the Temple and sacrifice.105 Both the Homilies (3.26, 45–46) and the Didascalia Apostolorum (26) denounce all sacrifice and reject portions of the Bible that describe power of animal blood to atone. At the same time, these Christians claimed to have continued Hebrew ethnic sacrifice. Julian’s argument that ethnic Judean sacrifice was a direct successor to ethnic Hebrew sacrifice threatened their identity as the true Israel. It might have complicated life in Antiochene homes.106 Sacrifices require priests, and Julian invested heavily in an innovative and costly priestly program. Once again he drew on Judeans and Judean priests as examples on which his Hellenic priests might build. Here too his arguments were liable to foment trouble in Jewish and Christian circles. It is to Julian’s priestly program that we now turn. In the next chapter, Julian’s priestly program is explained and the role of Jews as Judeans and Jewish priests is elucidated.

5

A Priestly Nation The Jewish Priesthood as a Model for Julian’s Priestly Program

Orthodoxy needs visible leaders. It was not enough to define the proper worship of the gods. Julian sought to build a network of people to lead such worship to promote Hellenic identity, so that all souls might be saved and along with them the Roman oikoumenē. The institution of the priestly hierarchy was not new to Julian, but it was innovative. Unlike earlier institutions of priesthood like that of Maximin Daia, Julian’s priests were not to be selected from among the wealthy class but rather chosen on the basis of their piety, charity, and honesty, and Julian sought to regulate their private as well as their public lives. Priests were to be respected as leaders of society at a time when priests were poor and no longer esteemed.1 This was a steep challenge even for an emperor. It required new thinking and models that his priests could emulate. Jews qua Judeans offered Julian an example of the role priests could play in an ethnos, and Judean priests addressed many of the issues he faced in implementing his priestly program. They led priestly lives (bioi hieratikoi, Gal. fr. 58 = 238C), were led by professional priests and a secular leader in the person of the Patriarch, and had self-sustaining models of funding their priests that Julian could borrow (fr. 72 = 306A). Julian’s attempt to rebuild the Temple, especially as articulated in his Letter to the Community of the Jews, suggests that his ethnological plans involved the return of Jewish priestly leadership. If such was his intention, it would have threatened the existing Jewish and Christian hierarchical orders. J U L IA N ’ S P R I E S T LY P R O G R A M

Julian’s priestly administration can be traced to earlier paradigms. Provincial priests had been in existence since the Principate.2 They were elected by the concil86

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ium provinciae, the assembly of delegates from the cities, which was responsible for administering the cult of Rome and Augustus in the provinces.3 These assemblies still existed under Diocletian and Constantine, but the latter took away their competence over Hellenic cults. As part of a set of religious reforms, Maximin Daia had even appointed High Priests in the provinces to select local priests in the early fourth century.4 Julian was not breaking new ground in this regard. The key difference in Julian’s priestly program was the criteria he set out for the selection of priests. Maximin Daia’s priests were chosen from the wealthy class, as priests had always been, and there is little evidence that they were heavily regulated.5 By comparison, Julian’s priests were chosen for their piety, charity, and honesty, and Julian sought a specific regimen of daily ritual and philosophical study, regulating both their public and private lives in a manner that was heretofore unheard of. Julian took his role of pontifex maximus seriously and expanded the powers of the office considerably. He also took his role literally, carrying out all sacrifices himself. Libanius praises his engagement as a priest carrying out daily sacrifice in his palace.6 Not everyone approved.7 His divine mission to set the oikoumenē back on the right path infused this role with new responsibilities. For example, Julian believed he was responsible for educating people about orthopraxy that would propitiate the gods. It was as pontifex maximus that Julian acted to interpret and synthesize various ethnic ancestral laws to build Hellenic identity. Jews are an example of his efforts. Julian set up his chief priests to administer each of the provinces even before he arrived in Antioch. However, it was not until his major Hellenizing efforts of early 363 that he infused his priestly program with content. In February of that year, he sent out a manual for priests in two parts, The Letter to Theodorus (Ep. 89a), addressed to his chief priest of Asia, and his Fragment of a Letter to a Priest (Ep. 89b). These laid out how and when he wanted priests to worship, how they ought to conduct themselves in their temples and in private, and the criteria by which they were to select the lower-level ethnic priests.8 Taken together, his instructions shape and support his priestly leadership and enable it to execute his Hellenizing program. Under the new priestly dispensation, Julian was perched at the top of the earthly cultic-political order. In his person, he combined both the political and the cultic leadership as both emperor and pontifex maximus, respectively. Below him the magistrates occupied leadership in the administrative sphere, whereas his chief priests were in charge of cultic matters. Julian enforced a complete separation between these two spheres. On the whole this was functionally similar to Constantine’s system, except that the bishops also took on administrative matters.9 This program was mapped onto Julian’s geographical ethnic map of the empire. Provincial High Priests were to choose and supervise local ethnic priests. Julian imagined that these priests would occupy a new senior role as leaders in the hierarchical structure of the Roman oikoumenē.

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Perhaps it is not surprising that Julian sought to elevate priests above the magistrates.10 But why did he desire to promote priests rather than philosophers to the highest positions of his empire? The answer lies in his Hellenizing goals and is tied to his ethnological order. It was as a philosopher guiding the Roman oikoumenē to salvation that Julian conceived his priestly program. Julian’s philosophy was Iamblichean rather than Porphyrian. He stressed priestly ritual over intellectual contemplation. Although priests are not theurgists in his program, his description of the laws they execute contains theurgy.11 If Julian’s goal was to determine the correct set of ethnically defined deities who safeguarded Rome and to propitiate them, then priests were the right leaders for this task. Priests are one of the constituent aspects of the ethnos in Galileans. Each ethnos has ancestral laws, sacrifice, priests, temples, and purity. It was these ethnic priests who mediated between the gods and humans by performing sacrifice on the people’s behalf. This is why Julian emphasizes the position of the priest as crucially occupying the middle ground between the gods and humans, a position that Julian also occupied.12 Their role was to ensure that the ancestral laws of the ethnē were observed exactly as handed down so that souls and ultimately the entire oikoumenē might be saved. Julian was prepared to invest considerable resources to turn his vision into reality. He sank money and effort into the restoration of temples, the establishment of new senior offices for his chief priests, and an educational program to train the lower, ethnic priests. Julian’s inspiration for his priestly program is frequently debated.13 Most scholars see no signs of Iamblichean Neoplatonism in his priestly program.14 Ilinca TanaseanuDöbler points out that there is no clear proof in the Letter to Theodorus (Ep. 89a, 89b) that Julian draws his program mainly from Iamblichus.15 In fact, one can point to several factors that suggest the opposite. Julian does not instruct his priests to carry out specific theurgic rituals. Nor does he select priests based on their knowledge of theurgy. They are not expected to play the role of a theurge, who guides the souls of men to their meeting with the One.16 In fact, Julian does not even mention Iamblichus’s higher form of theurgic sacrifice. Some of his Neoplatonically trained chief priests, who had studied with his mentor, Maximus of Ephesus, men like Theodorus, may have had that ability. Indeed, many, though not all, of his chief priests were trained Neoplatonists.17 Finally, Julian’s description of the images of the gods as representations of the gods lacks the sunthēmata one would find in Iamblichus’s work.18 Indeed, many scholars believe that Julian’s priesthood is modeled on the Christian clergy. For example, Julian’s priests are cast as representatives of the community rather than as Iamblichus’s individualistic theurgists.19 Yet there are good reasons for the discrepancies between Julian’s priesthood and Iamblichus’s theurgists. Julian was building an imperial network of priests modeled on his ethnic order to serve the gods who protected the Roman oikoumenē. Iamblichus never had to develop a network of priests or to develop normative criteria for

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selecting priests. Furthermore, there are clear signs of Iamblichean theurgy in Julian’s presentation of priests. The priests are to follow ta patria, which TanaseanuDöbler points out carry within them divine meaning because they were handed down by the gods and their lawgivers, whom Julian calls theurgists.20 This idea comes from Iamblichus, who believes that the gods authored the cults. By mirroring the heavenly order, their cultic practices exemplified divine principles that provided for the deification of the human Soul, a principle also enunciated by Iamblichus. Indeed, regardless of theurgic education or lack thereof, every priest engaging in sacrifice in accordance with ancestral law was performing lower levels of theurgy. As Heidi Marx-Wolf writes, according to Iamblichus: “Everyone who practiced religion in the proper way and participated in god-ordained rituals practiced theurgy and could attain some measure of communion with the higher gods.”21 Even if souls did not reach the Supreme God, these rituals participated in what Julian later hoped was a universal attempt to achieve salvation. We should also expect that a deeper explanation of the priest as theurge would have been left out simply because Julian would have been hard pressed to find priests trained in theurgic Neoplatonism to administer to all the cults in the empire. At the same time, in On the Mysteries, theurgists were priests.22 It is the qualities by which local, ethnic priests were to be chosen that have most often been highlighted as lacking theurgic content, and it is to these that we now turn. T H E T H E I O S A N Ē R A N D T H E R IG H T P R I E ST

The quality of Julian’s priests was crucial for the success of his priestly program. The poor regard with which priests were held in the mid-fourth century required a major marketing initiative. The standard practice of choosing well-connected men of wealth to fill these roles would not do. Julian’s priests were to be neither men of means nor necessarily well educated.23 Rather, he sought honest, pious, philanthropic men who would remain pure and be beyond reproach.24 In all ways, they would exemplify the priestly life (bios hieratikos).25 Their piety would be demonstrated by their love of the gods and their love of their fellow men.26 Such men would be a welcome change, and Julian hoped that their exemplary behavior would inspire people to see them as role models and lead to their return to traditional Hellenic cultic practice. Competition with the Christian bishops could not have been far from his mind. Julian’s chief inspiration for the criteria he chose to select his Hellenic priests was of course the model he chose for his own life—the Pythagorean life.27 Pythagoras was considered a quasi-divine being by many Neoplatonists. He was able to communicate with the gods and was therefore imbued with cosmic knowledge. In addition, he was initiated in all the mystery cults practiced in Syria and Phoenicia and was aware of their Egyptian origins.28 Indeed, much of Pythagoras’s knowledge

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comes from Egyptian priests, and this is likely why Iamblichus takes on the persona of Abamon, an Egyptian priest, in his On the Mysteries.29 Pagan “holy men” (theioi andres), among them many Neoplatonists who followed in the footsteps of Iamblichus of Chalcis, followed the Pythagorean life. They fastidiously maintained a high level of purity through diet, moderation, and modesty. Julian exemplified this life. His mentor, Iamblichus of Chalcis, was considered the quintessential theios anēr. His emphasis on theurgy for raising the soul advanced a religious understanding of the philosopher that became associated with the priest.30 Garth Fowden writes that the theios anēr “was a holy man,” divinely possessed, who always sought to attain the true philosophy and conducted himself in a manner that displayed reverence for the gods.31 In fact, a theurgist had to possess the purity of the theios anēr to perform appropriate rites and guide the soul into alignment with the world Soul.32 By conducting oneself like Pythagoras, one maintained the level of purity necessary to be a theurgist. Yet the ritual acts of theurgy necessary to establish a connection between theurgists and the gods as presented in Iamblichus’s On the Mysteries also required special knowledge. Pythagoreans differed in that they performed some ritual but preferred philosophical paideia.33 Julian’s priests were to embody the principles of the theios anēr and thereby conduct themselves as hieratikoi bioi. They were to maintain a heightened level of purity before setting foot in a temple by engaging in purification rituals.34 Neoplatonist principles required that the theurgist had to purify his body so that the god might fill it in their union.35 Julian expects his priests to spend an additional day keeping themselves pure even before purifying themselves in the custom of their particular cult.36 Such purity enabled them to make efficacious private and public sacrifice and prayer that would propitiate the gods.37 Meanwhile, they were to wear awe-inspiring clothing so as to impress the populace with their grandeur as representatives of the gods.38 In addition, Julian imposed restrictions on priests’ lives as well. They were to steer clear from any taint of politics.39 When not in the temple they were not to wear fancy clothing40 or attend the licentious theater or come close to a dancer or a mime.41 They were to act philanthropically, sharing all their goods with good men, including the poor, their enemies, and even with prisoners.42 For Julian, to perform philanthropy was to revere the gods.43 He was likely inspired by the competitiveness of Christian charity, which brought many new people to their faith.44 Julian’s priests may not have possessed the technē necessary to be theurgists, but by conducting themselves like theioi andres their purity at least left open the potential of becoming theurgists in the future. This technē might also come from exegesis of divine wisdom, another aspect of Iamblichus’s theurgy. The philosophical curriculum Julian mandates for priests when they are not engaged in sacrifice does not contain theurgical texts.45 But they might contain principles of interpretation relevant to theurgy. In addition, according to Gregory Nazianzen, Julian

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also sought to educate by building schools and by bringing in interpreters of Hellenic doctrines to establish the correct form of worship.46 It is possible that Julian intended to supplement priestly education and to train them in the technē of theurgy. These interpreters likely were Neoplatonists like Salutius, whom Julian commissioned to write On the Gods and the Universe. To sum up, Iamblichean theurgy should not be ruled out as a source for Julian’s priestly program. The Christian priestly hierarchy may have been a relevant model for Julian’s priestly administration, but if so, it also was structured to service the ethnē and was supervised by provincial priests. Julian faced a number of other challenges to the successful implementation of his priestly program. Perhaps the largest was the poor standing of priests in that era. This was driven by the weakening of public cult and the decline of cities more generally in the third century. As cities and temples decayed, so too their authorized representatives, the priests, became poorer. Charged with the construction and repair of sacred monuments and with the funding of festivals and sacrifices, priests had enormous expenses. For centuries, cities had drawn on their sacred funds and civic funds to defray these costs, and priests received portions of sacrificial meat.47 These were now decimated. With fewer people sacrificing, priests became poorer and were unable to fulfill their duties. By Julian’s day few priests could afford to devote themselves full-time to the priesthood. In this situation Julian was forced to consider how he might fund his program. James Fleming reveals the enormity of the financial burden this program entailed. If every priest sacrificed twice per day—Julian’s minimum requirement—the number of sacrifices for each priest would reach 730 each year. At three times per day, that number reaches 1,095.48 That is a staggering number when multiplied by the number of temples in any given city and countryside. The innovative nature of Julian’s priestly program and the challenges he faced among Hellenes not inclined to sacrifice or to respect priests called out for persuasive models. Julian turned to the Jews. He knew that priests occupied an important place in biblical tradition, and he was familiar with Greek philosophical writings characterizing Jews as priests and philosophers. As a former Christian he likely also knew that bishops sometimes claimed to be High Priests.49 Most important, in the Jews he had a people ready to restart their sacrificial cult with priests as their leaders. J U L IA N , J U D E A N S A S P R I E S T S , A N D J U D E A N P R I E ST S I N J U L IA N ’ S W R I T I N G S

Modeling Behavior for Hellenic Priests Julian’s priestly program is closely connected with Against the Galileans. Within days if not weeks of writing that work, Julian writes about the priestly life (hieratikon bion) in his Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, employing the same language as

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he had used in Galileans.50 At the very beginning of the third part of Galileans, at fragment 58 (= 238C), where Julian begins to attack Christians for not keeping Judean ancestral law, he writes that the Hebrews have “observances which demand the priestly life and profession [biou kai proaireseōs hieratikēs].” This statement not only acknowledges the role of priests in the ancient lives of the Hebrews (e.g., the priestly “profession”) but also recognizes that Jews behave like priests with respect to their practices (e.g. the “priestly life”). It is possible that Julian is drawing on the writings of the ancient philosopher Theophrastus, a fourth-century-b.c.e. student of Aristotle, whom Julian read and who claimed that ethnic Judeans are philosophers by descent and speak to each other about God while observing the stars and praying to God.51 If so, Julian goes beyond Theophrastus’s ideas in acknowledging a separate role for priests in Hebrew society. The Judean ethnos had long been governed by a High Priest who served in the Jerusalem Temple. Such leadership showed proper respect for priests. Given Julian’s effort to link the Judeans with the ancient Hebrews in the third part of Galileans, one would expect that the role of priests and that of the priestly life would apply equally to Judeans.52 If Theodorus had read Galileans along with Julian’s letter to him he would have seen that Julian used the same language to describe the priestly life, and he may have concluded that Judeans modeled appropriate priestly behavior. Julian’s characterization of the Patriarchs as Chaldeans (Gal. fr. 86 = 354B) skilled in theurgy and knowledgeable about sacrifice suggests that Abraham possesses important knowledge of the crucial priestly function of sacrifice. Julian even posits that Abraham’s sacrificial knowledge and divination via the Chaldeans is comparable to Hellenic practice.53 Certainly the Bible contains knowledge of theurgic sacrifice. Julian interprets God’s acceptance of Abel’s sacrifice as His preference for animated beings since they participate in life.54 Meanwhile, Abraham’s sacrificial knowledge and even Moses’s special knowledge in all forms of sacrifice share a trait also reportedly possessed by Iamblichus.55 This leaves open the possibility that Judean sacrifice also contains elements of theurgy. Theophrastus’s description of ethnic Judeans as priests who practice philosophy finds expression in Julian’s characterization of Judeans as a scholē in his Letter to Theodorus.56 As we have seen, philosophy was to play an important role in the lives of Julian’s priests. Theophrastus not only describes Judeans as philosophers but characterizes them as engaging in philosophy as priests in the Temple. It is this perception of Judeans as philosophers that causes Julian to focus on the Jewish school’s doctrine of not eating pork (or anything strangled) or an animal with the blood in it as an example for Hellenes. This passage was likely taken from On Abstinence 2.161, which Porphyry wrote to a Roman senator advising him how to achieve salvation by leading a Pythagorean life. Porphyry employs the Hebrews’ abstention from eating pigs as an ethnic example of a wise people who discriminate in their choice of nourishment.57 Here the Judean is an example of the theios

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anēr who keeps a restrictive diet. In Julian’s program, dietary restrictions cause the soul to focus on itself and prepare it for its ascent to the One. Julian explains that Jews are willing to die rather than violate their laws. If in the Fragment of a Letter to a Priest (Ep. 89b) ancestral laws are given by theurgists—the lawgivers—then these laws have special esoteric wisdom. This allows Julian to suggest that Judean dietary laws may be a source for Hellenic law.58 Judean dietary practices are also used to shape Hellenic practice in Galileans fragment 72 (= 305D–306A). There Judean private sacrifice with prayer consecrates the meat Judeans eat, and thus Julian claims that everything Judeans eat is consecrated (panta esthiousin hiera). In the previous chapter, we saw that these passages are sandwiched between Julian’s statements that Judeans and Hellenes share several precepts in common. The sanctification of their food through prayer and sacrifice is therefore modeled as proper practice for Hellenes and particularly for priests engaging in the priestly life, who should also eat consecrated meat. This should be read with Julian’s demand that Hellenic priests engage in frequent sacrifice and prayer in Epistle 89b, which would produce plenty of consecrated meat. Julian’s Judeans model priestly behavior in other ways as well. Julian argues that Judeans maintain their purity laws and engage in purifications in Galileans 306B just as he requires of his priests. In response to Christian claims that blood sacrifices are polluting acts (305B), Julian argues that Moses did not see sacrifice as polluting.59 Julian may be following theurgic Neoplatonist reasoning here. Iamblichus argued that the fire consuming the sacrifice purifies the matter, turning it into a pure substance. Reading this into Galileans fragment 72 (= 305B–306A), just as Aaron’s sacrifice on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16) was not polluting but had expiatory effect, so too Judean private sacrifice with prayer was a purificatory act that also consecrated the food.60 Therefore, Judeans in their homes act like priests by engaging in sacrifice with prayer and eating the meat of their sacrifice, which is consecrated and therefore pure. Julian also presents Judeans as a priestly people who pray and sacrifice in private and in public. This comes close to his request that his priests pray and offer private and public sacrifice in Fragment of a Letter to a Priest (302A) as well as sacrifice three times a day (302B), practices that were not standard behavior for most Hellenes. In addition, Julian’s regulation of private life was highly unusual and restrictive. Theodorus would have recognized the emperor’s use of Jews, because he too was trained as a theurgic Neoplatonist and may have been familiar with Porphyry’s use of Jews as a source for Hellenic wisdom. Given Julian’s unusual attempt to regulate private priestly life in Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, it was important that he provide justifying sources for such restrictions. Jewish behavior in private offers such an example. One of Julian’s key criteria for selecting priests is that they engage in acts of philanthropy. In his Fragment of a Letter to a Priest this is mandated by Zeus Xenios, who

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welcomed strangers.61 It is unclear whether Julian thought of Jews as giving philanthropy. The Letter to Arsacius says so, but it has been proven to be inauthentic.62 Nevertheless, it is at least possible that its content reflects an authentic letter, especially when we consider that Julian’s statements about philanthropy in his Fragment of a Letter to a Priest are congruent with his comments in the Letter to Arsacius.63 Julian promotes philanthropy among his priests in the Fragment of a Letter to a Priest.64 Julian’s presentation of Judean circumcision is found in a passage only attested by Cyril of Alexandria (Against Julian 9.13.7–20). Cyril claims to respond to Julian’s statement that Judeans observe the same laws as the Hellenes and that circumcision is approved by the Egyptian priests, the Chaldeans, and the Saracens. Julian’s association of circumcision with Egyptian priests may suggest that circumcision contains some sort of theurgic wisdom and that circumcision is a valid ancestral law. Carine Van Liefferinge argues that Julian raises Jewish theurgy purely for political purposes, to express the superiority of Jews over Christians in this circumstance.65 Indeed, there is some politics at play. In the first half of Galileans, Julian implies Hebrews do not have theurgy, because they adhere to a literal reading of their myths.66 Then in the final part of Galileans, fragment 86 (= 354B–C), Julian aligns the Patriarchs with Hellenes by linking them to the Chaldeans.67 What Van Liefferinge misses is the role of Galileans in shaping Hellenic orthopraxy. Judean Priestly Gifts: A Model for Funding Julian’s Priestly Program Julian perhaps hoped that priests could live off parts of the sacrificial animals.68 In reality, with so little sacrifice that was not the case. The enormous costs of the emperor’s priestly and sacrificial program required a solution. Here and there Julian could help by absolving priests of taxes and exempting temples’ lands from imperial taxation for a few years.69 Ultimately, another solution would have to be found. Jews’ support of their priests was a model Julian may have found helpful. In Galileans fragment 72 (= 305D–306A) Julian writes that the right shoulder of every Judean private sacrifice is given to their priests as first fruits.70 Within this pericope, private offerings of first fruits is meant to mirror public offerings of a first-fruits sacrifice to God in the Temple, a phrase Julian also uses in discussing Abel’s sacrifice to God.71 This is a practice Julian likely witnessed. Deuteronomy 18:3, read in conjunction with Deuteronomy 12:21, mandated that the arm, the cheeks, and the maw be given to the priests on any slaughter of an animal for the purposes of consumption.72 It is also possible that some Jews thought they were sacrificing. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Julian was not likely familiar with this passage, since it was not one that Church leaders ever commented on. The fact that Julian does not mention the passage and the absence of the cheeks and the maw among the gifts given to the priests suggests this is something Julian witnessed or about which he had bona fide information. Not all Jews necessarily kept the finer points of Deuteronomy 18:3. The Babylonian Talmud claims Rabbi Hisda punished the butchers of

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the Huzal Valley for failing to donate these priestly gifts.73 The passage imagines rabbinic control and the ability to enforce biblical Law, but it also suggests that not all Jews followed the law of Deuteronomy 18:3. Julian is the only other source to suggest that the law of Deuteronomy 18:3 was observed. Nevertheless, we know from John Chrysostom that Jews in Antioch observed dietary laws. Since Deuteronomy 18:3 was bound up with the preparation of kosher meat, it is possible that some Jews in Antioch kept this law as well. Most likely Julian, or his source, witnessed Jewish ritual slaughter with the partial gifting of the shoulder, or they simply overlooked the two smaller priestly gifts of the cheeks and the maw. The gifting of the right shoulder, in particular, was likely normal practice. Even though in neither the Masoretic text nor the Septuagint does Deuteronomy 18:3 specify which shoulder is to be offered as a priestly gift, later tradition shows that priestly gifts from the slaughter of an animal for consumption always specified the right shoulder.74 This would have come about because of the similarity between the rituals in Leviticus 7:32–34 and Deuteronomy 18:3, which led to a process of conflation. Evidence of this conflation can be found in the Temple Scroll. Over time, this became Jewish practice.75 The Jewish practice of gifting part of a sacrifice to priests was useful in a couple of ways. Where he could, Julian relied on common societal touchstones to support his program. To support care for strangers, Julian offered Odysseus as a model of care for the stranger in his Fragment of a Letter to a Priest.76 Any Hellene with an education (paideia) knew Homer’s works and would have recognized and appreciated Julian’s use of his idioms. But much of Julian’s program was an innovation cloaked by ancestral laws. Financial support of priests was not easily sustained by Homer. In places like Antioch, where Jewish practices and Scripture were valued for their antiquity, Julian’s Judeans could model such behavior for Hellenes and act as sources to authenticate Julian’s program. Their regular sacrifice in private and gifting of first fruits to priests mirrors Julian’s demand that priests sacrifice regularly in Fragment of a Letter to a Priest77 and that Hellenes also do so.78 The model of Judean sacrifice and gifting to priests might sustain his program. Philip Alexander argues that the funding of priests became more diffuse after the Temple’s destruction in 70 c.e., meaning greater numbers of priests benefited from priestly gifts than ever before, since these were collected by more priests than the few who had been in the Temple.79 Although we have no other evidence of this practice in Antioch, Julian’s description of Judeans’ offering the right shoulder of a private sacrifice to a priest may be evidence that these laws were kept. Judean Priests and the Patriarch: Modeling Ideal Leadership for Hellenes Julian’s main request in the Letter to the Community of the Jews is that Judeans pray on his behalf.80 However, the request is made within the context of a return of

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Judeans to Jerusalem, which the emperor mentions toward the end of his letter and which is an allusion to the rebuilding of the Temple, where Julian will gather with Judeans to worship the Judean God after his victory in Persia. As I argue below in the appendix, this represents the restoration of Jews as Judeans to their former status in the empire and follows the emperor’s ethnological arguments in Against the Galileans. Judeans will have back not only their land but also their Temple, priests, and cult. With this restoration they will be able to resume their sacrifice on behalf of the emperor to their God just as they had in the Second Temple Period. In the meantime, in the absence of the Temple, Julian seeks their prayers. Although he never uses the word “priest,” priests are clearly not far from his mind. We can detect their presence in his portrayal of Judean worship, which is similar to biblical images of the priest praying with arms outstretched toward heaven and focused in concentrated prayer on the worship of God in the Temple.81 This is how Julian describes all prayer in Galileans fragment 11 (= 69B), and it corresponds with the emperor’s depiction of Judeans as priests in Galileans. As we saw in the last chapter, Judean concentrated prayer in this letter is a model for Hellenes and, once sacrifice was added at the Temple, would animate the sacrifice. Now that he was rebuilding the Temple and returning Jews as Judeans to Jerusalem he required a priestly caste to run the Temple. In the appendix I argue that Julian’s removal of taxes on Judeans should be seen in light of his policy of an abatement of taxes on cities in order to revive their civic cults but also more generally as Julian’s attempt to free up Judeans, presented as priests, to engage in worship fulltime, as Julian himself says. Removing these taxes would free up finances necessary to avoid working. This is not dissimilar to Julian’s exemption of Hellenic priests from the financially burdensome curiae.82 Among Julian’s reduction of Judean taxes is his request that the Judean Patriarch forgo his apostolē tax. This was an internal Jewish matter not yet mandated by Roman law and over which Julian had no jurisdiction.83 The emperor’s request would have been a sensitive issue in Antioch, where the Patriarch was revered. We should expect that Julian negotiated with the Patriarch over the removal of his tax. As we will see soon, one of the bases on which the Patriarch claimed authority to collect taxes was apparently that he stood in the position of the High Priest and thus demanded taxes as a priestly gift. The removal of the Patriarch’s tax opened the door for priests of the Temple to begin collecting their half-shekel tax and other priestly gifts. Jewish funding models of priests in the Temple offered Julian a ready mechanism to pay for the upkeep of the priests and their cult, and would have enabled him to restrict his spending in Jerusalem to the restoration of the Temple and the resettlement of Jews as Judeans in Jerusalem.84 He also could show Hellenes a model for how their own priests and temples could be funded. The Patriarch clearly benefited from his negotiations with the emperor. Not only does Julian show the Patriarch great respect by calling him adelphon, but he also

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appears to elevate his status. The term aidesimōtaton (“most venerable”) is likely equivalent to the Latin illustris and clarissimus, terms that were used to describe the Praetorian Prefect, and is similar to the term spectabilis later used in Roman law to describe the Patriarch.85 This position may have come with imperial funding, which would have lessened the financial loss to the Patriarch.86 More important, the Patriarch now had legal status in Roman law. The dispute about whether Julian actually raised the Patriarch’s status is tied to the authenticity of the Letter to the Community of the Jews, which I argue in the appendix has an authentic core.87 The Patriarch’s raised status would have satisfied the Patriarch and his supporters in Antioch and in Palestine, and this letter was measured to meet the sensibilities of its audience. Indeed, Julian needed the support of the Patriarch for his program in Jerusalem and, based on the inscriptions and images on the synagogue floor at Hammat Tiberias, there is some evidence that he received such support.88 The support of the Patriarch for the emperor’s Jerusalem endeavor notwithstanding, Jewish priests clearly stood to benefit from the new dispensation. A return of priests to the Temple would renew priestly leadership. With the Patriarch’s elevation in Roman law, it seems that Julian had in mind a Judean dyarchy in which the Patriarch was charged with all political and administrative affairs and the priests were responsible for the Judean cult in the Temple.89 This model has been explained by David Goodblatt and found at the beginning of the Second Temple Period in the rule of Zerubavel, scion of the House of David, and Yehoshua the son of Yehozadak, the High Priest of the line of Zadok.90 Julian likely was familiar with this model from the Books of Haggai and Zechariah.91 The Judean dyarchy modeled Julian’s ideal leadership. Under Julian, Rome was led by a High Priest, the pontifex maximus, and his priests, who handled all cultic matters, and by magistrates, who handled all political and administrative matters. Julian sought to raise the priests’ profile.92 Given the reality with which priests were perceived and the need to raise their profile, Judean priests were useful tools that could model cultic leadership for Hellenes while Jews modeled an ethnos that revered its priests. U N D E R M I N I N G T H E C H R I S T IA N A N D J EW I SH O R D E R S : T H E J EW I SH H IG H P R I E S T A N D J EW I SH P R I E ST S I N C H R I ST IA N I T Y A N D J U DA I SM

Julian’s plan to restore the Temple and its priests to the apex of ethnic Judean life would have had implications for both Christians and Jews. Julian’s stance on Jewish priests would undermine Christian bishops who claimed the authority of the High Priest as well as Jewish leaders who either claimed to step into the shoes of the High Priest or claimed the priestly gifts for themselves. While I suspect that Julian was happy to weaken the bishops, Jewish leadership concerned him only inasmuch as it was instrumental to advancing his Hellenizing program.

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Christian ethnic leadership has roots in Paul’s letters but also was justified on the absence of the Jewish High Priest and his Temple. Claims of the bishop to stand in for the High Priest have their earliest expression in Paul. In 1 Corinthians he analogizes the Old Testament priesthood with Christian leadership.93 Paul’s analogy continues to shape the thought and practice of the later Church and is developed by Church leaders. Christians turn to 1 Corinthians 9 for their understanding of the bishop as a priest.94 This is particularly the case in Syrian Christianity, where in literature from the second century through the fourth biblical High Priests and priests model the bishop. In the eighth chapter of the Apostolic Tradition, thought to be written in Syria and later than the rest of the work, not only does the theme of priests determine the tasks of the bishop, but the prayer beseeches God to grant the bishop the spirit of the High Priesthood.95 By the third century we have a Syrian Christian document claiming that the bishop is the High Priest. Book 9 of the Didascalia Apostolorum says that every bishop is a High Priest. A century later, the Syrian work the Apostolic Constitutions (2.26.4), likely written in Antioch, also calls the bishop the High Priest.96 He is owed the right to live off the revenue of the Church.97 Bryan Alan Stewart identifies a bishop-as-priest typology in Constitutions 1.6. Just as Israel and the Tabernacle typify the Church, so Israelite priestly leadership parallels the Christian episcopal leadership, so that the bishop can be called a priest.98 In the fourth century, Eusebius of Caesarea uses Temple priests as a model for his Christian bishops. Eusebius’s use of Christian priests appears to be bound up in his supersessionist argument that Christians rather than the Jews are the true Hebrews and therefore heirs to Abraham’s Covenant with God. This outlook allows him to wield the Jewish priests as he sees fit,99 and he therefore uses Old Testament priestly models of leadership to undergird the authority of the Christian bishops.100 Meanwhile, among aspiring Jewish leaders, the legacy of the priests was a tempting source of authority to co-opt. First, however, they would have to deal with the continuing presence of priests in the era after 70 c.e.101 Jewish priests likely remained a cohesive communal force that retained a certain amount of power even in the absence of the Temple. There is evidence that they continued to maintain their role as judges, were expert interpreters of the law, collected tithes and other priestly gifts, maintained their ritual purity, and were leaders of liturgical worship. Recent work by Naftali Cohn demonstrates that priests vied with the rabbis for authority over ritual law and ritual practice in the Tannaitic period (first through early third centuries c.e.). Attempts to co-opt priestly prerogatives pick up in the later Amoraic period (from the mid-third through the fifth century). The presence and power of priests in this period is hotly debated. On the one hand, Steven Fine, Zeev Weiss, and others doubt that the priests were a significant distinct group in this period,102 whereas Oded Irshai and Rachel Elior argue that priests maintained a distinct identity and

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competed for power, even rising to lead the Jewish people after the demise of the Patriarchate in the early fifth century.103 In my opinion, the evidence suggests that priests maintained a distinct presence, although other groups, especially the Patriarchate in Palestine, appear to be more entrenched in their leadership.104 It is precisely in this moment when Julian writes about priests. A dominant feature of this period is the attempt made both by the rabbis and the Patriarchate to control priests,105 to strip away their traditional roles, and even to appropriate their priestly prerogatives,106 all for the purpose of aggregating power at the expense of the priests. In some cases, the rabbis seek to replace the priests outright by ignoring them. The somewhat later fifth-century midrash Leviticus Rabbah is purportedly a commentary on the biblical book of Leviticus, in which priests play a starring role. Burton Visotzky demonstrates that the rabbis largely ignore priests and the cult,107 and even seek to replace the priesthood outright.108 Michael Swartz demonstrates how the priests were diminished by the rabbis in mishnah Yoma and tosefta Yoma but praised in the Avodah service by people who took the very same narratives and put them to different effects.109 Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that the priests continued to claim tithes. According to one story in the Palestinian Talmud, some priests took their tithes by force.110 The sages responded by altering the laws for declaring tithed goods. While I suspect priests were real interlocutors with the rabbis, I am more interested in how priestly prerogatives are appropriated by rabbis and the Patriarch to claim authority. The Patriarch of Palestine is another Jewish leader who attempts to legitimize his power by claiming that he is the High Priest. Most often the Patriarch’s authority rests on his claim of being a scion of the House of David. However, we have three different sources that, when read together, suggest that the Patriarch also claimed priestly prerogatives. All postdate Julian, but only by ten to thirty years. Only a decade after Julian, Epiphanius writes that Joseph, an apostle of the Patriarch, went to Cilicia during Constantine’s reign to depose and appoint “synagogue heads, priests, elders, and hazzanim” and to collect “tithes and the first fruits” (ta epidekata kai tas aparchas) from Jews in that province on behalf of the Patriarchate.111 Although some have questioned the authenticity of Epiphanius’s narrative here, it corresponds with other evidence suggesting that the Patriarch claimed these priestly dues.112 Specifically, there are two parallel rabbinic sources recording that during a sermon, Rabbi Yose of Ma’on blasted priests for not devoting themselves to study. The priests responded that they did not have time to study, because the Patriarch had seized their priestly dues, and so presumably they were forced to work to earn a living.113 At this, Rabbi Yose attacked the Patriarch for violating biblical law. In response, the Patriarch then harassed Rabbi Yose. Scholars debate whether this narrative reflects rabbinic anger at the Patriarchate, in which case the priests represent the rabbis, or whether there are real priests whose priestly dues the Patriarch usurps.114 What they undoubtedly demonstrate is that the Patriarch claimed the priestly dues.

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Similarly, preaching in the 380s in Antioch, John Chrysostom calls out the Patriarchs for attempting to play the part of the priests when they are no priests at all. Chrysostom states to the Jews that “those among you who are today called Patriarchs are not priests at all. They act the part of priests and are playing a role as if they are on stage, but they cannot carry the role, because they are so far removed from both the reality and even the pretense of the priesthood because they do not possess the priestly garments, anointing, or sacrificial liturgy.”115 Although one may question in what way the Patriarchs acted like priests, there seem to be three different sources claiming that the Patriarch usurped the priestly roles or prerogatives. I am particularly persuaded by these descriptions of the Patriarch, because rabbinic sources are confirmed by Church sources. In any case, we may conclude that Julian’s restoration of Jewish priests was bound to stir up trouble. C O N C LU SIO N : T H E I M PAC T O F J U L IA N ’ S U SE O F J U D E A N P R I E ST S I N A N T IO C H

Julian’s description of Judean priests provides some support for the claim that Julian’s priestly program was in part inspired by theurgic Neoplatonism. Certainly his use of Judeans to explain his priestly program would have been understood by many of his Neoplatonist chief priests. To these people the Jews were useful to think through Julian’s Hellenizing priestly program. For Theodorus, the chief priest of Asia (which likely included Antioch), it also may have provided an opportunity to think about how he might use Jews qua Judeans to convince local priests to behave as priests. On the other hand, the rebuilding of the Temple and the restoration of the Jewish cult threatened to disrupt how Christians thought about and used Jewish priests in their own project of legitimation. Meanwhile, Julian’s use of Judean priests could only further encourage the attraction of Judaism to Christians attracted to their “Jewish” past. Rabbinic silence on the episode of Julian’s program speaks volumes. It may betray fear that they would become redundant in the face of growing priestly power.116 Meanwhile, they could not speak out because Jewish support for Julian’s rebuilding project was most likely strong. To solidify the new role of Judean priests, Julian would have to rebuild the Temple and restore the Judean cult. The next chapter will focus on Julian’s various statements about the Judean God of Jerusalem as part of his effort to define the ethnic gods who protected the Roman oikoumenē and will consider that effort’s impact on Christianity.

6

The God of Jerusalem and His Temple Fixing the Jewish God in Julian’s Cosmos

Correctly identifying the gods who guided and protected the Roman oikoumenē was essential for emperors in the fourth century. Both Emperor Constantine, his biographer Eusebius of Caesarea, and later Julian shared the same concern of articulating the correct divine order that would secure the empire. Constantine convened the Council of Nicea in 325 and gently forced a unified articulation of Jesus Christ as the Platonic Divine Intellect, who shared the same substance with the Father. He then turned to Jerusalem to make manifest his allegiance to this god by building the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and placing his palace within its compound. A few decades later, as Emperor Julian was establishing his own divine order and repairing the mischaracterizations of his Flavian predecessors, Constantine and Constantius II, he returned to Jerusalem and recharacterized the god of that city for his own ends. This chapter explores Julian’s attempt to fix the Judean God within his cosmic order. Julian’s effort flows from his ethnographic discourse and ethnic argumentation in Galileans, where every ethnos has an ethnarchic god appointed by the Demiurge. These ethnarchai bestowed on their peoples ancestral laws that were executed in their temples. In this context the Jewish God is the Judean god. He is depicted as a weak god and only one among a group of lower, ethnic gods. This characterization of the Judean God allows Julian to control the image of the Jews as Judeans and their God with the goal of containing Christian universalism and repairing the cosmic order of his Flavian predecessors. At the same time, Julian draws on Neoplatonist articulations of the Judean God in a manner that enables him to place this God high up within his philosophically Neoplatonist order and in a way that allows him the flexibility to gain the support of Jews and pagan monotheists and henotheists. These multiple expressions about the 101

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Judean God reveal some ambivalence as Julian mediates between various Neoplatonist statements about His nature, and as he struggles over how close to Hellenes he should hold Judeans and their God. Over the centuries Roman emperors were interested in identifying the God of Jerusalem. In the aftermath of the third Jewish Revolt (132–35) in seventy years, Hadrian sought to quell political ethnic Judeanness and so erased the Judean God, along with the Judean city of Jerusalem, which he rebuilt to exclude the Judean Temple and renamed Aelia Capitolina.1 However, it was essential that the god of the city be recognizable, and so Hadrian drew on a library of knowledge about the God of Jerusalem that recognized Him as the Highest God and named Him Jupiter Capitolinus.2 Since Jupiter was Hadrian’s personal deity, naming Aelia Capitolina’s god Jupiter also worked to tie the new city and the new Province of Palaestina more tightly into the fabric of the Roman empire and to Hadrian’s person directly.3 Constantine’s founding of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher two centuries later was a double move away from the traditional understanding of Jerusalem’s god. The placement of the church on the site of a Hellenic temple—which one later Christian thought to be Jupiter’s temple, the supreme god of both Hadrian and, later, Diocletian—suggests that it came to signify Christianity’s victory over Hellenism.4 At the same time, the new church faced the ruined mound of the Jewish Temple.5 In this way the Church of the Holy Sepulcher defined Jesus as the Supreme God, who not only replaced the Roman empire’s supreme god but also correctly defined the “true” God over and against the one understood by the Jews. The building of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was conceived at the Council of Nicea in 325 and in the wake of Constantine’s defeat of Licinius in 324. When Constantine absorbed the eastern half of the empire in which homoian Christianity thrived, he sought a unifying cosmic vision that would support his rule.6 As earthly rule was increasingly justified by a matching divine realm in the fourth century, defining the cosmic order became a matter of paramount importance. While the Nicene Creed secured an agreement on the nature of the divine being who protected Constantine and secured Rome, the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher ran parallel to the theologically unifying creed, manifesting and declaring this Supreme God’s power by physical means.7 The emperor made sure to build an imperial palace on the site, declaring his affiliation with its God.8 Ten years later, the emperor chose the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to declare both the unity of the Church and to define his plans for his dynastic succession. The one God, Jesus Christ, was to mirror the one emperor and his family. To highlight the unity of God and the empire, Constantine insisted that Arius be accepted back into the Church at the dedication ceremony. The timing of the dedication ceremony was laden with meaning. It was held on the day Solomon purportedly dedicated the First Temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 8).9 Such symbolism boldly declared the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as the successor to

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the God of Jerusalem’s Temple, the Jewish Temple on Mount Moriah. Eusebius’s dedication speech, On Christ’s Sepulcher, identifies Jesus with the Logos and with Wisdom in Proverbs 8.10 Just as Eusebius argued that Christians were the true Hebrews and that the Jewish people were a defunct ethnos in Preparation and in Book 1 of Demonstration, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was dedicated as a symbol of the Covenant of Abraham that Christians now inherited in the shadow of the destroyed Temple Mount. J U L IA N A N D T H E G O D O F J E RU S A L E M

Like his predecessors, Julian sought a unifying definition of the divine cosmos that would uphold his sole rule and repair the Flavian dynasty’s mischaracterization of the divine order.11 As a philosopher and an emperor who sought the welfare of the Roman oikoumenē Julian sought to identify the proper hierarchy of ethnic divinities that Rome encompassed who had always protected and blessed the Roman empire. In late 362 or early 363, with the Persian campaign only weeks away and success there dependent on the correct propitiation of these gods, this project became urgent. In this context, Jerusalem became a site where Julian could physically represent his own cosmological vision and correct the errors of Constantine and Constantius II, made manifest at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. At the same time, he could realize his ethnological arguments about Judeans and Christians qua Galileans in Against the Galileans, where Judean prayer, sacrifice, and priests model ethnic worship for Hellenes (fr. 67–72 = 299B–306B). Defining the God of Jerusalem was essential to complete the process of ethnicization of the Judeans, since every ethnos had a land, a temple, a god, and ancestral laws. It was accompanied by a re-Judeanization of Jerusalem, to which Julian begins to turn his mind in his Letter to the Community of the Jews. As a result, Julian’s definition of the Judean God should be understood as a two-part process that is inherently one. By articulating his divine cosmos and fixing the Judean God within it, he necessarily corrects the mischaracterizations of his Flavian predecessors. Similarly, the rebuilding of the Temple should be conceived not solely as an anti-Christian endeavor but rather as part of Julian’s realization of his Judean ethnological arguments in Galileans and his realignment of the divine order that forced him to reckon with Constantine’s definition of Christ as the leading and only God of the empire. The timing of Julian’s attempt to fix the Judean God in his pantheon and the Flavian context suggests that we should not brush aside Julian’s definition of this god or the Temple’s rebuilding as just another instance of his resuscitation of a city and its cult, as so many historians have done.12 Consider that this project only commenced a full year after Julian began restoring temples across the empire. Also Constantine’s involvement in Jerusalem made this city an extremely important site where Julian must fulfill his divine charge to repair the Flavians’ mischaracterization of the divine

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order. This endeavor occurred at the very moment he was thinking through his cosmic order in Hymn to King Helios. To understand the place of the Judean God, one must wrestle with King Helios. The emperor presents the Hymn to King Helios on Helios’s birthday, December 25, 362. It is immediately followed up by the commissioned work of Salutius, whom Julian hired to pen a more common version. King Helios presents a muddled cosmos. It resembles most the Middle Platonist cosmos of Porphyry and Numenius, but it is ostensibly modeled on Iamblichus of Chalcis’s theurgic Neoplatonist tripartite cosmos, without the more complicated aspects of the Iamblichean system.13 At its apex is Plato’s One, who sits among the intelligible gods. The One imprints himself on the Divine Intellect (Helios) and brings him forth as the perfect impression of himself. Helios sits in the middle of this tripartite cosmos among the intellectual gods, midway between the intelligible gods and the visible gods.14 He transports the life energy of the intelligible world to the visible world and plays the same role among the intellectual gods as the One does among the intelligible gods. He is complete by himself and not mixed with other gods.15 The other gods occupying this divine realm are not the focus of King Helios. However, we know Julian engaged in a process of syncretization in which local gods were matched with the existing Roman imperial order.16 In the late antique empire this synthesization was particularly popular among Neoplatonists, who strove to reach a synthetic divine order that matched the earthly empire.17 At about the same time as he published King Helios Julian began preparations for writing Against the Galileans. As he encountered the Jews in the writings of Celsus via Origen, Porphyry, and Eusebius, and as he formed his ethnological arguments, a key question arose: Where did the Judean God fit in his divine realm? The answer to this inquiry would have been all the more important as he made plans to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple. Such efforts were inseparable from the fixing of the Jewish God as the Judean God in Julian’s cosmic order.18 Julian writes about the Judean God in five different works in early 363—in Galileans, the Letter to Theodorus and its other half the Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, the Letter to the Community of the Jews, and Lydus’s fragment of a letter to the Judeans. These are all published between February through April or May of 363. Sometimes the Judean God is portrayed as a local, ethnarchic god—a solely ethnic Judean god—and other times He is the Highest God or a highly placed god. These contradictory characterizations have left scholars struggling to make sense of Julian’s descriptions of the Judean God. Many choose to downplay one comment in favor of others.19 Julian’s many expressions of the Judean God’s identity give voice to Julian’s ambivalence on the one hand and also to a utilitarian approach to the Jewish God. Just as Julian can offer a different cosmic order in the Hymn to King Helios (Neoplatonist or Middle Platonist) and in Galileans (Platonist), so too he can present the Judean God differently depending on his audience.20 Julian’s definitions of the Judean God is an imperial act that is

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inherently part of his ethnological discourse and is enabled by the Neoplatonist tactic of mining Jewish sources for Hellenic wisdom. By labeling the Judean God, Julian positions Him to achieve a number of goals, including the delegitimization of the Christian God and thus the invalidation of the Christian cum Galilean ethnos. Further, Julian positions the Judean God in a manner that will allow him to create a new coalition among Judeans and Hypsistarians. This was achievable because Middle Platonists and Neoplatonists placed the Jewish God quite high up in their hierarchical divine order, and Julian naturally draws from their works, while some Hypsistarians worshipped the Jewish God as the Supreme god. P O SI T IO N I N G T H E J U D E A N G O D

Julian’s presentation of the Jewish God as the Judean ethnarchic god in the early part of Galileans drives many scholars’ analyses of His place in the cosmic order. Moved by his desire to contain Christian universalism and his need to respond to Origen’s theory for the diversity of nations, Julian employs an ethnarchic framework in which the Demiurge (tou kosmou dēmiourgos)21 assigns ethnarchic gods, matching their nature with the nature of the ethnos. As far as Julian is concerned, this explains the diversity of the nations better than the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, with which Origen refutes Celsus. Julian points out that the realities of different natures of the ethnē can be explained only by a polytheistic worldview. He uses a simplified cosmic order in Galileans in order to respond to the CelsusOrigen debate on the diversity of nations, which took place within this framework.22 In Julian’s cosmic vision, the Demiurge retains a lot of power, leaving the ethnarchic gods (ethnarchai) with very little.23 In this framework, the Hebrew and later Judean God is the god of the Hebrew and the Judean ethnos, and one among many ethnic gods. To attack Christians, Julian argues that the Judean god is weak even among his peers, having bestowed little of value on his people. This argument is remarkably similar to Celsus’s, except that Celsus treats the God of the Jews as a satrap or viceroy rather than as an ethnarch.24 Moreover, this is a small point in Celsus’s argument, whereas Julian’s ethnological arguments are a central pillar of his argument in Galileans. In keeping with this ethnological framework, the Jewish God must be an ethnarchic god under the power of the Demiurge. This both relativizes and controls the image of the Jewish God but also naturalizes Him in Julian’s cosmic order. In Galileans fragment 6 (= 49E) Julian counters Origen, Christians, and Judeans who believe that God is the Demiurge, demonstrating via Scriptures that he merely organized existing matter. This leads Julian to the following conclusion:25 Therefore it is natural to think that the God of the Hebrews [ton Hebraiōn theon] did not give birth to the whole universe [kosmou genesiourgon] with dominion over the whole, but rather, as I said before, that he is confined within limits, and that since his empire has limits we must conceive of him as only one among a crowd of the other gods.

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While this argument reduces the Jewish God to a Judean God, it is designed to contradict Christian universalist claims. Riffing on another passage from Celsus (True Doctrine, 5.41),26 Julian next entertains the possibility that the Jewish God is the Demiurge but claims that “we”—likely Neoplatonist philosophers in this instance but possibly also a wider group of Hellenes—understand this god’s true nature. Here Julian employs his divine wisdom obtained from his encounter with Zeus and Helios, which enables him to understand the true nature of the Judean God. Julian seems to play with the idea in these sections, particularly in Galileans fragment 28.8–10 (= 148C), that the Judean God is the Demiurge. The relevant passages are reproduced below: [fr. 25 = 141D] But even if He who is honored among the Hebrews really was the immediate Creator of the universe [tou kosmou dēmiourgos], our beliefs about Him are better than theirs, and He has bestowed on us greater blessings than on them. [Emphasis added.] [fr. 28 = 148B] If the direct Creator of the universe [tou kosmou dēmiourgos] is He who is proclaimed by Moses, then we have truer beliefs about Him, inasmuch as we consider Him to be the ruler of all things in general, but besides Him there are national gods [ethnarchai] who are subordinate to Him and are like viceroys of a king, each administering separately his own province. [fr. 28.8–10 = 148C] And moreover, we do not make Him the sectional rival of the gods whose station is subordinate to His. But if Moses first pays honor to a sectional god, and then makes the master of the whole universe contrast with His power, then it would be better to believe as we do; for we recognize the God of All, though not without regard also for the God of Moses; this is better, I say, than to honor one who has been assigned the lordship over a very small portion, instead of the Creator of all things [tou pantōn . . . dēmiourgou]. [Emphasis and translation my own.]

Julian’s main concern in fragment 28.8–10 (= 148C) is that people understand the true cosmic order, which is polytheistic. The preservation of this order requires a polytheistic approach, and any confusion between the ethnarchic gods and the Demiurge risks leading the oikoumenē to a false monotheistic order. Presumably, this is why Julian insists on the power of the Demiurge over the ethnarchic gods. Since the cosmic order justifies the earthly order and Julian identifies himself with the Demiurge (Helios), it is essential that Helios and therefore the emperor himself maintain order over the ethnē and their gods. This is also why Julian assigns Helios as the ethnic divinity of Rome. The Romans rank first in the ethnocosmic order. Their earthly rule flows from their association with the most powerful god, Helios. Yet Julian plays with the notion that the Judean God may also be associated with the Demiurge. His use of the optative in fragment 25 (= 141D) and again in fragment 28 (= 148B) is a statement declaring the possibility that the Judean God may, in fact, be the Creator of the whole universe. Julian allows his readers to

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entertain the idea that the Judean God is, in fact, the Creator but that Jews and Christians simply do not understand Him. This context explains why Julian’s main criticism of Judeans even in the final part of Galileans and in his other works is their monotheism. In these sections, Julian offers the reader a bridge to the final part of Galileans, where the Judean God is presented as a “great god” whom Julian worships. The third part of Galileans forms the basis for all of Julian’s other comments about the Judean God both here and in the Letter to Theodorus, the Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, and the two letters to the Judeans. The image Julian presents of the Judean God in these works is very different from what we have seen in the passages above. Despite their depiction of the Judean God as a powerful god, each one is slightly different from the rest. In Galileans fragment 86 (= 354A) the Judean God is a “great god.” In the Letter to Theodorus, he is even the “greatest God, who governs the world of sense.” In the Letter to the Community of the Jews He is the Highest God and the Demiurge, and in the fragment preserved by John Lydus, He is “the Most High God.” How can we square these statements with the earlier statements of Galileans and with each other? All these musings about the Judean God are highly positive. This appears to be derived from Neoplatonists like Porphyry who rank the Jewish God as the Supreme God or as the Demiurge.27 Iamblichus also ranks the Jewish God highly, although as we will soon see as the Demiurge of the visible world. Neoplatonists merely continue a long tradition of Hellenes who rank the Jewish God highly.28 We have seen already that Julian had mused over the possibility that the Judean God is the Creator of the universe in Galileans fragment 28 (= 148C). Now, as he is about to close out Galileans, he describes the Judean God as a “great and powerful” god. Fragment 86 appears in that part of Galileans where Julian uses Jews as Judeans not only to define Christians as apostates from the Jewish ethnos but also to shape Hellenic identity. [fr. 86 = 354B] And yet, I call the gods to witness, I am one of those who avoids keeping their festivals with the Judeans; but nevertheless, I venerate always the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who, were Chaldeans of a sacred race, skilled in theurgy, had learned the practice of circumcision while they dwelled as strangers with the Egyptians. And they worship a God who was always gracious to me and to those who worshipped Him as Abraham did, for he is a very great [megas . . . kai dunatos] and powerful God, but he has nothing to do with you. [My translation.]

This represents an entirely different presentation of the Judeans and their God than we saw in Part One. Julian argues that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were Chaldeans who had a better understanding of their god and how to worship Him than did later generations. What Julian ventures in Galileans fragment 86 (= 354B) and in his Letter to Theodorus is an interpretatio Neoplatonica of the Judean God and His

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people. The emperor can do this because like Porphyry, who is a source for the final part of Galileans, he arrogates to himself the right to perform a masterful interpretation of the Jews as Judeans and their God. Judeans fail to understand His true nature because they have not purified themselves like their Neoplatonist peers.29 Julian’s identification of Judeans as Chaldeans here is designed to link Jews to this most prized ethnic resource for theurgic wisdom. It equates Hebrew wisdom with Chaldean wisdom, allowing Julian to harness the Patriarchs’ worship as a source for Hellenic orthopraxy. Judean wisdom, which Julian has already linked to the widely prized Hebrew wisdom, allows Julian the flexibility of extracting Hellenic wisdom out of Judean Scripture and practices as well. Julian’s description of the Judean God in the Letter to Theodorus, his chief priest of Asia, is usually thought to be the most reliable because it is addressed to a fellow theurgic Neoplatonist, whom Julian appoints as chief priest of Asia and who studied with Julian’s mentor Maximus of Ephesus. Julian writes: But these Judeans are in part god-fearing, because they revere a god who is the most powerful and most good [onta dunatōtaton kai agathōtaton], and rules this world of sense [hos epitropeuei ton aisthēton kosmon], and, as I know, is worshipped by us also under different names. [My translation.]

This is Julian’s most detailed description of the Judean God. He is the most powerful and most good god and governs this world of sense. We will come back to analyze this statement once we have canvassed Julian’s other descriptions of the Jewish God, which share similarities. In the Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, Julian writes: [295D] In my opinion there is no reason why their god should not be a great god [ton . . . theon einai megan], even though he does not happen to have wise prophets or interpreters. [My translation.]

The great nature of the Judean God fits perfectly well with his statement in his Letter to Theodorus and in Galileans fragment 86 (= 354B) but is too vague to make a clear identification. We will now see that Julian’s characterization of the Judean God in the Letter to the Community of the Jews as the Demiurge and as the Most High God in the fragment preserved by Lydus is more defined than but different from his statement in the Letter to Theodorus. In the Letter to the Community of the Jews (no. 204 Bidez), Julian writes the following:30 And since I wish that you should prosper yet more, I have castigated my brother Iulus . . . so that you may have peace of mind everywhere . . . [and] may offer more heartfelt prayers on my behalf to the Most High God, the Creator [tōn pantōn kreittoni kai dēmiourgōi theōi], who deigned to crown me by the power of His immaculate right hand. . . . But those who are free from care rejoice with their whole hearts and offer their suppliant prayer on behalf of my imperial office to Mighty God . . . and together with you, may glorify the Most High God therein [tōi kreittoni].

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Similarly, in the fragment preserved by John Lydus, Julian writes: And King Julian, when he left for the campaign against the Persians, writing to the Jews, says as follows: “I raise with the utmost zeal the Temple of the Highest God” [tou hupsistou theou]. [My translation.]

The term tou hupsistou theou (“Most High God”) appears in the Septuagint and therefore would seem to be an ideal way to refer to the Judean God if Julian was seeking Jewish support.31 Fergus Millar writes that this epithet reflects “the current tendency to monotheistic or henotheistic beliefs well known from late Antiquity,” a tendency that may suggest he was speaking to a broader audience than simply Jews.32 What accounts for the vagaries and the constant repositioning of the Judean God? Julian’s varied labeling of the Judean God allows him the flexibility to support his rule and his Hellenizing program. So his characterization of the Judean God as the Demiurge (a term recognized by Jews in the Roman world) in the Letter to the Community of the Jews and as the Highest God in Lydus’s fragment might appeal to Jews but also possibly to Hypsistarians, who worshipped the Most High God, and to other Godfearers, and thus Julian may have hoped to establish a coalition of supporters among these three constituencies.33 Besides this appeal to Judeans and other Godfearers and Hypsistarians, some of Julian’s repositioning of the Judean God may be directed to satisfy the proclivities of his audience in each case. So the description of this god in the Letter to Theodorus as the god who “governs the world of sense” matches Iamblichus’s description of the Jewish God. This is exactly what we would expect in a letter written to a fellow theurgic Neoplatonist. Iamblichus differentiates between three demiurges: those of the noeric (intelligible), noetic (intellectual), and the visible worlds.34 Jan Opsomer explains that Plato marks a clear gradation between the demiurges. In each he is Helios. In the visible world, Helios is present by means of his copy in the visible Sun.35 Thus Julian refers to the Sun. In his commentary on Plato’s Sophist, Iamblichus calls Him the sublunar demiurge who presides over generation.36 He is not the noetic Demiurge, but He governs all visible bodies. It is not entirely clear from the Hymn to King Helios that Julian fully grasps Iamblichus’s cosmic order. There is some evidence that Julian separates between a second and a third Helios, but it is negligible.37 Statements like that found in section 151 of King Helios that Helios is the same god who governs the intellectual world and leads the sensible world suggest that Julian does not differentiate between the two. Similarly, Julian writes to Judeans using language from the Septuagint that god is the Demiurge and “the Highest God.” Such descriptions seem designed to please the ears of his audience. Still, the assemblage of Julian’s sometimes vague and potentially contradicting statements about the Judean God cannot be so easily justified. The uncertainty of

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the place of the Judean God in Julian’s cosmos suggests that Julian is ambivalent about where to place this god and may be working through this problem as he writes. I would suggest that this ambivalence is a result of where ethnic Judeans and their God fit in relation to Julian’s Hellenic gods. Julian has brought the Judean God and Judean practices dangerously close to Hellenes, nearly effacing the borders he seeks to place between Hellenes and other ethnē. Julian’s main complaint about Judeans, that they refuse to worship more than one god—which appears in Galileans fragment 58 (= 238C) and in the Letter to Theodorus (Ep. 89a.454A–B)— is a way to mark difference between Judeans and Hellenes. On the one hand, he would love to name the Judean God “the Highest God” and unite Jews and Hypsistarians and perhaps other pagan monotheists into a coalition supporting his reign. On the other hand, Julian cannot hold Jews too close, or else Hellenic identity will collapse into Jewish identity. Just as Jews qua Judeans are useful examples and sometimes sources of Hellenic wisdom, which he seeks to turn into Hellenic ancestral laws, he has to be careful to differentiate and subjugate them under Hellenes. Hellenes and their gods also need good boundaries lest they lose themselves in a wave of Judeanness. J U L IA N ’ S J E RU S A L E M P R OJ E C T A N D I T S A N T I - C H R I S T IA N I M P L IC AT IO N S

At the same time, Julian is interested in limiting Christian universalism. He achieves this goal by using ethnological discourse that forces him to limit the Judean God “within bounds” in the first part of Galileans. The act of labeling the god of Jerusalem as the Judean God reestablishes the Judean ethnos by restoring both its city and its god, both important ethnic markers for any ethnos. Eventually, Julian plans to rebuild the Temple, the Jewish central place of worship. Of course, this comes at the cost of the Christian ethnos, which loses its ethnic center—Jerusalem—and its god, both important ethnic markers. This corresponds well with Julian’s ethnic labeling of Christians with the ethnonym Galileans, which highlights the lack of a Christian connection to Jerusalem. Julian expressly denies this connection in Galileans fragment 72 (= 306A). Further, by linking the Judean God with the Sun, Julian fulfills his divine mission to repair the divine cosmic order and thereby guarantee the health of the empire. The crux of Julian’s attack on Christian Jerusalem, however, is his denial of Jesus as a divinity. He attacks Jesus’s divinity in a couple of places in Galileans.38 Here Julian strikes at the heart of Constantine’s characterization of the God of Jerusalem and the empire as Christ. Jesus, he argues, is no divinity at all, but a corpse.39 The Evangelists do not claim Jesus is a god, and John, who calls Jesus the Logos (“Word”), obfuscates his language, deliberately leading people into thinking of Jesus as a god.40

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What is striking about the passages where Julian discusses John’s use of the Word (Logos) is his introduction of intra-Christian disputes local to Antioch over the conception of Jesus. In fragment 80 (= 333B–D) Julian raises the Christian dispute that some people consider Christ distinct from the Word. Quoting John 1:18, Julian writes: “No man has seen God at any time, but the only-begotten Son of God, the one who is in the bosom of the Father, has revealed him” [John 1:18] Then is the only-begotten Son who lives in the Father’s bosom also the God who is the Word become flesh? But if as I think this one is the God Word become flesh, then you have certainly seen God “and he dwelled among you, and you beheld his glory” [John 1:19]. Alternatively, if the only-begotten Son is one thing, and the Word God another thing, as I have heard from certain members of your sect, then it appears then not even John made that rash statement. [Translation my own.]

Julian refers to an argument of Photinus, an anathematized Christian who denied the divinity of Christ, and thus someone whom Julian admired.41 It is in his Letter to Photinus that Julian claims he will refute Diodore about the divinity of Christ. Surely Galileans is that refutation.42 Julian’s arguments here are designed to highlight the incoherence of Christian claims that Jesus is both a man and the Word or the Divine Intellect. Christian evidence for this rests on John, who claims that only John the Baptist bore witness to this truth. Such a statement implies that Jesus was a not a god while he was a man, since no one has ever “beheld his glory” (John 1:19). Julian thus steps into a live debate among Christians over the nature of Christ as a god, which he denies elsewhere. He attacks both the divinity of Christ and also shows what David Hunt calls “the multiplication of the gods” in Christianity’s current understanding is in direct contravention of Mosaic Law.43 This puts the lie to Constantine’s efforts to place the empire under the divine realm of one god, which he tried to make manifest at the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In the context of Jerusalem, Julian’s argument raises the possibility that Jesus is not the Second God, and therefore Constantine’s effort to characterize Jesus as such is out of step with the greater library of inherited knowledge about the God of Jerusalem, which characterizes Him as the Highest God, namely the Demiurge or the Second God. By proving false Constantine’s claims about the leading god of the empire given expression in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Julian contrasts the Christian divine mess with his own “clear” and “correct” enunciation of the divine realm, which will protect Rome. Constantine’s divine order, on the other hand, puts Rome at risk. The building of Christian holy sites in Jerusalem left Christians vulnerable to potential undermining acts like those of Julian. Eusebius of Caesarea had initially warned Christians against the phenomenon of building holy places when Christian holiness should be carried in the heart.44 Christian identity focused on

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spirituality not physical entities. Meanwhile, the destruction of the Jewish Temple had long been a recruiting tool for Christians. It was also the site of Christian anxieties. The visual reality of the site did not match the constructed reality of Christian texts. Jesus prophesied that no stone would remain upon another (Matthew 24:2). Yet there remained partially built structures on the site. This already forced Church Fathers like Eusebius of Caesarea to interpret the passage in careful ways to make Jesus a true Prophet. By the mid-fourth century, the presence of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and other Christian holy sites and, equally important, the absence of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem had a profound effect on Christian theology and identity. To many Christians the absence of the Jewish Temple constituted proof of the truth of Christianity. By the time it was completed, Eusebius had come around to arguing that the new Church of the Holy Sepulcher stood opposite the ruined Temple as proof of Christianity’s inheritance of the Covenant with Abraham.45 The physical landscape of the city supported this argument. Glenn Bowman demonstrates how biblical passages of the Old and New Testaments interacted with the Bordeaux Pilgrim’s physical experience at the site of the Temple.46 He could encounter the site of the Temple and remember sites for their significance in the Old Testament while also remembering Jesus’s actions in the same site and his prophecy that it would be destroyed. In the 330s the reality of its destruction was reinforced by the rising Church of the Holy Sepulcher attesting to the victory of Christianity and supporting its supersessionist claims. In his fifteenth catechism, written in the 350s, Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem argued that Christians could “see and touch” the truth of Christianity by visiting the ruined Jewish Temple, where Jesus’s prophecy proved correct.47 Imagine, then, the impact of a rebuilt Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount and a restored Jewish city and cult in the face of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Cyril had advocated seeing and touching the ruined site of the Temple as proof of Christian truths. The same principle could be used to prove the opposite. As Christians exited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher they could not help but notice the revived Jewish Temple to the east. They would now remember Jesus’s prophecy and question whether Jesus was a true Prophet, let alone a god. The physical mass of the Temple interrupted the path to the Church on the Mount of Olives. Christians would have had to circumnavigate the space to get there. The presence of great numbers of Jews practicing their laws at the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem would have overwhelmed Christian senses and forced Church leaders to deal with the tangible threat of the Jews rather than the archaized tool they had long possessed. Eusebius had attempted to historicize and textualize the Jews so that he could use them as tools in his ethnic arguments to authenticate and legitimize Christianizing efforts in the Holy Land.48 The difficulty with controlling the image of the Jews was the need to interpret live Jews, whom many

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Christians experienced differently—especially in the East, where Jews were often perceived by Christians and others as sources for authentic wisdom. A revitalized series of Judean ethnic markers including the Temple with an active sacrificial cult, and a powerful priestly leadership, not to mention many new Judeans in the city threatened to upend Eusebius’s narrative and undermine Christian ethnic legitimacy by delegitimizing parallel Christian institutions of the Eucharist and the bishops while countering Christian characterizations of Jews as defunct. Now Julian would demonstrate the true descendants of the Hebrews and in the process deny Christian ethnic legitimacy as found in the arguments of Eusebius. Julian’s presence at the Temple after his war with the Persians, as he promised in the Letter to the Community of the Jews, would have accelerated this process. The Temple’s long shadow cast over the Church of the Holy Sepulcher highlighted Constantine’s error that Christ was the leading God of the empire. In a few decades it would give new credibility to Millenialist Christian voices, who would welcome the Jewish Temple as a sign of the coming of Christ. It could even further split the Church by confirming that Jewish Law was sacred and efficacious for Judaizing Christians, while seeding doubt about the truth of Jesus’s prophecy. These were voices that endangered Christian orthodoxy.49 A J EW I SH R E SP O N SE

For many Jews, Julian’s characterization of the Jewish God as the Highest God was a perfectly recognizable description of their God. Theos Hypsistos is present in the Septuagint.50 Many Jews could live with a characterization of their God as the Demiurge and they also recognized a Second God. Evidence existed for a second power from Proverbs 8, and Jewish philosophers like Philo believed in Logos theology. Daniel Boyarin demonstrates that Memra Logos (both mean the “Word”) theology was also well represented in the synagogues of Palestine and the Diaspora in the first centuries c.e.51 These binitarians understood that the Memra of God created the universe, a theory that the rabbis attempted to suppress as heresy.52 Where Jews differed with Julian was in his worship of other gods under the Supreme God. Julian studiously avoided mentioning them to the Jews, and there is no evidence that he would have sought to impose such worship on the Jews, even though he was clearly bothered by their refusal to worship other gods.53 All he required from the Jews was that they pray to their God on his behalf.54 Traditionally, scholars have assumed that the Patriarch would have reacted negatively to Julian’s program as he sought to remove his apostolē tax and raise the priests as leaders of the Judean people.55 However, we have seen evidence to suggest that the Patriarch supported Julian’s program.56 Julian’s ethnographic reasoning of his imperial earthly order as a mirror of the heavenly realm drove him to place the God of Jerusalem as the Judean ethnarchic god. But by virtue of a shared

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understanding of the God of Jerusalem based on a Roman library of knowledge, he may also have been Helios, the Divine Intellect, and the Demiurge. C O N C LU S I O N

Julian’s definition of the Jewish God was part of his effort to define and normalize the Judean ethnos. Jews became Judeans, just another ethnos among many in a large empire. Like the other ethnē, they possessed a city, a temple, a cult led by priests, and no less important, they performed sacrifice. As we have seen in other chapters, all these aspects modeled for Hellenes what an ethnos looked like, what practices it should perform, and how it was to be led. Julian was drawn to Jerusalem because it was a site where he could correct the Flavian dynasty’s mischaracterization of the divine order as made manifest in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.57 He used his knowledge of local Antiochene Christian theological disputes to highlight the incoherence of the Christian God and thus weaken Christianity as a candidate for leading the empire. As a Neoplatonist, he could draw on a rich tradition of the characterization of the Jewish God as the Demiurge or as the visible Helios. He wrote in the Syrian city of Antioch, where Jewish institutions and especially the Jewish God were highly valued among a cross-section of groups in the city. This presented an opportunity for Julian to broaden his base of support in the empire at a time when he had little. At the same time, these opportunities opened new dangers as he struggled over how close he could hold the Jewish God before endangering Hellenism. Julian’s ambivalence about the Judean God stemmed from these problems. The flip side of the reJudeanization of Jerusalem was to divest the city of its Christian ties. Julian would need to rebuild the city in order to include the Temple Mount once again. In its shadow the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and with it Christian self-understanding would have faded. In Galileans, Julian characterizes the Judean Temple as “their holy place.” He regards certain cities as “holy.”58 In the next chapter, we will see how Julian endeavors to turn Antioch and its suburb, Daphne, into such a “holy city” and territory by marshaling Judean heroes and biblical interpretation to change Christian perceptions of the dead and clear space for Hellenic worship.

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Creating and Maintaining Hellenic Places in Antioch

T H E “HO LY C I T Y ” I N J U L IA N ’ S T HO U G H T

In his work To the Uneducated Cynics, written in early 362, Julian imagines a “holy city.” He writes:1 Such men when they arrive at a prosperous city with many sacrifices and full of secret rites, and containing within it numerous holy priests who lodge in holy estates, who for this very purpose—I mean in order to purify everything inside—have expelled all that is objectionable and superfluous and bad from the city, public baths and brothels, and retail shops, and everything of the sort without exception . . .

This description represents Julian’s ideal city, one that he aspires to and to some degree seeks to recreate in his cities. Jan Stenger observes that Hellenes viewed Hellenic sites as a monument for the collective memory of the divine presence and therefore ignored any changes to the landscape in their descriptions of places.2 As emperor trying to effect his Hellenizing program Julian did not have this luxury. A city with many sacrifices, priests, and, no less important, with many sacred estates, structured to keep out impurity, is essential for the proper propitiation of the gods and therefore an important aspiration for Julian’s program. The reality was quite different. Many temples had been repurposed, while others lay empty. Julian believed it was his role to purify the world from contaminating evil.3 His notion of the integrity of the city was standard in hoary antiquity, if no longer practicable as notions of what was “holy” were in constant flux. As Jean Bouffartigue demonstrates, Julian was able to use the phrase “holy city” only in two instances.4 It required not only a major temple of one of the leading gods in the empire, among them Zeus-Serapis-Helios and Apollo but also the absence of contamination from 115

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the dead. Not only does Julian seek to turn back the clock, but he tries to extend this hyperpurified landscape to areas outside the city of Antioch, such as Daphne. The neighborhood of Daphne was home to many important Hellenic temples. Julian called Daphne a hieron chōrion, a “holy territory,” one of the few places in the empire that still possessed a central ancient temple to a major god.5 Spatial theorists recognize that landscapes are full of a variety of spaces, ranging from highly differentiated places such as temples to more undifferentiated spaces. Tom Tweed thinks of spaces as processes rather than things, which are subject to the constant movement of people through them, who perform rituals, engage in narratives, and appeal to suprahuman forces. Kim Knott argues that location itself interacts with these forces and shapes what takes place in these spaces.6 These differentiated spaces are also kinetic. They are propelled by natural cultural flows, which change over time. Jonathan Z. Smith would argue that “space” can become “place” through an agglomeration of such acts.7 All these spaces also interrelate as people move through them from space to space. Finally, differentiated spaces are generative in that they produce emotional responses.8 Since places cause us to recall events associated with them, they are also subject to manipulation.9 The analysis of spatial theorists is helpful for understanding the difficulties that Julian experienced in effecting his Hellenizing program in the Antiochene landscape as well as his response to them. The emperor’s vision of the “holy city” was compromised by embodied Christian rituals of burial processions contact with which contaminated Hellenes on their way to the temples in the city and outside it. As mourners carrying the dead on biers passed through the spaces and places of the city and its territory, they contaminated people and Hellenic temples, which remained open welcoming all, while giving spaces new meaning with their rituals. At the same time Julian began to see the proliferation of the Christian cult of the martyrs beyond the cemeteries and into Daphne. Christine Shepardson has recently applied cultural geography to explain how John Chrysostom and others claimed, controlled, and maintained sites in order to create orthodoxy for their flocks.10 Julian was primarily concerned with maintaining the purity and therefore integrity of temples in order to ensure the proper propitiation of the gods. This chapter examines the processes by which Julian controlled and maintained Hellenic places in Antioch and in its territory against the inherent dangers of Christian contamination. Julian employed ethnological arguments to deal with this threat. He marshaled ethnic Judean authoritative voices from Scripture and engaged in Scriptural interpretation in order to alter how Christians perceived their special dead and to challenge the new, local Christian cult of the Maccabean Martyrs in Daphne by redefining true martyrdom as dying for one’s ethnic ancestral laws rather than for belief in a corpse. By engaging in these practices, Julian hoped to negatively charge the kinetic energy of these Christian places and alter the generative feelings they produced from ones of awe to those of disgust and thereby open up space for Hellenes to reach their temples in a state of purity.

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Hellenic temples had undergone their own processes of change even before Constantine as Hellenic perceptions of these places turned them into relatively undifferentiated places. Some of their temples were repurposed into meeting places. Only a few Hellenes, often theurgic Neoplatonists, still visited temples to engage in sacrifice to the gods. For these people the Christianization of public spaces in and around the city was intolerable, as it affected the viability and image of the city they loved and threatened to turn once highly differentiated Hellenic places into undifferentiated sites or, worse, via Christian competition into differentiated Christian places. These spaces became frontiers ripe for Christian expansion and the creation of Christian places. From Julian’s perspective, the establishment of martyr cults in the territory of Antioch undermined still-existing temples, since the contamination of the dead threatened to negatively impact the interstitial spaces between temples and therefore the efficacy of the cult. The consequences were cosmic. In the first months of his stay in Antioch, Julian worked hard to alter the kinetic energy of Hellenic temples. He attempted to revive and nurture the spark of numinousness these spaces generated among Hellenes by frequenting all temples in the Antiochene territory with his regiments of Celts and Petulantes in order to offer sacrifice. He even concocted tales of his interactions with the gods in these spaces in the hope of investing these places with new meaning so that Hellenes might perceive of these as differentiated places and return to the worship of the gods. Perception was important to Julian, as he hoped it would affect practice. Dressing the priests in magnificent attire while they sacrificed in the temples was meticulously designed to heighten the sense of awe of visitors to the temples. We also see this goal articulated in Julian’s instructions that Hellenic priests not attend the theater. His argument in the Fragment of a Letter to a Priest justifying the worship of the images of the gods unsuccessfully offers a Neoplatonist understanding of images. The rationale is designed to invest these images with new meaning, thereby rationalizing for Hellenes who do not believe in the power of the images of the gods the worship of these images nonetheless. Meanwhile, Julian restored Hellenic differentiated space in Apollo’s temple in Daphne from Christians who had appropriated it for their martyr cult to Saint Babylas. C H R I S T IA N S I N T H E C I T Y O F A N T IO C H

The Edict Banning Daytime Funerals By late 362, with Hellenes in Antioch uninterested in the emperor’s sacrificial program and with the destruction of Apollo’s temple on October 22 of that year, Julian realizes that his initial efforts at Hellenization have failed. Christian embodied practices of daytime funeral processions involved movement through space carrying the dead and thereby endangered the temples by cutting off the routes of Hellenes to their temples. No longer could they assuredly reach their temples in a state

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of purity and thereby achieve efficacious sacrifice. Julian tried to deal with the phenomenon of Christian daytime funerals in his Edict Banning Daytime Funerals on February 15, 363, as he was completing Against the Galileans only weeks before his departure for Persia.11 Although the edict is correctly thought to be anti-Christian,12 it is also a bald attempt to control the Antiochene landscape and protect it from the dangers of pollution, thereby restoring the integrity of Hellenic temples. Julian writes:13 It was my duty, I have decided after reflection to restore the ancient custom that I have now decided to confirm by a law. For when they considered the matter, the men of old, who made wise laws, they believed that the difference between life and death is the greatest possible difference. Therefore they taught that each of these two states has rituals and practices peculiarly appropriate to it. . . . So they decided that expiations associated with the departed should be set apart. . . . However, if, as the Sun is the cause of day and night and winter and summer by his departure and arrival, we say that the most venerable of the gods themselves, the one who is before all things and from whom all things proceed, has appointed rulers over the living and allotted lords over the dead. Then we ought to assign to each of these domains in turn what is fitting for them, and to imitate in our daily lives the orderly arrangement of the gods concerning the manner in which things exist. As I have said, death is rest; and night harmonizes with rest. Therefore, I think it is fitting that business connected with the burials of the dead should be performed at night, since for many reasons we ought to forbid anything of the sort to go on by day.

Julian frames the edict with his claim that he is restoring the old order. In earlier centuries, the dead were simply taken out of the cities at night to be buried. The body’s handlers and gravediggers underwent purification rituals, as did the mourners.14 Julian’s language demonstrates that the Hellenization of Antioch and the empire is his primary concern. In this order, the earthly world was to mirror the heavenly realm, which separated life and death. Julian uses ethnological discourse here by emphasizing that people were to act according to their ancestral laws, which mandated that people emulate the gods and therefore maintain a strict separation from the dead. It is Hellenic ancestral law that Julian claims to restore. He uses terms like “wise laws” given to the “men of old” to reflect the antiquity of these laws. It was ancient men who, in Julian’s ethnographic order, gave the people wise laws from the gods, as reflected in the Twelve Tables, which appears to be his source. These laws stipulated that burial take place at night.15 Implicit in Julian’s prologue is the emperor’s rebuke of his Flavian predecessors, who overturned the order of the gods by supporting the shrines of the martyrs and by destroying temples. Their support of the tombs of the martyrs threatened Hellenic temples. Since spaces were interrelated, the Flavians’ introduction of new, kinetic Christian energy into the landscape involving the cult of the dead endangered the perceived integrity of Hellenic temples, which could brook no contact with the impure. Now

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Hellenes would be unable to reach their temples in a state of purity and would therefore be stymied in their attempts to propitiate the gods with efficacious sacrifice. It was Julian’s mission as mandated by Helios and the gods to restore the old order and thereby correct the errors of the Flavian Dynasty. At least two out of the three disturbances Julian offers as a justification for his banning of daytime funerals in the final part of the edict are related to infractions on Hellenic temples that interfere with ritual. Although the third disturbance does not impact ritual, it is united with the others in its negative impact on Julian’s support for his upcoming march on Persia. Here is Julian:16 Throughout the city people are walking to and fro each on his own business, and the streets are full of men going to the law courts, or to or from the market, or sitting at work at their crafts, or visiting the temples to confirm the good hope that the gods have vouchsafed. And then some persons or other, having laid a corpse on the bier, push their way into the midst of those who are busy about such matters. This is in every way intolerable. For those who meet the funeral are often filled with disgust, some because they regard it as an evil omen, while for others who are on their way to the temples it is not permitted to approach for worship till they have cleansed themselves from the pollution. For after this sight it is not permitted to approach the gods who are the cause of life and of all things least akin to decay. And I have yet to mention what is worse than this. And why is that? The sacred precincts and temples of the gods lie open; and it often happens that in one of them someone is sacrificing or pouring libations or praying at the moment when men carrying a corpse are passing close by the temple itself, and the voice of lamentations and speech of ill omen is carried even to the altars.

Julian’s complaints about daytime funerary practices including—the threat of contamination, sounds of lament impacting the ritual, and ill omens—all impact the violability of Hellenic sacred space. Each of these issues is inherently a spatial problem impacting Hellenic temples in the city and the territory of Antioch, although it could be extended to situations all over the empire. Luke Lavan describes the passing of Christian processions of the dead through the marketplaces of Antioch and Constantinople. As Christians wound their way through the busy streets of the city carrying their dead in large processions they would have woven through the daily crowds of people. People lived in close quarters in Antioch and were ever present in the two main arteries of the city. Libanius describes Antioch’s two main streets as being lined with stalls where people bought and sold goods. These streets carried them to work while also functioning as sites of social interaction. In this situation contact with the dead was a matter of serious concern as funeral processions became moving sites of pollution. Inevitably the mourners would have brushed up against the vendors and their customers and other people making their way to work or, worse, to the temples. Infected Hellenes on their way to temples would be forced to turn around and undergo

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purification rituals (the suffitio).17 These rituals took time and could easily thwart some Hellene’s attempt to carry out sacrifice, a key requirement of their ancestral laws. Accompanying funeral processions were sounds of lament that pierced the sanctity of the altar. Among theurgic Neoplatonists, efficacious sacrifice and prayer required absolute concentration in order to persuade the gods to offer their beneficence. Julian appears concerned that these laments could break the concentration of the priests and negatively affect the outcome of the ritual involving divination. At the time of the issuance of the edict, the war on Persia was weeks away, and Julian was in desperate need of the gods’ guidance via divinations, soothsaying, and prophecy.18 Ammianus’s account suggests that Julian’s attempts were unsuccessful. Bad omens coming from the sight of the dead would not have aided Julian’s cause.19 The Edict Banning Daytime Funerals sought to limit one of a multitude of bad omens Julian suffered that portended doom in Persia. Further, as Nathanael Andrade explains, the Christian voices singing psalms during a procession created new meanings for these public spaces, Christianizing them.20 The edict, then, is Julian’s attempt to maintain the Hellenic differentiated spaces of the temples by maintaining the relative neutrality of undifferentiated spaces in the city as people moved through them and thereby allows him to establish “the holy city.”21 Attacking the Cult of the Christian Martyrs Julian also faced the spread of the Christian cult of the martyrs. By the mid-fourth century, with the support of Constantine, martyr tombs were increasingly identified as access points to the divine. Christians congregated at their tombs to pray, so that the martyrs might petition God on their behalf.22 Robert Markus observes that the phenomenon was a response to the rise of Christian fortunes in the empire after Constantine, as Christians looked for a way to connect with their persecuted past.23 By early 363, the only martyr shrine in the territory of Antioch located outside the cemetery was the shrine of the Maccabean Martyr cult, which was a cave said to be the reliquary of the Maccabean Martyrs.24 Another site, Babylas’s former shrine in Daphne, had been destroyed, but the recent destruction of Apollo’s temple, which Julian had restored, likely made it a site pulsating with Christian power in Christian eyes. The Cult of the Christian martyrs was not without its detractors. Influential Christian leaders like Eusebius of Caesarea initially did not like the idea of monumental Christian differentiated spaces.25 Athanasius,26 Eusebius of Caesarea,27 and Gregory of Nyssa28 were also opposed to treating tombs as differentiated spaces.29 In addition, at least some Christians in Antioch may have kept “Jewish” laws concerning corpse impurity.30 Didascalia 26, circulating in Antioch, castigated Christians who kept the rules of corpse impurity that its redactor argued were part of

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the deuterōsis.31 This same sentiment is repeated in Constitutions 6.27–30, which was written in Antioch in the 380s. In the very same decade Chrysostom writes that Jews sometimes practice a distinct ritual of washing after touching a corpse.32 In sum, by the end of 362 Julian may have thought that he might yet impact the growth of the Christian cult of the martyrs. It had grown stronger, but it probably had not quite overwhelmed Christianity, as it would only a few years later. By late 362 the Christian cult of the martyrs had just begun to spread and bleed into the Antiochene landscape. The danger to Julian’s Hellenizing program was significant. Physical movement through a city and its territory enabled its citizens “to experience the interconnectivity of the civic topography while filling it with their own sights, smells and noises.”33 It activated narratives that interacted with the architecture of the city and constructed “the ideological framework that they inhabited.”34 To hear Julian tell it, Christians had “filled the world with tombs,” panta eplērōsate taphōn kai mnēmatōn (Galileans fr. 81 = 335C). Julian is using spatial rhetoric here, and he gives a sense of crowding, as if his Hellenic space is caught in a vise. In reality, there were only two martyrs who had escaped the confines of the cemetery. One was Babylas, who had been safely reinterred and bounded in the cemetery outside Antioch. Even from there, however, his influence still lingered in Daphne with the destruction of Apollo’s temple. By early 363, Julian’s failure in Daphne likely had been compounded by Christian worship of the cult of the Maccabean Martyrs at the Cave of Matrona, in Daphne.35 The physical removal of these sites of Christian worship was politically impossible. Julian’s response in Antioch had to be different than in cities like Edessa. Antioch was a cosmopolitan city and showed little interest in the emperor’s polarizing program. But rhetoric could be used to affect how Christians perceived and valued tombs and the cult of the martyrs. These newly differentiated spaces came into being through embodied practices of Christians coming to worship and sometimes to sleep over at these sites in hopes of a cure in a practice called incubation. However, since spaces are not static but kinetic and subject to manipulation, it is possible to change people’s perceptions of them. This process begins with how people understand the rituals of Christians worshipping in these spaces. Christine Shepardson has demonstrated how John Chrysostom used rhetoric to control sacred space in the context of Christian competition in Antioch.36 Julian engaged in similar uses of rhetoric to get Christians to revalue the Christian cult of the martyrs so that they might see these tombs as places full of impurities rather than places of worship. His goal was undoubtedly to free the interstitial space that lay between temples from the contaminating agents that threatened Hellenic ritual practice in Antioch and throughout the Roman world. Galileans offers a robust attack on the Christian cult of the martyrs. There in fragments 81 and 82 (= 335C–340A) Julian argues:

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Creating and Maintaining Hellenic Places in Antioch [335C] You have filled the whole world with tombs and sepulchers, and yet where in your Scriptures does it say that you must grovel among tombs and pay them honor? But you have departed so far from the truth that you do not listen to the words of Jesus of Nazareth on this matter. Listen to what he says about sepulchers: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whited sepulchers; on the outside the tomb appears beautiful, but within it is full of dead men’s bones, and impurities.” . . . [339E] If this is so, why do you grovel among tombs? Do you wish to hear the reason? It is not I who will tell you, but the prophet Isaiah: “They live among tombs and in caves for the sake of dream visions.” [340A] You see, then, how ancient among the Judeans was this practice of witchcraft, namely sleeping among tombs for the sake of dream visions. And indeed it is likely that your Apostles, after their teacher’s death, practiced this and handed it down to you from the beginning, I mean to those who first adopted your faith, and that they themselves performed their spells more skillfully than you do, and displayed openly to those who came after them the places in which they performed this witchcraft and abomination. If then Jesus said that sepulchers are full of uncleanness, how can you invoke God at them? [Translation my own.]

Julian here uses several rhetorical tools to attack this phenomenon. The attack on the Christian cult of the martyrs comes at the end of a series of passages that attack Jesus as being no more than a corpse (tōi palai nekrōi: Galileans fr. 81 = 335B). This brutal argument used by Hellenes against the Christian deity dates back at least to Celsus in the second century c.e. Julian associates this description of Jesus with the cult of the Christian martyrs, an association he repeats in his Letter to Theodorus. As a student of paideia, Julian used psogos, harsh rhetoric, to tag a negative image on his opponents in order to affect how people perceived the site.37 Both in Galileans and in Misopogon, written within a month of each other in early 363, Julian deploys memorable language for Christians who worship at tombs, speaking of them as tois taphois proskalindesthai, “groveling among tombs” in Galileans 335C and peri tous taphous kalindoumenois graidiois, “the little old women who roll among the tombs” (Misopogon 344A). This phrase is borrowed from Plato (Phaedo 81d) to depict and conjure up a negative and objectionable image that would cause its listeners to wince. By changing people’s perception of space one can change how people experience that space and ultimately change the kinetic energy of a place, inducing a new and different generated emotion. This negative image might affect how Christians and Hellenes would react to such a place. Learned Hellenes will have recognized Julian’s term of “the little old women who roll among the tombs” as a moniker for Christian worshippers of the martyrs. Libanius, a member of Julian’s coterie in Antioch, also characterizes “those who roll around the tombs” to refer to these worshippers.38 It is likely that men who received the same paideia as Julian and Libanius and who were weaned on Homer, Hesiod, and Plato also used the same turn of phrase to refer to the Christian martyrs. This was used in a

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mocking way and functioned like a wink to other well-educated elites. Generations later, Eunapius uses this phraseology—prosekalindounto tois mnēmasi—to describe the worship of Christians at martyrs’ graves. Using Christian Authoritative Voices and Scriptural Interpretation against the Cult of the Christian Martyrs Julian employed ethnological discourse using Judeans and Christians as Galileans to attack the cult of the Christian martyrs. This took two forms, both centered around Judean ancestral laws. These appear in both Galileans and in the Letter to Theodorus. One way to attack what Christians perceived was to juxtapose the sight of Christians worshipping at the tombs of their martyrs with well-known and authoritative Scriptural Christian voices and their interpreters. In effect, Julian tried to change the narrative of these differentiated Christian spaces that would impact embodied perception of the space and change its generative power. No voice is more authoritative than that of Jesus, who in Matthew 23:27 compares hypocritical scribes and Pharisees to whitened sepulchers that appear beautiful on the outside but inside are full of akatharsias (Gal. fr. 81 = 335C). Julian takes this passage completely out of context and simply uses the impurity of the tomb to alter what Christians perceive when they look at tombs. I suspect that Julian is passing Jesus off as a Judean who observed Judean ancestral laws against impurities. Jesus, he implies, also keeps Judean purification laws, which he mentions only a few sections earlier as being identical to Hellenic laws of purification (Gal. fr. 72 = 306B). Then in fragment 81 (= 335D) Julian delivers the punch line: If Jesus thought the sepulchers were full of uncleanness, by which he meant ritual impurity, how could Christians call God through them?! Christians in Antioch knew about Jewish rituals guarding against corpse impurity. It was likely a concern among Jews and Christians on the borders of the Jewish community in a city with frequent daytime burial processions. We know from Chrysostom that Jews in Antioch practiced ritual washing (In Ioh. hom. 70.2; In II Tim. hom. 6.4; Catech. 9.16), including sometimes after coming into contact with a corpse (In I Cor. hom. 20.4; Catech. 9.16).39 In a city where some Christians observed Jewish ancestral laws, we should expect that these were points of contestation between Christians and Jews. Christians would have heard various interpretations of Scriptures, or heard about them from their friends, including interpretations on the topic of corpse impurity.40 Jesus’s attitude toward the dead was a significant stick to wield against the Christian cult of the martyrs precisely because it raised for Christians the issue of how much “Jewish” law they ought to practice. The Old Testament was held in especially high esteem in Antioch. Some bishops were chosen based on their ability to interpret the Old Testament.41 In this environment we can expect that at least Christians on the borders of the Jewish community of Antioch were interested particularly in listening to

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interpretations of the Old Testament. Julian thus attempts to interrupt Christian perceptions of the dead by applying plausible interpretations about the Judean dead. This played into how many Judaizers already perceived Jews as authoritative interpreters of the Bible and as authentic purveyors of a hoary past. Now we can understand how Julian’s use of Isaiah in Galileans fragment 82 (= 339E) might alter perceptions of the Christian cult of the martyrs. Isaiah is perhaps the most important of the Prophets among Christians, many of whom thought that his prophecies foretold the coming of Christ, and Julian quotes Isaiah 65:4 in Galileans. Speaking in the sixth century b.c.e., Isaiah was the chief spokesperson for the Judean Kingdom and promoted its central cultic site, the Jerusalem Temple. Access to the divine was monopolized by the Temple cult and its mediators, the priests.42 All other diviners, augurs, astronomers, and suchlike persons were sinners, to be killed. The cult of the dead was yet another competitor with the Temple. In sixth-century-b.c.e. Judea, it was a popular phenomenon.43 People gathered at the tombs of their fathers to sleep over and pray to gain advice from their ancestors for all kinds of problems plaguing them. Of course, this presented a challenge to the Judean Kingdom and its authorized Temple cult. Isaiah castigates the people of Judah for lodging among tombs and caves for the sake of dream visions (Isaiah 65:4).44 In effect, Isaiah defines orthodoxy for the people of Judah. Access to the divine could be found only in the Temple, mediated through its cult as led by the authorized priests of the people. The text of Isaiah 65:4a castigates “Those who sit inside tombs, and spend the night in secret places,” which refers to either one or two different acts of ancestor worship.45 However, the Greek translators of the Bible interpreted the two actions as one act of sleeping over at tombs (koimōntai) and added the gloss “for the sake of dream visions,” which does not appear in the Hebrew Masoretic text.46 In the Hellenic world this act would have been understood as incubation. Among Greeks and Romans, the act of incubation was the act of sleeping over at shrines on a mat to gain dream visions of healing from the gods.47 Julian’s choice of this passage cannot be coincidental. This is the same passage that Eusebius of Caesarea interprets in his Commentary on Isaiah. It is this same Eusebius who is Julian’s chief interlocutor in the third part of Galileans. Julian seeks to discredit Eusebius’s argument in Preparation and Demonstration Book 1, that Christians are the “true Israel.” In Commentary on Isaiah, 28.65, Eusebius interpreted Isaiah 65:4 as follows:48 Nothing of a sacrilegious nature did the people of Israel refrain from, . . . sitting or dwelling in sepulchers and sleeping in the shrines of idols, where they were wont to lie on the outspread skins of sacrificial victims for the purpose of learning the future through dreams. The heathens in their delusion celebrate this in the shrine of Aesculapius up to the present day and [in the shrines] of many others, which are nothing but tombs of dead men.

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Michael Hollerich explains that Eusebius’s goals in the Commentary on Isaiah are similar to his goals in Preparation and Demonstration.49 In both, Eusebius uses ethnological discourse to justify Christian ethnic claims. In Preparation and Demonstration, Book 1 Judeans are rejected by God because they can no longer practice their ancestral laws. In the Commentary on Isaiah it is the wicked practices of the Israelites who incubate at tombs contrary to ancestral laws that leads God to abandon them in favor of the Christians. Notice that Eusebius’s argument also castigates “Israelite” practice as illegitimate by associating it with Hellenic acts of incubation. Both groups sleep over somewhere in order to gain visions of healing: Israel at tombs and Hellenes at temples which Eusebius calls tombs. This has the double effect of establishing Christians as a leading ethnos that has come to replace the Israelites-cum-Judeans in its Covenant with Abraham but also establishes Christian primacy over Hellenes, who also sin. Rather than controlling the image of the Jews by declaring them defunct Judeans, Eusebius assigns this practice to wicked Israelites of the past instead of to Judeans of his present, whom he delegitimizes as a defunct people in the absence of their Temple in Demonstration. Ironically, Eusebius seems unaware of or deliberately ignores the connection between Christian martyr worship and this practice.50 The interpretations of Scripture were important sites of ethnic contestation in Late Antiquity. Reading texts to support or delegitimize an ethnic group was an inherent part of ethnological discourse, since legitimacy might depend on the best interpretation of texts. How one reads texts, the methods one uses, can legitimize or weaken an ethnological argument. The mechanics of Eusebius’s interpretation would have made this a contemporary reading in mid-fourth-century Antioch. His method is very similar to a contemporary method of reading Scriptures in the city of Antioch that emerged out of the rhetorical school’s focus on textual criticism, philology, and style, and the explication of a topic based on a moralizing conclusion.51 This trend in interpretation is associated with Diodorus of Tarsus, who was already in Antioch in 362 and an antagonist of Julian, but we actually find its antecedents in the beginning of that century. Diodorus’s method of interpretation, called histōria, emphasized the original context of a verse. Its true meaning could be found elsewhere, so long as the original context of the verse was not harmed.52 This did not prevent the use of allegory but rather restricted it to a second stage after establishing the historical context of the text. This was a reaction to the persistent use of allegory that bore no relation to the text. Practitioners would begin by examining the text’s subject matter and would then proceed to lexical inquiries and establish the correct punctuation while paying attention to etymology, metaphors, figures of speech, and foreign words. The text would then be compared to other texts from Scripture to help place it in its correct context. Eusebius of Caesarea’s interpretation of Isaiah 65:4 shares many traits with the hermeneutical assumptions of popular Antiochene reading practices. It begins by

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assessing the historical context of sixth-century Judea and the practice of incubation that existed there outside the Temple. It then uses this Israelite practice as a type for Hellenes who incubate in temples. By applying this interpretive methodology Eusebius is able to achieve two larger goals of his work, namely to explain why Christians inherited God’s Covenant with Abraham and why they have succeeded Hellenes in the empire. Julian inverts Eusebius’s interpretation of Isaiah 65:4 by using the same locally popular hermeneutical method of interpretation. The context of the passage is Isaiah trying to enforce orthopraxy, which could take place only in the Jerusalem Temple. In Julian’s interpretation, then, it is the place rather than the act that determines the validity of the meaning of the text.53 The ancient people of Judah sinned because they incubated at tombs, which were impure, rather than worshipping at the Temple. Julian labels incubation at tombs “magic,” thereby rendering it illegitimate.54 This determination would be supported by Jesus’s own words about the impurity of tombs, which Julian quoted earlier in Galileans fragment 81 (= 335C). Therefore, for Julian the people of Judah sin not because they incubate but because they do so at tombs. In this scenario, it is the Christians who most resemble the ancient ethnic Israelites. Julian explains that they learned the practice of incubating at tombs from ethnic Judeans. To this end, Julian changes Eusebius’s Israelites to Judeans. Nominally, the text supports this as Isaiah spoke to the people of Judah in chapter 65. But Julian takes this one step further, arguing that centuries later the Judeans taught early Christians these very same practices. The verb ēn is used to temporally place the act of enkatheudein in the continuous past of the imperfect, which allows Julian to claim that, centuries later, Jesus’s Apostles learned this practice of incubating at tombs from Judeans who continued to practice this illegitimate act. By changing Eusebius’s Israelites into Judeans, Julian links the Israelites of old with the Judeans of his own day and thereby undercuts Eusebius’s argument that Christians are the “true Israel.” He also characterizes the Christian past as Judean, rather than Hebrew or Israelite, pointing out the fallacy of Eusebius’s ethnological argument characterizing Christians as Israelites. Christians are actually Judeans, and sinful Judeans at that! Julian’s argument may have been even more persuasive if the Jews of Antioch, or some portion of that population, came to pray at the reliquary of the Maccabean Martyrs in Daphne. It would have given Christians and Hellenes a context of establishing that the Jews of Antioch were the same ones attacked by Isaiah in 65:4 and that their practices went against the Law of the Bible. Having named, identified, and valued tombs in a negative way, Julian forced Christians to reconsider and revalue these places. In this sense, Julian creates what human geographers call “an imaginative geography,” which makes it difficult for viewers to understand the space in ways other than how Julian characterizes them.55 Geographers describe the naming, identification, and valuation of a particular location as changing

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undifferentiated space into a distinct place.56 Using Tweed, we may argue that embodied perception could change the space’s generative power, with Julian’s interpretation of Isaiah 65:4 functioning as a new narrative and in direct competition with an older, outdated narrative. The effectiveness of Julian’s commentary might be measured by changing Christian perceptions of martyr tombs from one of stories of heroism and power to one of pollution. The power of Julian’s interpretation comes from his ability to use exegetical methods popular in Antioch to outexegetize Christian interpreters, and in ways that would be meaningful to Christians in Antioch. Julian poaches Isaiah from Eusebius and the Christians to alter Christian understanding of the cult of the Christian martyrs.57 He was uniquely placed to engage in this duel of high-stakes interpretation, because he possessed an unparalleled depth and breadth of knowledge of Scripture. He could therefore reach further and deeper than most Hellenes into Scripture to refute Christian ethnic claims and interpretations of the Bible.58 He was also highly skilled in grammar and rhetoric, having been educated in the best schools, which later produced Christian interpreters like John Chrysostom.59 Training in grammar gave him the tools to parse texts. His familiarity with reading practices in Antioch gave his interpretations an air of legitimacy and thus were persuasive. The credibility of Julian’s interpretation of Isaiah 65:4 undermined the authority of Eusebius. If Eusebius was an unreliable interpreter of Isaiah 65:4, which defined Christians within the ethnological universe of the Roman empire, then Christians were not the “true Israel” but rather ought to be Judeans, as were the Apostles. In mid-fourth-century Antioch, this argument needed only prodding, given the groups of Christians already on the borders of the Jewish community. In the final analysis, it is Julian who is Isaiah’s true interpreter. The emperor may not have viewed only Eusebius as his chief interlocutor in Galileans. In a letter to the Christian heretic Photinus, Julian promises to counter the Christological views of Diodorus of Tarsus. Galileans is his refutation. Using histōria was also a way of demonstrating exegetical one-upmanship over his exegetical competitors.60 Julian’s castigation of the Christian cult of the martyrs also employs ethnological discourse to educate Hellenes. By correlating Christian worship of the martyrs at tombs with the ancient Judeans, Julian reminds Hellenes that real incubation and contact with the gods cannot happen at tombs—a practice he labeled with the disqualifying term “magic”—but at temples. Moreover, his castigation of JudeanChristian worship at tombs provides Hellenes with what Christine Shepardson has recently called a “map” of what was pure and what was impure, and thus where they could attend as well as places to avoid.61 On this map tombs are inherently impure and are therefore places to avoid. This was essential in a world where what was perceived was changing. Julian’s writings show that he found Hellenes did not have a clear idea of where sacrifices ought to be offered. In Batnae, they sacrificed

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everywhere rather than in temples.62 Demarcating the pure from the impure served to reinforce orthopraxy as conceived of by Julian for Hellenes. Isaiah then functioned as a key source in convincing Hellenes and Christians. If the delegitimization of the Christian cult of the martyrs was designed to have Christians question their own practices, Hellenes stood to benefit. Shrinking Christian differentiated space would permit interconnected Hellenic differentiated spaces to flourish by enabling Hellenes to carry out their religious duties without the threat of becoming impure via Christians’ funeral processions. A restored Hellenic landscape would allow for proper worship of the gods and ultimately lead to proper propitiation of the gods, which promised success for the empire. This is perhaps the only instance in which Julian holds out Judeans as negative ethnic exempla for Christians and Hellenes. In this case, Judean practice is used as the negative origin of Christian practices. This use of Judeans seems to be at odds with Julian’s use of Judeans as examples shaping Hellenic orthopraxy. In fact, this is the exception that proves the rule. These are, after all, sinful Judeans who pray at tombs. Isaiah castigates them to have them reform their ways. Rather Julian’s argument here proves his point that Christians have taken the very worst practices of the Judeans. At the same time, by leaving the Judean practice in the continuous past Julian shows some ambivalence about this use of Judeans. This ambivalence likely reflects Julian’s unease over holding Judeans so close to Hellenes in a way that might blur the lines between these two groups, or, alternatively, too far from them lest he be unable to use Judeans to shape Hellenic identity. The Letter to Theodorus and the Cult of the Maccabean Martyrs The cemetery outside Antioch was not the only place where Antiochenes could encounter the Christian cult of the martyrs. In recent years new Christian cults of the martyrs had developed in Daphne. Babylas’s shrine had been removed, and the martyr’s body had been reinterred in the koimetērion. But likely over the course of Julian’s reign some Christians began worshipping at the reliquary of the Maccabean Martyrs at what Chrysostom would later call Matrona’s Cave.63 We first hear of the Christian cult of the Maccabean Martyrs from Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15, of early 363. John Chrysostom claims that Christians go up and lie down next to a “synagogue” called Matrona’s Cave in order to incubate.64 Gregory claims the cult is small and downplays its significance. To Julian, this would have been a direct threat to the “holy city.” Although Daphne was not within Antioch’s city limits and therefore did not directly conform to Julian’s description of the “holy city,” Julian did consider the place to be differentiated Hellenic space while the Temple of Apollo stood. There were also other temples in Daphne whose integrity was necessary to protect from polluting agents. In his Letter to Theodorus, Julian attempts to alter the very definition of martyrdom by clearly alluding to the Maccabean Martyrs as having died for their ancestral dietary laws. This was essentially

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an ethnological argument that highlighted that these martyrs had died for their Judean ancestral laws. Julian then found a key Christian voice to insist that Christians ought to keep Judean dietary laws. This played out in the city of Antioch, where some Christians still kept Judean dietary laws—much to the chagrin of Christian leaders. True martyrdom, argues Julian, is to die for the ancestral laws of one’s ethnos rather than for belief in an impure corpse. The Letter to Theodorus was written in early 363 in Antioch, during the time Julian sought to reenergize his Hellenizing program. While lamenting the Hellenes’ failure to practice their ancestral laws, Julian turned to Judeans as examples of a people who ardently kept their laws, even preferring death over transgression. In 89a.453C–454B he writes: Therefore, when I saw that there is among us great indifference about the gods and that all reverence for the heavenly powers has been driven out by impure and vulgar luxury, I always secretly lamented this state of things. For I observed that adherents to the doctrines . . . [MS Spanheim: of the Judeans] are so ardent in their belief that they would choose to die for it, and to starve and die rather than taste pork [MS Spanheim: or any animal that had been strangled] or had the life squeezed out of it; whereas we are so apathetic about religious matters that we have forgotten the customs of our forefathers, and therefore we actually do not know whether any such rule has ever been written down. But these Judeans are for their part god-fearing, seeing that they worship a god who is truly most powerful and most good and governs this world of sense, and as I well know, is worshipped by us also under other names. They act correctly, in my opinion, if they do not transgress the laws; but they err in one matter in that, while reserving their deepest devotion for their own God, they do not conciliate the other gods also; but the other gods they think have been allotted to us Gentiles only. This error they have taken to such foolish extremes in their barbaric conceit. But those who belong to the impious sect of the Galileans that spreads its disease . . . [Translation my own.]

As we observed in chapter 3, the fact that Julian offers Jews qua Judeans as examples of a people who hold true to their philosophical school is noteworthy because it appears in a letter to a fellow Neoplatonist and his chief priest of Asia.65 Not only are Judeans an example of a people faithful to its laws, but Julian suggests that they may have something to teach Hellenes about their own dietary practices. Indeed, Julian refuses to eat pig, believing it to be impure.66 In other words, Judeans and their laws may be sources for Hellenic wisdom. This passage from the Letter to Theodorus was likely found in Galileans, in a section that is now lost and therefore would have been heard by the people of ´rion. As we saw in chapter 3, Antioch in synagogues and churches and in the bouleute¯ this letter shares several important items with Galileans. First, the triangulation of Hellenes with Judeans and Galileans not only is present but is used in the exact same manner as in Galileans. Just as Judeans share with Hellenes matters pertaining

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to sacrifice, temples, altars, and purifications in Galileans fragment 72 (= 306B) as well as matters pertaining to the priestly life (fr. 58 = 238), so too in the Letter to Theodorus Julian suggests that Judean dietary laws may be practices that Hellenes ought to keep. Giorgio Scrofani explains Julian’s use of Judean dietary laws to model purification for Hellenes, and in chapter 5 above I showed how Julian uses these laws as examples of priestly behavior and thus as paradigms for Hellenic identity.67 Indeed, the Letter to Theodorus is the only other place where the emperor uses Judean Law to model proper practice for Hellenes. In fact, if anything, Julian is more explicit in the Letter to Theodorus about using Judean Law and practice as a source for Hellenes. Moreover, in both the third part of Galileans and in this letter Julian borrows directly from Porphyry. Either Julian is writing both works at the exact same time, or, more likely, he took a passage from Galileans and inserted it in his Letter to Theodorus. The parallels continue throughout the remainder of the letter. In both Julian compares Judeans favorably with Hellenes but finds the former deficient in their refusal to worship more than one God. This argument is an effort to differentiate and to delegitimize Judeans as compared with Hellenes to show their superiority and to define Hellenic orthodoxy. This too was part of Porphyry’s stratagem. Further, the flow of the argument in the Letter to Theodorus matches that of Galileans but works in reverse. Julian extols Judeans for keeping their ancestral laws but then goes on to attack them for refusing to worship more than the one God. Jews qua Judeans may be a source from which one can derive Hellenic wisdom, but Julian reminds them that they are inferior to Hellenes, just as he does in Galileans. Finally, Judean worship of the one God is still preferable to Christian worship of a corpse, an argument that gets cut off here in the Letter to Theodorus, likely by a Christian offended by the claim.68 In Galileans these arguments work exactly in reverse. Julian denies Jesus as a divine being, (fr. 79–80 = 327A–333D), calling him a corpse (tōi palai nekrōi), which leads him to attack the proliferation of dead people, the martyrs (fr. 81 = 335B–C). Julian wrote this letter to a fellow Neoplatonist with whom he had studied. They both recognized this statement from Porphyry of Tyre’s work, who in On Abstinence 2.161 claimed that Hebrews prefer to die rather than taste pig.69 Porphyry wrote:70 For it would be a terrible thing, that while the Syrians do not taste fish and the Hebrews pigs, . . . and even when many kings strove to change them, they preferred to suffer death rather than to transgress the Law, we choose to transgress the laws of nature and the divine orders because of fear of men or some evil-speaking coming from them.

Peter Schäfer correctly points out that Porphyry’s statement that Hebrews would have preferred to suffer death rather than transgress their dietary laws must refer to the Maccabean Martyrs, since they are the only known instance of a people oppressed for keeping their dietary laws.71 We may add that the Maccabean

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Martyrs were associated with Syria and were said to be buried in Antioch. Since Theodorus was chief priest of Asia, it is possible that he too associated Porphyry’s and Julian’s statements with the Maccabean Martyrs.72 More important, as a fellow Neoplatonist, he may have been familiar with the Neoplatonist tactic of reconstructing Hellenic wisdom from Jewish wisdom and therefore found the Judeans to be convincing models of practice for Hellenes. If we also consider that the Letter to Theodorus was read and shared publicly and that this piece of it had also appeared and been recited where Galileans was read, the example of Judeans may have been convincing to a wider audience of Hellenes, particularly in places like Antioch, in other parts of Syria and in Asia Minor, where there were large populations of Jews, and possibly Hypsistarian communities, which kept dietary practices with Jews. Certainly Jews, their practices, institutions, and God, were highly valued by Hellenes in this society. For Hellenes in Antioch familiar with the Maccabean Martyrs through key landmarks in their landscape, Judean practices may have been persuasive. What is most striking about this passage is how Julian changes Porphyry’s words slightly but in important ways. In his Letter to Theodorus Judeans are willing to die rather than eat pig or anything strangled or anything with the blood still in it. But in On Abstinence, Porphyry mentions only Hebrew willingness to die rather than transgress their laws. This refers back to his claim that Hebrews refused to eat pig. In 2 Maccabees 6 and 7, the Maccabean Martyrs died for their refusal to eat pork. Yet Julian deliberately changes Porphyry’s claim from merely a Hebrew refusal to eat pork to include a refusal to eat (possibly, if we follow Spanheim, “strangled animals” [pniktou]) “anything that had the life squeezed out of it.”73 The text in Julian is unclear here. At the very least it included any “animal that had the life squeezed out of it.”74 “Life” here likely meant the blood. Besides Julian, there are only two ancient sources that use the language of pniktos, apothlibeis, or both in relation to a prohibition on meat. One is Philo of Alexandria, who claimed that some non-Jews “strangle and throttle” animals and “entomb in the carcass the blood, which is the essence of the soul.”75 A second source is Acts of the Apostles 15:20, 29, and 21:25, where the Apostles list the four regulations they insist that Gentile Christians keep, including the meat of strangled animals.76 Acts 15:20 states:77 We should merely write telling them to abstain from food contaminated by idols, from illicit marital union, from meat of strangled animals, and from eating blood.

We have seen that Acts 15 was an important prism for Christian groups on the border of the Jewish community because it mandated the practice of certain “Jewish” laws along with faith. The Apostolic Constitutions even frames its narrative around it. It was the linchpin of the early Christian leaders coming to terms with their “Jewish” past, as well as with the Gentile Church. Christian groups struggled with the question

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which ancestral laws they ought to keep. Acts 15 insists that aspects of the Judean dietary laws be observed by Christians as well. Acts 15 also had a long history in Antioch. In the third and the fourth century, this passage was a live issue for Christians and Godfearers in Antioch, and in Syria more generally, who shared spaces with Jews. The Didascalia uses Acts 15 as the narrative setting and claims to preserve the full contents of the letter. It widens the letter to discuss ritual ablutions with water, menstrual purity, vegetarianism, and asceticism (Didascalia 23–24, 26) even as it argues against them.78 Meanwhile, Homily 7.8.1–3 of the Pseudo-Clementine literature argues almost exactly against the Didascalia, insisting that Acts 15 requires that Christians abstain from “food offered to idols, dead carcasses, strangled [animals], those caught by wild beasts, blood.”79 This struggle at the core of Christian identity over how much “Jewish” law Christians ought to keep remained an important issue in fourth-century Syrian Antioch. Now powerful Christian leaders argued against keeping these laws as they struggled to uncouple their identity from Jewish identity. Their flocks apparently were not totally convinced, claiming “Jewish” law for themselves. Christians in antiquity argued over the exegesis of these prohibitions and made changes to the text, leading to a variety of manuscripts of the Apostolic Decree. While normally we cannot be sure if their Bible contained the word pniktou or apothlibentos, we know from Homily 7.8 of the Pseudo-Clementine literature that there were Christian groups in Syria, and likely Antioch, where this text circulated, who did have this version of the Apostolic Decree. Julian’s goal was to embarrass Christians for not following the Apostolic Decree in Acts and to support Christian groups like the PseudoClementines to keep up their “Judean” practices. Christians who were not faithful to Acts 15 were acting in ways incongruent with their own faith. Thus, it seems likely that Julian consciously used the language of Acts 15.80 If this conclusion is correct, Julian’s method is plain. He appropriates Christian interpretations of Acts 15:20 by reading it within its historical context. By doing so, he enters a Christian debate about this passage that we know had implications among Christians in the cosmopolitan city of Antioch. Most Christian interpreters read the word “strangled” to be an example of not eating blood and had either removed the word from their texts81 or had allegorized the Apostolic Decree.82 There is plenty of evidence that some Christians refused to eat blood through the third and into the fourth century.83 In a city famous for interpreting Scriptures in their historical context, Julian’s interpretation may have had an impact. His argument certainly fits into his attempt to convince Christians that they are really lapsed Judeans and to weaken Christian orthodoxy. Revaluing the Cult of the Maccabean Martyrs Anyone who heard Galileans being read and discussed in Antioch would have known who Julian meant by “Judeans who died for not eating pig.”84 This was a city

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where the Maccabean Martyrs were beginning to be lionized.85 For Christians, Julian’s focus on Judeans who had died for their dietary laws recalled the heroic deeds of the Maccabean Martyrs. Gregory Nazianzen’s Oration 15 testifies to the recent formation of a Christian Maccabean Martyr cult at the reliquary in Daphne.86 Only twenty years later, John Chrysostom writes the following in his Against the Judaizers 1.6.2:87 You must apply the same argument to the synagogue. Even if there is no idol there, still demons do inhabit the place. And I say this not only about the synagogue here in town but about the one in Daphne as well; for at Daphne you have a more wicked place of perdition, which they call Matrona’s. I have heard that many of the faithful go up there and sleep beside the place.

Some Christians apparently joined Jews in prayer at a site that Chrysostom here calls a “synagogue” but was more likely a place where some Jews may have gathered to pray, just as they had done at the site of Prophets’ tombs in Judea in the Second Temple Period.88 Christians’ participation in prayer at the site is not unusual for a city like Antioch, where many Christians valued Jewish Scripture, and may have looked to local “Jewish” martyr exemplars tied to their own hoary past. They would have considered these local heroes to be authentic purveyors of their own past. Whether these Christians turned the site into a full-blown martyr cult in mid- to late 362 is unknown. Julian sought to reinforce and revalue the site of the Christian cult of the Maccabean Martyrs as inherently Judean. In so doing he ignited Christian controversy over the site in a manner that weakened Christian orthodoxy and sowed division between Christians in Antioch. By highlighting the Maccabean Martyrs as Judeans who died for their dietary laws, Judean laws, Julian tied the Maccabean Martyrs more firmly to Judeans and Judeanness. To the Godfearers of the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies this did not present a problem. But the attraction of local martyrs to Christians may have drawn in other Christians as well. Whereas once the Antiochene cultural landscape had ingested Jewish tradents like the Maccabean Martyrs as undifferentiated idioms, Julian now labeled them “Judean” and forced Christians to make an uncomfortable choice. The fixing of the identity “Judeans” to the Maccabean Martyrs was a direct response to Eusebius of Caesarea’s naming the Maccabean Martyrs “Hebrews” in Preparation and answered the question of the identity of the “true Israel,” a question Julian promised to answer in the third part of Galileans. In Preparation, the Maccabean Martyrs were examples of some Judeans who retained the spirit of the Hebrews and could pass on this wisdom to the Christians. In Eusebius’s calculus, Christians retained Hebrew wisdom and thus were their true heirs, whereas Jews became a defunct ethnos unable to perform their ancestral laws after the destruction of the Temple.

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Julian responded by tying the Maccabean Martyrs ever more tightly to the Judean ethnos. They were members of the same ethnos who in Julian’s day kept the dietary laws. Only a few sections earlier (fr. 72 = 305D–306A), Julian explained how Judeans still consecrated what they ate through sacrifice and prayer and the giving of first fruits to the priests. Not only was Judean Law not defunct, Julian would restore the Judean Temple. This was an answer to his inquiry about the identity of the “true Israel.” By virtue of this argument Julian reoriented Christians’ (and Hellenes’) gaze upon their Jewish neighbors in Antioch. They were already primed to see Jews as the authentic bearers of their own ancient past. Now he forced Christians to see contemporary Jews as Judeans and their Maccabean Martyrs as the same people who kept the same laws, the “true Israel” and the authentic bearers of ancient wisdom. For some Christians, this was not a stretch. Given Chrysostom’s testimony twenty-five years later that some Christians looked upon Jewish customs and institutions with reverence, Julian likely had reason to believe his rhetoric would succeed in Antioch. This argument would have struck at the very nub of Chrysostom’s worry that these Judaizing Christians believed Jewish ritual to be more authentic and therefore more effective. If the Jerusalem Church had demanded that Gentile Christians keep Jewish food laws, then what had become of the Church and Christian practice since? By using language of the Apostolic Decree to characterize the Maccabean Martyrs’ observance of their dietary laws he reminded all Christians that their own authoritative voices required them to keep “Judean” dietary law, as well. Once again, Julian pointed to the fact that early Christian qua Galilean leaders were Judeans who kept Judean Law, and he suggested that Christians of his day ought to do so as well. This was an attempt to push Christians toward the Judean ethnos and to collapse the distinction between Judeans and Christians by restoring Judean Law to the Christians, who (Julian claimed) were really Judeans. Julian strategically reoriented the language of Porphyry’s earlier discourse to drive this point home. Julian also aggravated a preexisting controversy among Christian leaders surrounding the worship of the Maccabean Martyrs. Both Gregory and Augustine reveal that there was opposition to the Maccabean Martyr cult precisely because these martyrs had died for Jewish Law.89 We need not understand the early origins of the cult as an organized homoian or homoousian takeover of space. It is possible this was a natural adoption of ancient Jewish martyrs revered both by Jews and Christians and may have been frequented at first by those Christians closest to the borders of the Jewish community. If Christians and Jews came together to pray at the site, this seems the most likely explanation. The struggle over the identity of the Maccabean Martyrs, as Jewish or Christian, mirrored the schizophrenic identity of Christians. Julian used ethnographic arguments here to highlight the requirement that each ethnos was to have its own ancestral laws. He argues that Judean ancestral laws are actually Christian ancestral laws as well, except that

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Christians failed to keep them. The Maccabean Martyr cult underscored his point, for these were people worshipped by Christians who actually died for observing their Judean ancestral laws, laws that the New Testament required them to keep. The controversy over the identity of the Maccabean Martyrs played out over a complicated Christian landscape split between three different bishops in the city. Claiming the Maccabean Martyrs was an attempt to claim authority over a key site in the Antiochene landscape, and thus the Maccabean reliquary had the potential to become a locus of power for any Christian group that laid claim to it. It is in this context that we should understand Chrysostom’s castigation of Judaizing Christians who incubated at Matrona’s Cave in Daphne. Given his negative characterization of synagogues, his use of the term is likely meant to denigrate those Christians who prayed there. It may also be an attempt to bolster the new Church of the Maccabean Martyrs, recently built in the Kerateion and under the control of the homoousians.90 Julian seized on the confusion in the early formation of the cult in 363 to highlight the illogic of Christian veneration of Judeans who had died for their laws and to drive a wedge between Christian groups. This was precisely the point he tried to make in Galileans and to realize by rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple: that Jews were the Judean ethnos, with its attendant ancestral laws, Temple, cult, and God. He tied this to imperial theology. Being a good Roman citizen meant observing one’s ancestral laws. By emphasizing the fact that the Maccabean Martyrs died for their ancestral laws Julian uses them as ethnic exempla of proper worship for Hellenes and reclaims them as Judeans from the Christians who had recently begun to worship them. This would have been a powerful argument in the city of Antioch, where many Christian groups defined themselves in terms of the Law. The Didascalia, the Constitutions, the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, and Chrysostom’s Homilies all demonstrate efforts to define their Christian communities in relation to Jewish Law. They attest the lure of Jewish Law for many Christians in Antioch. By emphasizing the Maccabean Martyrs’ death for their laws, Julian also engaged the Christians in a debate about the identity of the Maccabean Martyrs and, more important, about the nature of martyrdom in general. True martyrdom, he argues, is to die for one’s ancestral laws and not for belief in a man, whom Julian likely went on to castigate in the part missing from his Letter to Theodorus. By recharacterizing martyrdom as death for one’s ethnic ancestral laws, Julian sought to change the rhetorical discourse about martyrdom in order to subvert Christian self-understanding.91 Indeed Julian’s failure to mention martyrdom per se throughout his works may be attributable to his attempt to redefine that term. Julian could strengthen Antioch as a “holy city” by getting Christians to reevaluate the character of the martyrs and martyrdom. By speaking about dying for the Law, Julian took a stand in one of Christianity’s most sacred understandings of itself. The Christian Church of the fourth century was built on the blood of the martyrs. Christians of this time negotiated a world in

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which they were no longer persecuted by worshipping their martyrs as intercessors to the divine. Julian was very much aware of Christianity’s development and use of its martyrologies in the propagation of its faith.92 He combined his rhetoric—which undermined Christian identification of the Maccabees as Christian martyrs—with action by refusing to make martyrs of Christians in his day. As Thomas Sizgorich has argued, Julian’s unwillingness to persecute Christians made it difficult for them to make sense of the events of his reign.93 Now he took away their past heroes as well and further loosened their connection to the Old Testament and to Israelite heroes. If Christians were no longer tied to the biblical heroes of yesteryear and no longer a persecuted group, who were they? C O N C LU S I O N

Julian’s exegesis played out over the landscape of Antioch. As Antiochenes moved about the city from differentiated to undifferentiated spaces and back again they now would have Julian’s words in their minds, juxtaposed with other Christian and even Jewish interpretations. Julian’s works and use of Judean Scripture, authoritative voices, and heroes were meant to frame or interrupt Christian understandings and worship of the cult of the martyrs in general and the cult of the Maccabean Martyrs more specifically and thus alter the generative power of these spaces. Julian’s interpretation of Scriptures using local hermeneutical principles that mapped onto the local landscape undermined earlier Christian interpretations of Scripture and might alter what Christians perceived and understood about their own past when they witnessed the Christian cult of the martyrs. Now they would carry with them new perceptions about these spaces that could alter the kinetic energy in Julian’s favor. What did this allusion to the Maccabean Martyrs do for Julian’s struggle against the Christian cult of the martyrs? Mary Carruthers has argued that Daphne was not just a literal place but a memory site reverberating with conventional associations. Relics called to Christian minds the events associated with them.94 These memories were constructed and mutable and therefore useful in the construction or destabilization of identities. Not only did Julian’s ethnographic arguments identify the Maccabean Martyrs as Judeans; it also stripped the association of these relics from Christianity by refocusing Christian perceptions of these relics and thus robbing the site of its Christian power. Combined with Isaiah’s castigation of lying at tombs, the effect of Julian’s statement would have left a Christian supplicant with a slightly altered story of the Maccabean Martyrs. They were still martyrs, but Judean ones who died in the observance of their ancestral laws—Judean Laws—laws that Christians ought to keep as well. The hoped-for effect of Julian’s rhetoric was to slow the advance of the Christian cult of the martyrs and to provide Hellenes with a map of places to stay away from

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while opening up space for them to reach their temples in a state of purity so that they might offer efficacious sacrifices and thus engender the blessings of the gods. Between the Edict Banning Daytime Funerals, which allowed Hellenes to wander freely in the streets without the threat of contamination, Galileans and the Letter to Theodorus, which could alter how Christians understood martyrdom, Julian hoped to free space and to reestablish his “holy city.”

Conclusions Antioch in the Aftermath of Julian

The story of Jews in the Roman empire as generally told is one of suffering and angst. We tend to think of moments of clashes between Jews and Rome. Three bloody Jewish rebellions and Roman suppressions of Jewish political movements lie at the center of this history. At the same time Jewish and Christian literature set up binaries of Jew-Greek, and Christian-pagan, making it difficult to see past this rhetorical framework. When Jews do appear in Christian apologies and pagan polemics, our instinct is to treat them as merely rhetorical figures without considering the social context of the authors. In part this can be attributed to ancient Christian arguments of supersessionism in which Jews are cast as a defunct ethnos unable to practice its laws in the absence of their Temple. Christians now take their place. Meanwhile, Roman historians and classicists find it difficult to marshal evidence of Jewish responses to empire, given the opacity and highly literary and didactic nature of rabbinic texts. In recent years, scholars in Jewish studies have begun to consider Jewish responses to Rome in this corpus and other Jewish remains of this period. Notably, Haim Lapin’s work, Rabbis as Romans, looks at rabbis as provincial elites, and Annette Yoshiko Reed and Natalie Dohrmann have edited an excellent volume entitled Jews, Christians and the Roman Empire, which delves into Jews living as Romans.1 This study has addressed the place of Jews in the Roman empire from an entirely different perspective. Emperor Julian adopted a new tactic in early 363 in his Hellenizing campaign. Having recently read Celsus’s True Doctrine via Origen’s Against Celsus, Porphyry’s On Abstinence and Against the Christians, and Eusebius of Caesarea’s Preparation and Demonstration Book 1, Julian learned how to employ Jews as ethnic Judeans in his efforts to build Hellenic identity and to destroy 139

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Christian ethnic arguments. In Julian’s work Judeans are sometimes sources for and more often examples of proper ethnic worship for Hellenes. That is to say, far from being a binary other to Hellenes, Judeans sometimes parallel Hellenes and at other times feed directly into Hellenicity. What made Julian’s arguments particularly potent was the place Jews occupied in Antioch, where he was writing Against the Galileans and a number of other works. Up until that point Julian’s Hellenizing program was failing in the cosmopolitan city of Antioch. It neither attracted Hellenes nor convinced Christians. Jews offered Julian a way in to Antiochene society. They had lived in Antioch and in Syria more generally for so long that their laws and culture had become embedded in Antiochene society. The Syrian philosopher Numenius is reported to have offered this famous dictum: “Who is Plato but Moses speaking Greek?” It pithily captures the place of Jews in Syrian society. Jews were not atypical, as so many Jewish and Roman historians had once thought. Nor were they an “other.” They were largely seen by both Hellenes and Christians as authentic purveyors of a shared ancient wisdom. This carried over into Neoplatonism, whose thinkers, aside from Plotinus, were largely of Syrian stock. For Christians, who shared Scripture with Jews, they represented a more authentic version of Christians’ biblical past. Julian could use Judeans as ethnic exempla in his arguments and could draw on actual Judean sites and local practices to make his arguments even more persuasive to his audience. The implications for historians of the Roman empire are significant. If Romanization was a process of negotiation between the empire and locals and therefore manifested differently in different places, then it behooves us to consider the particular flavor of the local culture of Syrian Antioch. Jewishness was a significant ingredient in this stew. Therefore, to understand Romanness in Syrian Antioch requires that we better understand the place of Jews there. It also means we should not present Roman history of Late Antiquity as merely a struggle between pagans and Christians over control of the empire. Unfortunately, this is not an easy task because of the nature of our evidence for Jews in this period, but recent work shows that it is possible. What impact Julian’s Jewish gambit had on Hellenes in Antioch is impossible to gauge. Besides the words of a few important Hellenes like Libanius, we know very little about the Hellenic reaction to Julian. Did his attempt to create Hellenic identity succeed in some part of the empire? Hellenic organized cult, if it existed, is quiescent. What many refer to as “the pagan revival”—Hellenes’ last stand, so to speak—has been questioned of late by Alan Cameron and has been shown to have little to do with Hellenic cult.2 Cyril of Alexandria reveals that Julian’s works are being used by Hellenes against Christians in the second decade of the fifth century. Whether they constitute a significant group of people and even practice the cultic aspects of Hellenic ethnic identity as Julian conceived it or are merely the remaining Neoplatonists who had studied under Hypatia is unknown.3

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We know far more about the Christian reaction to Julian in Antioch and can draw some conclusions about their reaction to his Jewish gambit and about Jewish-Christian relations more broadly. This is a topic for another book, but I want to raise the possibility that Julian did have a significant impact. Leaders of the Church certainly are frightened by Julian’s Jewish gambit. Gregory of Nazianzus, Ephrem, Theodoret, and others are all wary of Julian’s alliance with the Jews.4 They all write anti-Julianic tracts, for the most part long after Julian was dead and buried. Julian’s reign was short yet the number of Christian responses to his antiChristian work quickly began to accumulate. What were they frightened of? Unfortunately, only Cyril of Alexandria’s response to Julian and bits of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s work remain. It seems Christian leaders considered Julian’s antiChristian arguments featuring ethnological discourse about Jews as Judeans to be dangerous. They reminded Christian leaders that Jews were a potential threat capable of being used by emperors to destroy Christianity. At any moment Jews might yet again become Judeans and renew their ancestral cult in Jerusalem. Christians attracted to Jewishness might follow them there and practice Jewish law. In effect, Julian resurrected Andrew Jacobs’s “remains” of the Jews. We also know quite a bit about Christianity in Antioch and Christian relations with Jews in the decades following Julian from the works of John Chrysostom, then a priest in the city. Jews, their laws, practices, institutions, skills, and heroes, continue to be attractive to Christians there. What is new to Antioch is Chrysostom’s anti-Jewish vituperative rhetoric. Christian anti-Jewish rhetoric goes back to the New Testament, but it reaches a whole new level in the works of Chrysostom. Scholars argue that his rhetoric is really aimed at the Judaizers rather than at the Jews. However, that does not negate the fact that, in order to attack the Judaizers, Chrysostom has to attack and delegitimize Jews. He does so with gusto. What separates Chrysostom from earlier Church leaders who also delegitimized Jews and Judaizers is the demonizing and totalizing anti-Jewish rhetoric he employs. It is interesting that the only other instance of this intense delegitimization of Jews may also be found in Syria. Ephrem of Nisibis wrote very angry works against the Jews. However, the dating of Ephrem’s works is impossible to ascertain. Some may have antedated Chrysostom. Nevertheless, he wrote in Syriac, a language that John Chrysostom neither read nor spoke. Traditionally, Chrysostom’s anti-Jewish rhetoric is explained as a by-product of Christianization, which from the time of Theodosius I may more accurately be characterized as the homoousianization of Christianity. In the late fourth century we have increasing use of heresiological arguments that pit “orthodox” Christians against Jewish others as two unequal if legitimate poles in order to delegitimize all remaining Christian groups, which were not quite orthodox and not quite Jewish, as illegitimate hybrids. This argument focuses on internal competition within

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Christianity and leaves Jews as rhetorical others, devices used to develop orthodoxy. Jews do not come out looking pretty in this discourse. What I want to suggest is that if we step back and consider the processes by which Julian produced Hellenic identity and delegitimized Christians in Antioch using ethnic Judeans we may discover another impetus for Chrysostom’s antiJewish rhetoric. In chapter 3 we saw how Julian’s ethnological Judean argument responds to Eusebius of Caesarea, who argued that Judeans are a defunct ethnos, with inefficacious ancestral laws, in the absence of their Temple. This is an argument that is repeated in Antioch over and over again. It appears in the work of John Chrysostom and in the Apostolic Constitutions.5 These Christians specifically attacked the viability of Judean ancestral laws. This tactic functions as a tool of Christian orthodoxy and is aimed at controlling the image of the Jews.6 In Antioch, where there was a large Jewish population and many believers in Jesus sitting at the borders of the Jewish community, this claim would not have gone uncontested. For these people “Jewish” laws in the Old Testament were part of their patrimony, and Jews were authentic purveyors of Christian antiquity, because they practiced the Law. Acts 15 frames the Apostolic Constitutions precisely because there was a Christian community that believed that works were as important as faith. This is the reason why after Julian we hear from more than one fourth-century Christian leader in Antioch that Jewish Law was inefficacious in the absence of the Temple. The place of Jewish Law is at the heart of many of John Chrysostom’s writings that touch on Jews. For example, in his On Eleazar and the Seven Sons,7 John Chrysostom offered a Christian interpretation of the acts of the Maccabean Martyrs. Notably he steers away from any notion that they died for their dietary laws. In this sense, he is in dialogue with Julian in his Letter to Theodorus over the nature of martyrdom. Instead Chrysostom insists they were murdered for Christ. Chrysostom’s association of the sacrifice of the Maccabean Martyrs takes place against a backdrop of intra-Christian competition over the correct meaning and site of the Maccabean Martyr reliquary. As we have seen, sometime in the 380s Theodosius II sponsored a basilica church in the Kerateion that claimed to be the home of the Maccabean Martyr relics. This site belonged to the homoousians. Meanwhile, the original reliquary of the Maccabean Martyrs was perhaps associated with homoians but almost certainly with Christians who stressed the Jewish background of the Maccabean Martyrs who died for their observance of the Law. Jews may or may not have prayed at the site. Either way they would have taken pride in their local heroes and perhaps marched in celebration of the martyrs. Chrysostom grew up in Antioch and lived through Julian’s stay in the city in 362/3. He would have experienced Julian’s program and the local Christian responses to it as an adolescent. Given the reaction of Gregory Nazianzen and Ephrem of Nisibis to Julian’s use of Jews, we can expect that some Christians perceived Julian’s Jewish gambit as an act that weaponized Jews against them. Chrys-

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ostom would have learned at a young age to be wary of Jews. They posed a serious danger to Christians. At any moment a new emperor might come and finish rebuilding the Temple and Jews would, in fact, become Judeans. Julian’s Hellenizing project left no room for Jews, their laws, practices, and institutions, to remain neutral entities in the city of Antioch. Now Jews stood out. This foreboding would have been reinforced by groups of Christians joining with Jews waiting for the End Times in late fourth-century Antioch. Led by Apollinaris of Laodicea, these people expected the return of the Messiah and the return of the Temple with its sacrificial cult. Julian’s Jerusalem endeavor had stirred up new hopes in the city and apparently fostered new alliances between Christians and Jews. Finally, John Chrysostom also faced a similar problem as Julian. When Rome became Christian, a process begun in earnest in the mid-380s with the support of Emperor Theodosius I, Christianity came to define Romanitas. This process differed from locale to locale. In Antioch, Christian leaders had to reckon with the embeddedness of Jews in local culture, just as Julian had done two decades earlier. As Chrysostom tried to occupy and control greater amounts of life and space in the city of Antioch, he was forced to deal with Jewish spaces and practices there.8 This meant affecting how people understood themselves and their culture. This is precisely what Chrysostom is up to in the case of the Maccabean Martyrs. Asking Christians to reevaluate how they looked at and valued Jews, their laws, practices, institutions, and heroes, was difficult particularly because of societal unconscious acceptance of Jewish idioms within the local culture. Weaning Christians from Jewish Law required tough language, and Chrysostom rose to the occasion. The ferocity with which he did so, however, may have come from his own fears of the Jews. Ultimately, he played an important role in setting Christian attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. Eventually this dynamic had a very negative impact on JewishChristian relations. Julian’s resurrection of the specter of the Jews had serious unintended consequences.

appendix

The Letter to the Community of the Jews

The importance of the Letter to the Community of the Jews [Ep. 51 Wright] to understanding Julian’s project is worth articulating. Aside from Gregory Nazianzen, who also writes about Julian’s rebuilding of Jerusalem, this is the only contemporary source to mention it. All the other sources focus on the rebuilding of the Temple. In recent years the letter’s authenticity has been impugned. Peter Van Nuffelen has added two important observations to the work of Josef Bidez and others that tip the balance of the argument negatively.1 Several terms in the letter demonstrate, at the very least, that someone edited it in the fifth century.2 However, this is not a reason to invalidate this letter in toto.3 The reality is that Julian’s fingerprints are all over the Letter to the Community of the Jews, and I believe the extant letter preserves one that Julian did indeed write to the Jews. When we read this letter intertextually with Julian’s other works of this period, we find it to be consistent with his writings about Judeans in Galileans, the Letter to Theodorus, the Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, and with the fragment preserved by John Lydus. Read in this light, it would be better to rename this letter the Letter to the Community of the Judeans. Rather than looking at individual moments in the letter that seem anachronistic or are unusual literary forms for Julian— many of which can be explained—I suggest that it is more helpful to investigate whether there are elements of Julian’s Hellenizing program of early 363 in the letter that only Julian could have written and to ask what this letter may do to advance his program. My main argument is that this letter advances Julian’s Jewish gambit as laid out in Galileans by considering the resettlement of the Judean ethnos in Jerusalem, where its members can worship their God in their Temple. This plan allows Julian to offer Judeans as an exemplary ethnos aside from its monotheistic beliefs. Now Judeans truly share with Hellenes temples, altars, sacrifice, purifications (Galileans fragment 72 = 306B) and the priestly life (fr. 58 = 238C). Some of the arguments, especially the letter’s use of Iamblichean terminology for theurgic prayer but also the presentation of Judean worship and Judean leadership of both priests and the Patriarch as a mirror of Julian’s vision of ideal leadership in Epistle 89b, have been 145

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presented already in chapters 4 and 5. These are not the product of a Christian hand. As we saw in chapter 5, Julian’s elevation of the Patriarch and request that he forgo his apostolē tax makes sense only if he was trying to offer Jews an incentive to move to Jerusalem and would also have enabled Jews to resume their half-shekel tax. To these arguments let us add a few observations about the substance and structure of the letter. Julian presents himself as a deus ex machina who can realize Jewish dreams of a rebuilt city of Jerusalem and its Temple. The stated goal of the letter is to get Jews to pray to their God for his reign. Such prayer is highly reminiscent of the Jewish priestly offering of a sacrifice to God on behalf of the emperor during the Second Temple Period. Julian believes that each ethnos ought to worship its god in accordance with its ancestral laws, because this will guarantee the security and success of Rome. The old conciliation of Jews’ refusal to sacrifice to the emperor presented Julian with no difficulty, since he sought that all Hellenes worship their gods in accordance with their ancestral laws. In many ways, this represents a restoration of the former ethnic status of Jews as Judeans and their normalization in the Roman empire, the first time since 70 c.e. that this status was attained. How does Julian go about getting the Jews to pray to their God for him? Naturally, he must win them over. As we saw in chapter 5, he begins by cutting taxes, a classic maneuver for this emperor and one that he used to restart the cults of many cities in his empire. The hook in this letter is that Jews should pray to God on his behalf because he will rebuild Jerusalem and resettle Jews as Judeans there, where they can worship their God, which clearly refers to the Temple. This tax-cutting measure, then, is linked to both goals. One obstacle Julian had to overcome was his Flavian background. The Flavians had not always treated Jews well. Their building of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, their various laws that discriminated against Jews, and the squelching of the Jewish revolt against Gallus likely convinced Jews to tread cautiously around this dynasty. Julian’s repudiation of Constantius II’s taxes at the very beginning of the letter is designed to differentiate himself from his Flavian predecessor in order to overcome Jewish skepticism.4 Even if Constantius II had not collected the apostolē on behalf of the Patriarch as Peter Van Nuffelen has argued, as far as the Jews were concerned they paid taxes to Rome, and it hardly mattered which emperor levied them.5 Julian also demonstrates to Jews that he is on their side. By informing Jews in his letter that he has asked the Patriarch to forgo his tax the emperor achieves a few things. He demonstrates to the Jews that he is their advocate and is serious about lowering their taxes. This demonstration allows him to show a mixture of power and patronage in a way that supersedes the patronage of the Patriarch. Had the Patriarch released the apostolē, the Jews of Antioch stood to benefit, as they had close ties with the Patriarch and likely paid this tax. The emperor’s request, rather than command, recognizes that the tax is an internal Jewish matter and is likely included to pressure the Patriarch into releasing his tax. At the same time, Julian’s deference toward the Patriarch, which some scholars find incredible, was measured to meet the sensibilities of his audience, in particular the Jews of Antioch and the Roman East, where the Patriarch was highly regarded.6 His characterization of the Patriarch as his adelphon (“brother”) shows deep respect for the Patriarch even as he asks him to forgo his tax. Julian’s respectful language demonstrates that this was a carefully calibrated attempt to win over the support of Jews in Antioch and in Palestine. In addition, he needed the Patriarch’s backing to encourage Jews to support his program.

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Similarly, Julian names the Judean God as the Most High God in Lydus’s fragment and as the Demiurge and Most High God in the Letter to the Community of the Jews.7 In chapter 6 we saw that this was aimed at Jews but possibly also at pagan monotheists who worshipped the Judean God as the Most High God. Julian goes so far as to claim that the Judean God is the god who crowned him with his right hand. His use of language from the Septuagint, which he knew well, to describe the Judean God also demonstrates his attempt to win Jews over.8 He also shows them that he values Jewish qua Judean worship as a means of achieving victory in Persia.9 Finally, Julian’s use of the name Jerusalem rather than Aelia Capitolina may be designed to appeal to Jews. We also should expect that the reduction of taxes would take a front seat in Julian’s plans for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the resettlement of Jews qua Judeans there.10 Consider that the restoration of the cult in Jerusalem was a project unlike any other he had undertaken. In every other instance where he abated taxes to restore a city’s cult the ethnos in question lived there already.11 Many of these Hellenic temples still stood, although a number had been stripped of their riches and even put to other uses. The Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed, and besides a handful of Jews already living in the city in the mid-fourth century, its people were scattered to other parts of the empire.12 Jews would have to be enticed to give up their livelihoods in the Diaspora and return to Jerusalem. A reduction of taxes would have acted as an economic incentive to bring Jews to the city. Moreover, if Yaron Eliav is correct, Hadrian’s city cast the Temple Mount outside the city’s walls. Julian now also faced the cost of rebuilding the city to include the Temple.13 As we saw in chapter 5, his exemption of Jewish taxes also resembles his exemptions of the priests from the curiae, a financially onerous endeavor, and we have pointed out that Julian regards Judeans as priests. There can be little doubt that Julian’s plan to rebuild Jerusalem and its Temple had its genesis in Julian’s writing of Galileans. The effort, promised in this letter, is the instantiation of his ethnographic argument in Galileans. Other references to Julian’s rebuilding of the Temple do not mention the resettlement of Judeans in Jerusalem and the reinstitution of worship in the Temple, which is referred to obliquely at the end of the letter. This letter does all of that. It realizes his ethnographic discourse by reJudeanizing Jerusalem with its cult, priests, Temple, and God. Now, one can hardly ignore the anti-Christian argument in fragment 72 (= 305D–306A) that Judeans would sacrifice in public if their Temple stood. There he turns to the Christians and asks why they do not sacrifice, having invented a “new” kind of sacrifice—the Eucharist— and then claims they have no need for Jerusalem at all. The rebuilding of the Temple and the reinstitution of the Judean sacrificial cult would restore the Jews’ ability to sacrifice and demonstrate that the city belonged to the Jews as Judeans and their God rather than to Constantine’s and Eusebius’s Christian God. We have seen that those passages also offer an example of ethnic orthopraxy for Hellenes. A rebuilt Jerusalem with a functioning cult at its restored Temple was something Julian could offer Hellenes as a model. By achieving these ends Jews would return as Judeans to the status quo ante of pre-70-c.e., when they were fully integrated into the empire, and in a manner that would strengthen Julian’s Hellenizing program. More than that, in Ep. 51.398A (Wright) Julian refers to Jerusalem as the polin hagian Hierosalēm (“sacred city Jerusalem”), and in Galileans fragment 72 (= 306A) the Judean Temple is tou hagiasmatos (“the holy place”).14 Jerusalem, then, may offer an example of Julian’s concept of the “holy city,” a place with many sacrifices and priests who purify the city, which we explored in chapter 7.15

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Appendix T H E KOI N Ē O F T H E J U D E A N S A N D J U L IA N ’ S AU D I E N C E

What is the koinē of the Judeans?16 Most likely it stands in for the term politeia and refers to those who share in it. In light of Julian’s emphasis on ancestral law as a telltale feature of each ethnos, this is logical. Julian uses this term in Oration 3 to the Italian koinē.17 Jeffrey Brodd suggests the letter was written to an audience close to the Patriarchate in Tiberias.18 The difficulty with that suggestion is that the letter mentions another letter he wrote to the Patriarch. I suspect that the letter is addressed initially to the leadership of the Jews of Antioch, which was the largest community of Jews in the Roman East, but ultimately could be read to apply to all Jews. Julian’s goals, to get Jews to pray for him and to resettle Jerusalem, make most sense to the ears of a large Jewish community, one capable of supplying many Jews. Julian’s familiarity with Antiochene Jews enabled him to display his knowledge of them, their tribulations, practices, and God. Similarly, his veneration of the Patriarch makes sense in the context of Antioch, where the Patriarch was respected.

notes

P R E FAC E

1. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2006). 2. See Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 b.c.e. to 640 c.e. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 3. Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). I N T R O D U C T IO N : E M P E R O R J U L IA N ’ S J EW I SH G A M B I T

1. For archaeological remains of synagogues as well as Jewish inscriptions see Thomas A. Kraabel, “The Diaspora Synagogue: Archaeological and Epigraphic Evidence since Sukenik”, ANRW Part 2, Principat, 19.1: 475–510, edited by Wolfgang Haase, (New York: de Gruyter, 1979). For inscriptions see Walter Ameling, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). See Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, eds. and trans., Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1987); Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, eds. and trans., Magic Spells and Formulae: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1993). 2. An exception is Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (AD 135–425). trans. H. McKeating (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). 3. Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996); Miriam S. Taylor, Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus (Leiden: Brill, 1995); James Carleton Paget, Jews, Christians, and Jewish Christians in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010); Andrew 149

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Jacobs, Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); Christine Shepardson, Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem’s Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria, North American Patristic Society, Patristics Monograph Series (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008). 4. Giorgio Scrofani, “ ‘Like the Green Herb’: Julian’s Understanding of Purity and His Attitude Towards Judaism in Contra Galileos,” JLARC 2 (2008): 1–16. 5. See Natalie B. Dohrmann and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 6. Hayim Lapin, Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100–400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 7. I am referring to Iamblichean theurgy but specifically to the theurgist as an exegete of divine wisdom. See chapter 1. 8. On Porphyry, see Aaron P. Johnson, Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre: The Limits of Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 9. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2006). Against the Galileans uses a Platonic cosmic order. See Julian’s Hymn to King Helios for his presentation of a different cosmic order. See chapter 1 herein for an explanation of Hellenes and of Julian’s program. 10. See chapter 2 on Antioch. 11. Rowland B. E. Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London: Routledge, 2012), 200; See also Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler’s criticism of Jay Bregman in Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion zur Philosophie in der Spätantike: Kaiser Julian und Synesios von Kyrene (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008), 139 n. 505. 12. I am not counting the Letter to Arsacius (Ep. 84) since it has been proved to be a forgery. See Peter Van Nuffelen, “Deux fausses lettres de Julien l’apostat (la lettre aux Juifs, Ep. 51 [Wright], et lettre à Arsacius, Ep. 84 [Bidez]),” VC 55 (2001): 131–50; For a counterargument see Jean Bouffartigue, “L’authenticité de la lettre 84 de l’empereur Julien,” RPh 79.2 (2005): 231–42. 13. Josef Bidez, ed., L’empereur Julien, Œuvres complètes, tome 1, 2e partie, Lettres et fragments (Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1972), 102. 14. I call this the Letter to the Community of the Jews although one might call it the Letter to the Community of the Judeans as I do in the Appendix since Emperor Julian designates Jews ethnic Judeans. 15. The authenticity of the Letter to the Community of the Jews is addressed below in the appendix. 16. See chapter 3, where all of Galileans is discussed in depth. 17. Andrew Jacobs, Remains, 26–32. 18. In chapter 4 the question of Julian’s depiction of Judeans performing theurgy will be explored. 19. An exception is an article by Giorgio Scrofani, who suggests that Julian uses Judaism to prove the validity of a Hellenic, pure way of life and worship. In Scrofani’s opinion Julian’s use of Jews is limited to issues of purity. See his “ ‘Like the Green Herb.’ ” 20. David Rokeah, Jews, Pagans and Christians in Conflict (Leiden: Brill, 1982).

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21. Daniel Boyarin, Borderlines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 202–5, 209–10. 22. Gedaliah Alon, “Towards a Clarification of the Problem of Julian’s Knowledge of Jews,” in Gedaliah Alon, Studies in Jewish History in the Times of the Second Temple, the Mishna and the Talmud, vol. 2 (Tel-Aviv: Kibbutz Ha-Meuhad, 1958; in Hebrew), 313–14; Moshe David Herr, “Between Churches and Theaters and Circuses,” in S. Elizur et al., eds., Knesset Ezra: Literature and Life in the Synagogue (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi, 1994; in Hebrew), 105–19; Fergus Millar, “The Jews of the Graeco-Roman Diaspora between Paganism and Christianity, a.d. 312–438,” in Fergus Millar, Hannah M. Cotton and Guy M. Rogers, eds., Rome, the Greek World, and the East, vol. 3, The Greek World, the Jews, and the East (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 432–56. 23. Michael Adler, “The Emperor Julian and the Jews,” JQR 5 (1893): 615–51; Claude Aziza, “Julien et le judaisme,” in René Braun and Jean Richer, eds., L’empereur Julien: De l’histoire à la légende, 331–1715, vol. 1 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1978), 141–58; Hans Lewy, “Julian the Apostate and the Building of the Temple,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., The Jerusalem Cathedra, vol. 3 of Studies in the History, Archaeology, Geography and Ethnography of the Land of Israel (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983), 70–96. 24. Maijastina Kahlos, “Introduction,” in Maijastina Kahlos, ed., The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman World (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 1–15. 25. Judith Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 275. 26. Aaron Johnson, Religion, 202. 27. Daniel R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews: Four Faces of Dichotomy in Ancient Jewish History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014); idem, “ ‘Judaean’ or ‘Jew’? How Should We Translate Ioudaios in Josephus?” in Jörg Frey, Daniel R. Schwartz, and Stephanie Gripentrog, eds., Jewish Identity in the Greco-Roman World / Jüdische Identität in der griechischrömischen Welt, Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity 71 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 3–27; Steve Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” JSJ 38 (2007): 457–512. 28. Jay Bregman, “Judaism as Theurgy in the Religious Thought of the Emperor Julian”, The Ancient World 26.2 (1995): 135–49 at 146. 29. Galileans fr. 86 = 354B. See Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, “Weiser oder Scharlatane? Chaldaerbilder der griechisch-römischen Kaiserzeit und die chaldaeischen Orakel,” in H. Seng and N. Tardieu, eds., Die chaldaeischen Orakel: Kontext—Interpretation—Rezeption (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg, 2010), 19–42 at 26–28. She points out that Hebrews were linked to Chaldeans in Philo, On the Life of Moses II 26.31.38; On Abraham 99. 30. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion, 139. 31. Scrofani, “ ‘Like the Green Herb.’ ” 32. Galileans fr. 72 = 305D. 33. Scrofani, “ ‘Like the Green Herb,’ ” 11. 34. Ibid. 15. 35. Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015), 287.

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36. Josef Vogt, Kaiser Julian und das Judentum (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1939). 37. Todd S. Berzon, Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2016), 36. 38. Berzon, Ibid. 32–33. 39. Aaron Johnson explains that Platonic philosophy had continued to use ethnological discourse into Late Antiquity: Aaron P. Johnson, Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre: The Limits of Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 222. 40. Aaron Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius' Praeparatio Evangelica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), vii. See my chapter 3 below. 41. See her “ ‘Religion’ as the Cipher for Identity: The Cases of Emperor Julian, Libanius, and Gregory Nazianzus,” HTR 93.4 (2000): 373–400. 42. Florin Curta, “Language Ethnē, and National Gods: A Note on Julian’s Concept of Hellenism,” in Victor Spinei, ed., Florin Curta: Text, Context, History and Archaeology; Studies in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2009), 41–57; Aaron P. Johnson, “Hellenism and Its Discontents,” in Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 437–66. 43. Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). 44. Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin, Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016.) I agree with David Frankfurter that second order uses of religion can be helpful in explaining phenomena in this period. See his review of Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept, by Brent Nongbri, JECS 23.4 (2015): 632–34. 45. The debate about the status of Porphyry’s Against the Christians is addressed in the section “Porphyry of Tyre” in chapter 3. 46. Garth Fowden, “The Pagan Holy Man in Late Antique Society,” JHS 102 (1982): 33–59. 47. See my chapter 7 below. 48. Dohrmann and Reed, Jews. 49. Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 b.c.e. to 640 c.e. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 50. Charlotte Fonrobert argues that there were many ways of being Jewish in Late Antiquity. See her “The Didascalia Apostolorum: A Mishnah for the Disciples of Jesus,” JECS 9.4 (2001): 483–509 at 485. 51. I am aware of and sympathetic to challenges to the concept of “empire” vis a vis Rome after 212 c.e. See Claudia Rapp and H. A. Drake, eds., The City in the Classical and Post-Classical World: Changing Contexts of Power and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). However, even if Julian’s ordering of the Roman oikoumenē required persuasion, it remained an unbalanced relationship. C HA P T E R 1 . J U L IA N ’ S H E L L E N I Z I N G P R O G R A M A N D T H E J EWS

1. Aedesius was a student of Iamblichus of Chalcis, a theurgic Neoplatonist philosopher of the late third to early fourth century, whose teachings Julian followed. Josef Bidez argued that Julian’s initiation included theurgy. However, not everyone agrees. See Josef Bidez, ed.,

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L’empereur Julien: Œuvres complètes, tome 1, 2e partie, Lettres et fragments (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1972), 31–32. The main source for this transformation is Eunapius. Carine Van Liefferinge, La théurgie des Oracles Chaldaïques à Proclus (Liège: Centre International d’Étude de la Religion Grecque Antique, 1999) 218–24; Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion zur Philosophie in der Spätantike: Kaiser Julian und Synesios von Kyrene (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008), 135–36. 2. Most scholars do not think Julian staged the rebellion, but Glenn Bowersock argues that Julian’s protestations are not believable. See Glenn W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 51–52. 3. Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Routledge, 1992), 89. 4. Elm argues that Julian lays claim to the “holy race” of the true philosopher sought by Iamblichus: Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015), 115. 5. Julian identifies as a Roman. He refers to Rome as “our city” and declares that his personal deity, Helios, is the god of the Romans. See Or. 1.10b; Or. 2.63d; King Helios 153d, 157a. See Jean Bouffartigue, L’empereur Julien et la culture de son temps (Paris: Institut des Études Auguestiniennes, 1992), 664. He also refers to the victory of the Romans over the Macedonians as “ours” (Or. 1.17d) and identifies himself as part of the Constantinian Dynasty (King Helios 131C). 6. Active involvement in public political life threatened to commingle knowledge of the gods with mortals and thus lose its potency. However, Dominic O’Meara has overturned the long-held belief that later Plotinian philosophers eschewed the political life. Dominic O’Meara, Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), 120–23. 7. Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 9 and 20. 8. Elm, Sons, 93. Reading the Letter to Themistius O’Meara argues that Julian models his political reform on the “second-best model of political reform projected” in Plato’s Laws. O’Meara, Platonopolis, 120–21. See his discussion of the “second-order” model in Plato’s Laws at 91–93. Philosophers of this model saw their role as similar to the Demiurge’s in Plato’s Timaeus. Elm argues that by the time Julian writes the Hymn to King Helios he is a philosopher-king from Plato’s Republic. Susanna Elm, Sons, 292 at n. 90. 9. Misop. 340B. 10. Elm, Sons, 2. 11. Ibid. 121. 12. Ibid. 119. 13. Ibid. 14. By virtue of his authority as pontifex maximus, he organized the priesthoods, maintained the calendar, and interpreted the cultic traditions of the ethnē. Augustus was the first to join the role of pontifex maximus with that of the imperator, and through that office’s authority became the chief priest for the whole empire. See Augustus, RG 10. 15. This was an expansion of the position of pontifex maximus. Julian is the first to use his authority bestowed upon him by this title to define peoples’ ancestral laws. Typically, the

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pontifex maximus was responsible for the cult in Rome. In this role, Julian oversaw the cults of the empire and was the ultimate arbiter of the interpretation of all ancestral laws. 16. Julian uses Hebrew wisdom primarily but claims the Hymn to King Helios is inspired by the Chaldean Oracles and refers to the wisdom of all these ethnē in Galileans if only sporadically. 17. See my discussion of Julian’s innovating role of the office of pontifex maximus in chapter 5 below. 18. Aaron P. Johnson, Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre: The Limits of Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 202. 19. Aaron Johnson call this use “ethnic argumentation.” See his Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), vii; Denise Kimber Buell calls this “ethnic reasoning.” See her Why This New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 20. Iamblichus also wrote other works about soteriology, but there is no evidence that Julian read them. There is only evidence that Julian read Iamblichus’s commentary on the Chaldean Oracles, a text on Helios, and something on myths. See Bouffartigue, Empereur, 358. Julian is also influenced by On the Mysteries. 21. Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy in Late Antiquity: The Invention of a Ritual Tradition, Beiträge zur Europaïschen Religionsgeschichte (BERG), vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2013), 88. 22. This is true for On the Mysteries but not in some of Iamblichus’s other works. Typically, theurgy is presented as a predetermined entity that is later incorporated into Neoplatonism. The term first appears in the Chaldean Oracles and is related to a rather small number of rituals used to achieve union with the One. See Georg Luck, “Theurgy and Forms of Worship in Neoplatonism,” in J. Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher, eds., Science and Magic in Concert and Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 185–225. However, the definition of theurgy varies according to the author: Van Liefferinge, Théurgie. In general, theurgy fits well both within Hellenic worship of the gods and in the traditions of mystery cults. The Chaldean Oracles borrows common Greek ritual patterns and makes them consonant with Platonic-Stoic theology by introducing mystery wisdom. (Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 43.) Rituals such as sacrifice of a stone as an apotropaic offering, teletai marking some form of mystery initiation tied to the soul’s ascent, and divine visions triggered by spoken formulas are all present and play an important role in the ascent of the soul. (Ibid. 26–39.) 23. On the Return of the Soul fr. 290A Smith; See Andrew Smith, ed., Porphyrius: Fragmenta (Leipzig: Teubner, 1993); Aaron Johnson, Religion, 142; H. D. Saffrey, “Connaissance et inconnaissance de Dieu: Porphyre et la théosophie de Tübingen,” in H. D. Saffrey, ed., Recherches sur le néoplatonisme après Plotin (Paris: Vrin, 1990), 11–30. The Letter to Anebo does not deal with the notion of theurgy. Later, in On the Return of the Soul, Porphyry would use the term “theurgy” to denote a technē practiced by ritual experts, or theurgists, who are responsible for people unable to achieve salvation via philosophy, assigning the Chaldeans a special place, quoting them as authorities in the art of theurgy. 24. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 100. 25. Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 84; Myst. 2.11. 26. Myst. 3.15; Shaw, Theurgy, 48.

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27. Myst. 3.24. In the Letter to Anebo, Porphyry argues against the notion that the names of the gods in their own languages have any power. 28. T. Stäcker, Die Stellung der Theurgie in der Lehre Jamblichs (Frankfurt, 1995). 29. Pythagoras often appears as the philosophical exegete par excellence—although Julian did not read Iamblichus’s works on Pythagoras. 30. Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden’s argument that Julian’s Hellenizing program was based on Iamblichean theurgic Neoplatonism has met with strong headwinds from scholars but has been supported by the work of Carine Van Liefferinge, Théurgie, and Susanna Elm, Sons. In general Julian seems to adopt a flexible attitude in justifying his Hellenizing program. He uses philosophical principles that he thinks will work to achieve his goals. Theurgic Neoplatonism was neither popular nor readily understood by the masses. Julian’s innovative program requires persuasive sources. His program seems to be drawn from the writings of Iamblichus, Pythagorean principles, the Chaldean Oracles, Middle Platonism, and Neoplatonism. Indeed, scholars debate whether Julian has a single philosophy throughout his works. See Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion, 130. Some scholars prefer to examine the philosophical underpinnings of each work separately. 31. Rowland Smith and Rosen argue that theurgy ought not to have an important place in Julian’s program. See Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London: Routledge, 2012), 110–11; K. Rosen, Julian: Kaiser, Gott und Christenhasser (Stuttgart, 2006). Other scholars disagree. See Josef Bidez, La vie de l’empereur Julien (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1930), 67–81; Bowersock, Julian, 28–30, 86; Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian, 31–38, 136, 144, 182–87; U. Criscuolo, “La religione di Giuliano,” Mediterraneo Antico 4 (2001): 365–88 at 384; Elm, Sons. Carine Van Liefferinge argues that Julian’s adoption of theurgy was a political act that is expressed only during his time as emperor. See Van Liefferinge, Théurgie, 224. Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler’s argument that Julian went to study with Maximus over other Neoplatonists because of his theurgic practices is convincing. See her Konversion, 136. If, as Van Liefferinge argues, Julian did not express his theurgy prior to his reign it was because he was pretending to be a Christian and in danger of being found out. Van Liefferinge is correct in her estimation that Julian used theurgy for political purposes. His goal was to guarantee the security and success of Rome. 32. Jean Bouffartigue points out that Julian never quotes or alludes to the Chaldean Oracles, though he believes Julian read Iamblichus’s commentary on the Chaldean Oracles. Jean Bouffartigue, Empereur, 358. 33. In Ep. 12 (Letter to Priscus), Julian requests copies of the Chaldean Oracles and Iamblichus’s commentary on it. 34. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 138. 35. Ibid. 139. 36. Ibid. 138. 37. Hymn to King Helios 152A–B. 38. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 140. The Metroac cult was an Oriental cult that was steeped in Mysteries and that performed special secret rites. 39. Ibid. 141. When Julian prays to Cybele for perfection in theurgy (Hymn to the Mother of the Gods 20.180B), he appears to be asking for esoteric knowledge. Other times Julian argues that myths contain theurgic wisdom. At these moments Julian sometimes uses the

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term “theurgy” or another term that means “mysterious hidden wisdom” and therefore has the same meaning as “theurgy.” In Against the Cynic Heraclius, Julian argues that the words of the gods, their myths, are not to be taken literally, but that rather they contain secret truths requiring interpretation. For a discussion see Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden, “Le traitement du mythe de l’empereur Julien à Proclus” in M. A. Amir-Moezzi et al., eds., Pensée grecque et sagesse d’orient: Homage à Michel Tardieu (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 63–76 at 66–70. 40. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion, 141. For instance, Julian discusses Metroac rites of the cult of Cybele in the Hymn to the Mother of the Gods and argues that people should refuse to eat certain foods in order to prepare the soul for meeting with the gods. See 18.178B–D; Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 140. Metroac rites render souls pure. Therefore, the purified soul in the Metroac cult is the same as pure theurgists. Ibid.; Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods, 138. Here Julian uses language similar to Iamblichus’s when the latter refers to theurgic efficacy. This similarity suggests that, like Iamblichus, Julian believed theurgy to be the highest level of performance of any cultic activity. See Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 141. 41. Ep. 89b.302B. 42. Fredrik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1969). 43. Hayim Lapin, “Introduction: Locating Ethnicity and Religious Communities in Later Roman Palestine,” in Hayim Lapin, ed., Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine (Potomac: University Press of Maryland, 1998), 1–28, esp. 17–21. 44. Jonathan Hall, Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 25–26. 45. Aaron P. Johnson, Ethnicity, 34. 46. Aaron Johnson, Religion, 189. 47. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991). 48. Jonathan M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), chapter 6. 49. Anthony Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 54, 57. 50. Hymn to King Helios; Kaldellis, Hellenism, 54. 51. The third-century Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus of Chalcis characterized Hellenism in religious terms. See Glenn W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity, Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures, 18 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 7–10; Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian, 8; John A. North, “Pagans, Polytheists, and the Pendulum,” in J. A. North and S. R. F. Price, eds., The Religious History of the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 479–502. 52. Sara Stöcklin-Kaldewey, Kaiser Julians Gottesverehrung im Kontext der Spätantike, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 86 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 385. 53. Vasiliki Limberis, “ ‘Religion’ as the Cipher for Identity: The Cases of Emperor Julian, Libanius, and Gregory Nazianzus,” HTR 93.4 (2000): 373–400; See also Sara Stöcklin-Kaldewey, Kaiser Julians Gottesverehrung, 385. 54. Or. 4.252C. 55. Misop. 367C.

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56. Bowersock, Hellenism, 6. 57. Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); Barton and Boyarin have made religion relevant again but only to a degree. See Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin, Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016). 58. Florin Curta, “Language Ethnē, and National Gods: A Note on Julian’s Concept of Hellenism,” in Victor Spinei, ed., Florin Curta: Text, Context, History and Archaeology; Studies in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2009), 41–57; Aaron P. Johnson, “Hellenism and Its Discontents” in Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 437–66. Julian uses “Hellenes” to mean a few things, including the ethnos, the territory, the historical Greek nation, cultural Hellenism, and Hellenic polytheism. See Jean Bouffartigue, “Julien; ou, L’Hellénisme décomposé,” in S. Said, ed., HELLĒNISMOS: Quelques jalons pour une histoire de l’identité grecque; Actes de Colloque de Strasbourg 11, October 25–27, 1989 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 251–66 at 257–58. 59. Curta, “Language,” 51–52. 60. Jean Bouffartigue, “Julien; ou, L’Hellénisme,” 257–58. Jean Bouffartigue takes issue with some of Curta’s definitions of Julian’s use of “Hellenes,” arguing that some of these do emphasize religion rather than ethnic or cultural aspects but a number of his examples come from the now-impugned Letter to Arsacius and from Gregory of Nazianzus’s biased Christian complaint against Julian. See also Anthony Kaldellis, Hellenism, 58. He argues that Julian’s Hellenism was a matter of paideia. 61. Aaron Johnson, “Hellenism,” 449 and 453, respectively. 62. Ibid. 439. 63. Ibid. 64. Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, Ep. 89b.295D–296A. 65. Galileans fr. 86 = 354B. 66. Giorgio Scrofani, “ ‘Like the Green Herb’: Julian’s Understanding of Purity and His Attitude towards Judaism in Contra Galileos.” JLARC 2 (2008): 1–16 at 10. 67. Fr. 54 = 224D. 68. See my chapter 4 below. For an argument that Jewish rites are theurgic see Jay Bregman, “Judaism as Theurgy in the Religious Thought of the Emperor Julian,” The Ancient World 26.2 (1995): 135–49 at 145–46. He did not notice that Jewish private sacrifice contained theurgy. 69. Julian says Judeans sacrifice in hidden places (adraktois). Lexically the word is related to the common word derchomai, a deponent verb meaning “I see.” With a privative alpha, the perfect passive participle means “the state of being unseen”: Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). See also the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, Digital Library of Greek Culture, which lists four lexical sources. See Michael Adler, “The Emperor Julian and the Jews,” JQR 5 (1893): 591–651 at 602 n. 1. 70. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion, 141. 71. Van Liefferinge argues that Julian reads myths for wisdom and connection with gods—who, Julian argues in Galileans fr. 45 = 198C, no longer speak via oracles but now communicate through hierōn technōn, which could refer to theurgy, divination, and possibly the interpretation of myths. See Van Liefferinge, Théurgie, 235.

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72. See Jeremy M. Schott, Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2008), 52–66; for a different opinion see Aaron Johnson, who believes that Porphyry was attempting to reconstruct Hellenism not for the empire but rather for a small group of philosophers: Aaron Johnson, “Rethinking the Authenticity of Porphyry, Contra Christianos, fr. 1,” Studia Patristica 46 (2010): 53–58 at 57. Therefore, he differs with Schott’s argument that Porphyry was creating a universal Hellenic identity. 73. Jeffery W. Hargis, Against the Christians: The Rise of Early Anti-Christian Polemic, Patristic Studies, vol. 1 (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 81–82; Schott, Christianity, 57–59. See Michael Bland Simmons, Universal Salvation in Late Antiquity: Porphyry of Tyre and the PaganChristian Debate, Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 74. In his Philosophy from Oracles, an early work, Porphyry calls Jews “Hebrews.” See Porphyry, Philosophy from Oracles in Eusebius, Preparation 9.10.4. 75. Aaron Johnson, Religion; idem, “Hellenism,” 443. 76. Schott, Christianity, 57. 77. Ibid. 62–63. 78. Ibid. 79. See note 64. 80. Porphyry also did not engage in figurative readings of Scriptures in his anti-Christian polemic. 81. Glenn Bowersock argues that Julian’s program was motivated by an anti-Christian animus, although even he identifies the building of the Temple as corresponding to Julian’s sacrificial program. See Bowersock, Julian, 89. Rowland Smith attributes the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple as part of Julian’s restoration of the ancestral cults. However, he does not explain why Julian waited until early 363 to include Jews and Jerusalem, given that he issued orders to rebuild temples a year earlier. See Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods, 216–17. Susanna Elm argues that Julian’s anti-Christian animus did not drive his argument in Galileans but asserts rather that he sought to correct the error of their ways and bring them toward salvation with the rest of the Roman oikoumenē. She acknowledges that Julian became more stridently anti-Christian while he lived in Antioch but points out that it was largely Constantius’s homoians who were persecuted while homoousian Christian institutions continued unbothered. See Elm, Sons, 278. 82. Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods, 189–207, claims Julian was speaking to Hellenes as well in the final part of Galileans; Jan Stenger, Hellenische Identität in der Spätantike: Pagane Autoren und ihr Unbehagen an der eigenen Zeit, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, Band 97 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 365. 83. On labeling see Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives, 2nd ed. (London: Pluto Press, 2002). 84. Greg Woolf, “Beyond Romans and Natives,” World Archaeology 28.3 (1997): 339–50; idem, Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West (Chichester, Ssx: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011); Nathaniel Andrade, Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 20–21. 85. Isabella Sandwell, Religious Identity in Late Antiquity: Greeks, Jews, and Christians in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 86. Hans Lewy, “Julian the Apostate and the Building of the Temple,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., The Jerusalem Cathedra, vol. 3 of Studies in the History, Archaeology, Geography and Ethnography of the Land of Israel (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983), 70–96.

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87. See my discussion of Against the Christians in chapter 3 below. 88. Ep. 1098. 89. Elm, Sons. 90. Andrade, Syrian Identity. 91. Sandwell, Religious Identity, 18–19; Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 92. Renee Saltzman argues that people in the fourth century participated in a religious koinē that emphasized a common cultural heritage rather than religious differences. Michele Renee Salzman, “Religious Koinē and Religious Dissent in the Fourth Century,” in Jörg Rüpke, ed., A Companion to Roman Religion, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 109–25. Recent scholarship argues that most people fell into the fuzzy middle of a spectrum. Majaistina Kahlos calls this group the incerti, “those unclassifiable and indefinable individuals who appear in the grey area between hard-line polytheism and hardline Christianity.” See Maijastina Kahlos, Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Culture c. 360–430 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), 31; Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 176–77; Raffaella Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality and Religion in the Fourth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013). 93. I use the term “hybrid” not in a postcolonial sense but as a term that reflects the multiple conscious and unconscious identities of any one person at one time or during a lifetime. 94. Richard Miles, “Introduction: Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity,” in Richard Miles ed., Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1999), 1–15. C HA P T E R 2 . SE T T I N G T H E S TAG E : H E L L E N E S , C H R I S T IA N S , A N D J EWS I N C O SM O P O L I TA N A N T IO C H

1. Archaeological remains of Antioch can be found in George W. Elderkin, ed., Antiochon-the-Orontes, vol. 1, The Excavations of 1932, Publications of the Committee for the Excavation of Antioch and Its Vicinity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1934), 1934; Richard Stillwell, ed., Antioch-on-the-Orontes, vol. 2, The Excavations, 1933–1936 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1938); Richard Stillwell, ed., Antioch-on-the-Orontes, vol.3, The Excavations, 1937–1939 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941); Frederick O. Waagé, ed., Antioch-on-the-Orontes, vol. 4.1, Ceramics and Islamic Coins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948); Dorothy B. Waagé, ed., Antioch-on-the Orontes, vol. 4.2, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Crusaders’ Coins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952). 2. The only definitive Jewish object found is a broken marble slab with a menorah and a partial inscription carved on it. See Stillwell, Antioch, vol. 2, 150–51. Aside from the firstcentury-c.e. Jewish historian Josephus and some epigraphical and archaeological evidence in Palestine and in Apamea, no extant Jewish-authored texts about the Jews of Antioch remain. In addition, there is a nearly three-hundred-year gap between Josephus and later evidence about Jews in Antioch. This has not stopped scholars from writing about the Jews of Antioch: Carl H. Kraeling, “The Jewish Community at Antioch,” JBL 51 (1932), 130–60; Robert Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983); Wayne A. Meeks and Robert L. Wilken, Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common

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Era (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1979); Bernadette J. Brooten, “The Jews of Ancient Antioch,” in Christine Kondoleon, ed., Antioch: The Lost Ancient City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 29–37; Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (AD 135–425), trans. H. McKeating (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Johannes Hahn, “Die jüdische Gemeinde im spätantiken Antiochia: Leben im Spannungsfeld von sozialer Einbindung, religiösem Wettbewerb und gewaltsamen Konflikt,” in Robert Jütte und Abraham Kustermann, eds., Jüdische Gemeinden und Organisationsformen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna: Böhlau, 1996), 57–90. 3. Much of the information about Antioch comes from Libanius’s Orations, John Chrysostom’s Homilies, and mosaics, as well as from John Malalas, Julian, Ammianus Marcellinus, Theodoret, and Sozomen. See Isabella Sandwell, “Introduction,” in Isabella Sandwell and Janet Huskinson, eds., Culture and Society in Later Roman Antioch: Papers from a Colloquium, London, 15th December, 2001 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2004), 4. 4. Shaye J. D. Cohen. The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 67. Cohen does not limit this to Antioch but it is safe to assume that this description applied to the Jews of midfourth-century Antioch. 5. Christine Shepardson, “Between Polemic and Propaganda: Evoking the Jews of Fourth-Century Antioch,” JJMJS 2 (2015), 147–82. 6. Wayne Meeks and Robert Wilken have collected rabbinic material on the city of Antioch but have tended to accept this evidence as historical. See Meeks and Wilken, Jews, 9; and Wilken, John Chrysostom, 37, 64–65. 7. Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), 12–13; James Carleton Paget, “Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity,” ZAC 1 (1997): 195–225; Christine Shepardson, Controlling Contested Places: Late Antique Antioch and the Spatial Politics of Religious Controversy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2014), 92–116. 8. See Shepardson, “Between Polemic and Propaganda,”164–82, esp. 167, 174–75. 9. War, 7.43. 10. Material evidence is lacking because of an earthquake that leveled the city in Late Antiquity. For a collection of essays on the topography of Antioch see Catherine Saliou, Les sources de l’histoire du paysage urbain d’Antioche sur l’Oronte: Actes des journées d’études des 20 et 21 septembre 2010 (Paris: Université Paris 8, Vincennes-Saint-Denis, 2012). See Wendy Mayer, “The Topography of Antioch Described in the Writings of John Chrysostom,” in Saliou, Sources, 81–100. Catherine Saliou, “Les fondations d’Antioche dans l’Antiochikos (Oratio XI) de Libanios,” ARAM 11–12 (1999–2000): 357–88. See also Marilena Casella, “Les discours de Libanios (Discours 33–64) et la topographie d’Antioche,” in Saliou, Sources, 57–67. 11. Jesse Casana, “The Archaeological Landscape of Late Roman Antioch,” in Sandwell and Huskinson, Culture, 102–25 at 110. 12. Christine Kondoleon, “The City of Antioch: An Introduction,” in Christine Kondoleon, ed., Antioch: The Lost Ancient City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 3–12 at 9. 13. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 40. 14. Libanius, Or. 11.264.

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15. Christine Shepardson, “Syria, Syriac, Syrian: Negotiating East and West,” in Philip Rousseau and Jutta Raithel, eds., A Companion to Late Antiquity, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World (Chichester, Ssx: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 455–66 at 461. 16. Or. 11.166. Libanius’s description of the city emphasizes only its Hellenic sites, omitting Christian and Jewish ones. See Catherine Saliou, “Antioche décrite par Libanios: La rhétorique de l’espace urbain et ses enjeux au milieu du quatrième siècle,” in Eugenio Amato, ed., Approches de la Troisième Sophistique: Hommages à Jacques Schamp (Brussels: Editions Latomus, 2006), 273–85 at 279–81. A. J. Festugière, Antioche païene et chrétienne: Libanius, Chyrsostome et les moines de Syrie (Paris: Éditions E. de Boccard, 1959); Glanville Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria: From Seleucus to the Arab Conquest (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961); Liebeschuetz, Antioch; Saliou, “Antioche.” 17. Or. 11.172–73. 18. Fatih Cimok, Antioch on the Orontes, 2nd ed. (Istanbul: A. Turiz, Yaylinari Şti, 1994). 19. Ant. 16.148 and War 1.425; Malal. Chronicle 9.17; Brooten, “Jews,” 31. The thoroughfare was 36 meters wide. See Kondoleon, “City,” 9; Cimok, Antioch, 17. 20. Or. 11.216. See Cimok, Antioch, 17. 21. Libanius Or. 11.267. 22. Andrea U. De Giorgi, Ancient Antioch: From the Seleucid Era to the Islamic Conquest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 167. De Giorgi claims that people spoke more than one language in Antioch. Shepardson points out that Antioch “served as an important point of linguistic and cultural contact as well as textual, conceptual, and cultural translation that should make us consider more seriously its multilingual culture”: Shepardson, “Syria,” 165. 23. De Giorgi, Ancient Antioch, 169. 24. On Jewish neighborhoods see Wilken, John Chrysostom, 37. Since Wilken we have learned that Roman cities were not segregated and that people largely lived across its many neighborhoods. 25. Wilken, John Chrysostom, 48–49, 62; S. Applebaum, “The Social and Economic Status of the Jews in the Diaspora,” in Shmuel Safrai and Menachem Stern, eds., The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions, vol. 2, Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, section 1 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976), 714. 26. Libanius, Or. 47. He wrote this in the late 380s or early 390s. For dating of the text see A. F. Norman, Libanius: Selected Orations, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 497–99. The rabbis mention Jews who grow rice and farm in a region called Hulta, where rabbis came to collect money. See t. Demai 2, 1. Rabbi Akiva is said to have visited Hulta: y. Horrayot 3.48a. If the two are the same, as many scholars assume, then this Jewish community consisted of Jews who worked the land, likely as farmers and rice growers. See Brooten, “Jews,” 30. Others place this neighborhood to the southwest of the city, or in the valley northeast of the city. See Kraeling, “Jewish Community,” 142–43. 27. Wilken, John Chrysostom, 48–49, 62. Wealthy Jews owned slaves. See CTh 16.9.1; cf. 3.1.5. See Wilken, John Chrysostom, 60. 28. There are two inscriptions on the late fourth-century synagogue floor in Apamea. See E. L. Sukenik, “The Mosaic Inscriptions in the Synagogue at Apamea on the Orontes,” Hebrew Union College Annual 23.2 (1950–51): 541–51 at 544–45; Rachel Hachlili, Ancient

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Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 32–34, 198–204. For the inscription at Beth Shearim see Moshe Schwabe and Baruch Lifshitz, Beth She’arim, vol. 2, The Greek Inscriptions (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1974), nos. 141–44, pp. 127–30. Wealthy Jews from across the Roman World sought to bury themselves near Rabbi Judah in this necropolis in the third and fourth centuries. 29. Kondoleon, “City,” 9. Libanius, Or. 11.212. Temples to Zeus Bottiaeus, Zeus Kassios, Isis, Ares, Artemis, Aphrodite, Minos, Demeter, Dionysius, Pan, Herakles, and Hermes could be found in Antioch and its territory. See Libanius, Or. 30. The Temple of Artemis was located outside the city itself. See Catherine Saliou, “Les lieux de polythéisme dans l’espace urbain et le paysage mémoriel d’Antioche-sur-l’Oronte, de Libanios à Malalas (IVe–Ve s.),” in Aude Busine, ed., Religious Practices and Christianization of the Late Antique City (4th– 7th cent.), Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. David Frankfurter, Johannes Hahn, and Frits G. Naerebout, vol. 182 (Leiden: Brill 2015), 38–70. 30. By the turn of the fourth century, the city’s civic religion had changed dramatically. Public sacrifice in temples had decreased significantly. See Saliou, “Lieux”; Libanius, Or. 30.17–19. Chrysostom complains that Hellenes got drunk and were loud during these festivals. See Hom. in Martyres (PG 50.663). See also Emmanuel Soler, Le sacré et le salut à Antioche au IVe siècle apr. J.-C.: Pratiques festives et comportements religieux dans le processus de christianisation de la cité, Bibliothèque Archéologique et Historique 176 (Beirut, Institut Français du Proche-Orient, 2006), 29–32. 31. Isabella Sandwell suggests a possible breaking point in the city’s cult with the Persians’ sack of Antioch in 253 and again in 260. See Isabella Sandwell, Religious Identity in Late Antiquity: Greeks, Jews and Christians in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 41. Scott Bradbury discusses the political and social pressure not to sacrifice during Constantine’s and Constantius II’s reigns. See Scott Allen Bradbury, “Julian’s Pagan Revival and the Decline of Blood Sacrifice,” Phoenix 49.4 (1995): 331–56. 32. The Temple of Artemis required restoration, having been stripped of its statues and decorations by Constantius. The Temple of Tyche was stripped in 359 and then used as a classroom. Julian complained that it became more like a theater than a temple because it was used as a public meeting place; Julian, Ep. 176. 33. Libanius, Ep. 176. 34. Or. 11.202. This is the Omphalos (“Navel”) of Antioch. 35. Downey places a Hellenistic market by the river and another one near the palace in New Antioch. See Downey, History, 18, 29, 69, 72, 100–101, and 621–31. 36. Ibid. 624. 37. Luke Lavan, “The Agorai of Antioch and Constantinople as Seen by John Chrysostom,” in John Drinkwater and Benet Salway, eds., Wolf Liebeschuetz Reflected: Essays Presented by Colleagues, Friends and Pupils (London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2007), 157–67 at 162. 38. Ibid. 165. 39. De Giorgi, Ancient Antioch, 167. 40. On the nature of religious life in the Roman empire up until the fourth century see John North, “The Development of Religious Pluralism,” in Judith Lieu, John North, and Tessa Rajak, eds., The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire (London: Routledge, 1992), 174–93.

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41. See Aude Busine, “Introduction: Religious Practices and Christianization of the Late Antique City,” in Aude Busine, ed., Religious Practices, 1–18. 42. Paul Petit, Libanius et la vie municipale à Antioche au IVe siècle après J.-C. (Paris: Libraire Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1955), 143. For a different view see Emmanuel Soler, “Sacralité et partage du temples et de l’espace festifs à Antioche au IVe siècle,” in Eric Rebillard and Claire Sotinel, eds., Les frontières du profane dans l’antiquité tardive, Collection de l’École Française de Rome 428 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2010), 273–86, esp. 277, 282–83. 43. John Chrysostom, Hom. in Kalendas 1 (PG 48.954). See Fritz Graf, Roman Festivals in the Greek East: From the Early Empire to the Middle Byzantine Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 134–35. 44. See Graf, Roman Festivals, 72–75. 45. Libanius, Or. 5. 46. Libanius, Or. 41.15. See Soler, Sacré, 38–40, and “Sacralité,” 273–87; Nicole Belayche, “Une panégyrie antiochéenne: La maïouma,” in Bernadette Cabouret, Pierre-Louis Gatier, and Catherine Saliou, eds., Antioche de Syrie: Histoire, images et traces de la ville antique; Actes du Colloque international, organisé à Lyon, Maison de l’Orient Méditerranéen Jean Pouilloux, les 4, 5, et 6 octobre 2001, TOPOI, Orient-Occident, suppl. 5 (2004): 401–15 at 414. See also Jaclyn L. Maxwell, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 154–57, on the celebration of Kalends. 47. See also Liebeschuetz, Antioch, 230–31. 48. Julian, Misop. 362D. 49. Amm. Marc. 22.9.15. 50. Many of the religious festivals survived in some form. 51. See Chrysostom, Adv. Jud. 1.2 (PG 48.846). There is no direct evidence for Hellenes dancing with Jews. See my discussion on Galileans fr. 86 = 354A–B in this chapter on the Jews of Antioch. Soler contextualizes Jewish festivals within larger Antiochene festivals. See Soler, Sacré, 95–135. 52. Gregory Nazianzen, Homily 15. 53. Gregory reports that the festival is small. It was not on the city’s calendar as recorded by the Chronographer of 354. It first appears under August 1 in the Syriac Martyrology of 412, which was based on a Greek original of sometime after 363. See Martha Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15 and the Genesis of the Christian Cult of the Maccabean Martyrs,” Byzantion, 64.1 (1994): 166–92 at 187. 54. Lavan, “Agorai,” 157–67. 55. They would have begun not long after Julian’s reign. Christians, led by their bishops, marched in processions proceeding from the martyrs’ shrine up through the cities, stopping at churches along the way. 56. This church is usually located in the newer part of the city, but there are skeptics. See Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch (300–638 CE) (Leuven: Peeters, 2012), 68–76; Ana Maria Goliav, “Proposal for the Reconstruction of the Golden Octagon,” in Saliou, ed., Sources, 159–77. She locates it in the New City. Catherine Saliou argues that the sources are unclear about its location. See “À propos de la ταυριανὴ πύλη: Remarques sur la localization présumée de la grande église d’Antioche de Syrie,” Syria 77 (2000): 217–26. The other main church of Antioch was the Old Church of the Apostles.

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57. Libanius, Or. 11.208. 58. Barnabas, Paul, and Peter went to Antioch in Acts 11:22–26. See Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Antioch and Christianity,” in Kondoleon, ed., Antioch, 39–50. 59. See Susan Harvey, “Antioch,” 39–49. 60. Robin Ward, “The Schism at Antioch in the Fourth Century,” Ph.D. dissertation, King’s College, London, 2003. 61. Mayer and Allen, Churches, 68–76; W. Eltester, “Die Kirchen Antiochias im IV. Jahrhundert,” ZNTW 36 (1937): 251–86. There is also an inscription that may attest a church built by Caesar Gallus (351–54). See Mayer and Allen, Churches, 116–17. For a general background about the Trinitarian theological debates of the fourth century see Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 62. P. L. Malosse, “Antioche et le Kappa,” in Cabouret, Gatier, and Saliou, Antioche, 77–92. Constantius was in Antioch intermittently between 338 and 349, and in the winter of 360–61. 63. Antioch is often described as the capital of Syria. However, recent research suggests that Rome did not have provincial capitals, as governors did not reside in any one city. 64. Susanna Elm, “Julian the Writer and His Audience,” in Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher, eds., Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian the Apostate (Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2012), 1–18 at 12. 65. Or. 11.219. 66. Chrysostom reports that there were taverns outside the city on the way to a martyrium in the suburbs. Chrysostom, Hom. in Martyres (PG 50.663). See Mayer, “Topography,” 93. 67. This synagogue, also called Kenesheth Hashmunith by Ibn Shahin, is said to have been the first built after the destruction of the Temple. It is not clear whether the site was later taken over by a church or was not attested by Augustine. The claim that a synagogue contained the remains of the Maccabean Martyrs before it was converted into a church was first proposed by Mariano Cardinal Rampolla del Tindaro, “Del luogo del martirio e del sepulcro dei Maccabei,” Bessarione 1–2 (1996–97) = ‘Martyre et sepulture des Machabées’, Revue de l’art Chrétien 42 (1899), 290–305, 377–92, 457–64. This view was adopted by Downey, History, 448. For a discussion of the sources see Mayer and Allen, Churches, 90–91. 68. Malalas, Chron. 8.3. 69. Cod. arabicus 286. In addition, Ibn Shahin, a medieval Jewish writer, claims that this synagogue was the first built after the destruction in Jerusalem in 70 c.e. See Nissim ben Jacob ben Nissim ibn Shahin, The Arabic Original of Ibn Shâhîn’s Book of Comfort = Known as the Hibbûr yaphê of R. Nissîm b. Yaʻaqobh, trans. Julian Obermann (New York: AMS Press, 1980), 28. 70. Kraeling, “Jewish Community,” 130–60; Julian Obermann, “The Sepulcher of the Maccabean Martyrs,” Journal of Biblical Literature 49 (1930): 250–65; Margaret Schatkin, “The Maccabean Martyrs,” VC 28 (1974): 97–113. Other scholars sought to address the issue of contamination by denying the existence of a Jewish cult of the martyrs either tout court or on grounds that Christians would have constructed a Jewish Maccabean Martyr cult to justify the site as the home of the Maccabean Martyrs. See Leonard V. Rutgers, “The Impor-

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tance of Scripture in the Conflict between Jews and Christians: The Example of Antioch,” in Leonard Rutgers and Pieter Willem van der Horst, eds., The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 287–303. 71. Shaye Cohen objects to the historicity of the dead being buried in a synagogue because of corpse contamination. See Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Pagan and Christian Evidence on the Ancient Synagogue,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., The Synagogue in Late Antiquity (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1987), 159–81. More recently archaeologists have found evidence from a synagogue in eastern Syria with human relics deliberately placed in the doorway. See Jodi Magness, “Third-Century Jews and Judaism at Beth Shearim and Dura Europos,” in David Martin Gwynn, Susanne Bangert, and Luke Lavan, eds., Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 136–66; Ra’anan Shaul Boustan, “Jewish Veneration of the ‘Special Dead’ in Late Antiquity and Beyond,” in Cynthia Hahn and Holger A. Klein, eds., Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2015), 61–82. 72. Mayer and Allen, Churches, 91–95; Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15”; Lothar Triebel, “Das angebliche Synagoge der makkabäischen Märtyrer in Antiochia am Orontes,” ZAC 9 (2005): 464–95. 73. Josephus, Against Apion 2.39, Ant. 12.119. 74. War 7.43. 75. Ibid. 2.479. 76. Brooten, “Jews,” 29–38. 77. War 2.39; 7.44. 78. Fergus Millar, “The Jews of the Greco-Roman Diaspora between Paganism and Christianity, a.d. 312–438,” in Fergus Millar, Hannah M. Cotton and Guy M. Rogers, eds., Rome, the Greek World, and the East, vol. 3, The Greek World, the Jews, and the East (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 432–56 at 438–39. 79. Shepardson, “Between Polemic and Propaganda,” 174–75. For scholarship on John Chrysostom and the Jews see Marcel Simon, “La polémique antijuive de S. Jean Chrysostome et le movement judaisant d’Antioche,” Annuaire de l’Institut de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves 4 (1936): 403–21; Wilken, John Chrysostom; Fred A. Grissom, “Chrysostom and the Jews: Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations in Fourth-Century Antioch,” Ph.D. dissertation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1978; Adolf M. Ritter, “John Chrysostom and the Jews: A Reconsideration,” in Tamila Mgaloblišvili, ed., Ancient Christianity in the Caucasus, Iberica-Caucasica 1 (Richmond, Sy: Curzon, 1998), 141–54; Klaas Smelik, “John Chrysostom’s Homilies against the Jews: Some Comments,” Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 39 (1985): 194–200; Pieter W. van der Horst, “Jews and Christians in Antioch at the End of the Fourth Century,” in Stanley E. Porter and Brook W. R. Pearson, eds., Christian-Jewish Relations through the Centuries (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 228–38; Charlotte Fonrobert, “Jewish Christians, Judaizers, and Christian Anti-Judaism,” in Virgina Burrus and Rebecca Lyman, eds., Late Ancient Christianity, vol. 2 of A People’s History of Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 234–54. 80. See also Wilken, John Chrysostom, 65, on ritual bathing. 81. He also mentions Jewish tithe taking in the synagogue, although Shepardson argues that he refers to Scriptural Jews. See Shepardson, “Between Polemic and Propaganda,” 175 n. 94.

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82. For an extensive analysis of John Chrysostom’s attack on the rituals of healing see Dayna Kalleres, City of Demons: Violence, Ritual, and Christian Power in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015), 70–73. 83. Adv. Jud. 8.7 (PG 48.938). 84. Adv. Jud. 1.7.5–11; 8.4–7 (PG 48.854–55, 935–38). See Kalleres, City, 25 n. 6. 85. Adv. Jud. 1.6.2–3 (PG 48.852), 1.8.1 (PG 48.855). Also In Titum Hom. 3.2 he does not mention a synagogue. With Vinson, I suspect the reference in Adv. Jud. 1.6 was not to a synagogue but to a place of Jewish prayer, likely associated with the relics of the Maccabean Martyrs. See my further discussion in this chapter. Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15.” There is also a rabbinic claim that Jews possessed a local Sanhedrin in Daphne (y. Sanhedrin 3.2.14a). 86. Brooten, “Jews,” 34. 87. Sifre Numbers 84 (22a ed. Friedmann). 88. Deuteronomy Rabbah 4.8; y. Horrayot 3.48a; y. Berachot 9a (Rabbi Yona and Yose). 89. On the deuterōsis as a calque of Mishnah see Hillel I. Newman, “The Normativity of Rabbinic Judaism,” in Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz, eds., Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of Menachem Stern, TSAJ 130 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 165–71 at 169–70. 90. For Rabbi Isaac Napaha, see b. Kethuboth 88a; for Rabbi Ephas, see Midrash Bereshit Rabba 10.4. 91. Raffaella Cribiore, The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 92. Libanius, Ep. 1251. See Shepardson, “Between Polemic and Propaganda,” 158. There are eight extant letters written by Libanius between 388 and 393 to “the Patriarch.” Moshe Schwabe identifies this figure as the Jewish Patriarch in Palestine. See Moshe Schwabe, “The Letters of Libanius to the Patriarch of Palestine,” Tarbiz 1 (1930): 85–110 (in Hebrew). For a different view on the identity of the “Patriarch” in these letters see Martin Jacobs, Die Institution des jüdischen Patriarchen: Eine quellen- und traditionskritische Studie zur Geschichte der Juden in der Spätantike (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1995), 268–71. 93. Lib. Ep. 1098. See Moshe Schwabe, “Letters.” 94. Josephus writes that many Hellenes were attracted to the synagogue in Antioch (War 7.45). 95. Ibid. 96. By the third century the term “Godfearer” appears to be a formal category of people who kept some Jewish laws. They appear in Josephus, the Apocrypha, and the Pseudepigrapha. For scholarship on the Godfearers see Ross S. Kraemer, “Giving Up the Godfearers,” JAJ 5 (2014): 61–87. See also Judith Lieu, “The Race of the God-Fearers,” JTS, n.s., 46.2 (1995): 483–501. Evidence of Godfearers extends through the late fourth century. 97. Raffaella Cribiore argues that the lines between religious communities were blurred and that we should think not of closed communities but of groups that shared a “practical cultural and social interest” that “sometimes produced moments of extraordinary solidarity.” Raffaella Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality and Religion in the Fourth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 230. 98. I use the term “Roman East” here even though I am aware that the Roman East ceased to exist once the capital of the empire was in Constantinople. Nevertheless, Julian’s

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stay in Antioch and his orientation toward the Eastern frontier with Persia is best conveyed using this term. Glenn W. Bowersock, “Reconsidering Hellenism in the Roman Near East: Introductory Remarks,” in Yaron Z. Eliav, Elise A. Friedland, and Sharon Herbert, eds., The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East: Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), 21–23 at 22. 99. This term, which means “Highest God,” was used by Jews, Christians, and Hellenes alike. This did not mean that Jews, Christians, and Hellenic worshippers of Theos Hypsistos believed they worshipped the Jewish God. See Stephen Mitchell, “Further Thoughts on the Cult of Theos Hypsistos,” in Stephen Mitchell and Peter Van Nuffelen, eds., One God: Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 167–208 at 188; Rather, they agreed that they worshipped the Highest God but did not necessarily adopt attributions or customs of Jews. 100. Michael Frede, “Monotheism in Pagan Philosophy in Late Antiquity,” in Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden and Michael Frede, eds., Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 41–67. For the “one god” inscriptions around Antioch and how they came to be identified with Jesus after Julian’s reign see Frank R. Trombley “Christian Demography in the Territorium of Antioch (4th-5th c.): Observations on the Epigraphy,” in Sandwell and Huskinson, Culture, 59–85 at 68. 101. This was a world where “Jews, Judaizers, and Greco-Romans occupied very similar territory.” See Stephen Mitchell, “The Cult of Theos Hypsistos between Pagans, Jews, and Christians,” in Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden and Michael Frede, eds., Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 81–148 at 114. Many scholars believe they were henotheists recognizing either other gods below their supreme gods or angels, like Jews. Mark Edwards, Religions of the Constantinian Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 132. 102. Josephus, Against Apion 2.282; Greg. Naz. Or. 18.5 (PG 35.989–91). See Pieter W. van der Horst “Judaism in Asia Minor,” in The Cambridge History of Religions in the Ancient World, vol. 2, 321–40 at 333; Stephen Mitchell, “Cult,” 120–21. See also Juvenal 14.96–106. 103. There is considerable debate over whether the worshippers of Theos Hypsistos constituted a coherent group given the lack of any defining religious associations linking the majority of theos hypsistos inscriptions with Judaism, Hellenism, or Christianity. See Nicole Belayche, “Hypsistos: A Way of Exalting the Gods in Graeco-Roman Polytheism,” in J. A. North and S. R. F. Price, eds., The Religious History of the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 139–74. 104. Stephen Mitchell, “Cult,” 115; Anna Collar largely follows Mitchell on this point. See Anna Collar, Religious Network in the Roman Empire: The Spread of New Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 105. Stephen Mitchell, “Cult,” 145–46. However, he points out that there is not a one-toone correlation between the number of inscriptions and the strength of the cult. The lack of inscriptions in Antioch reflects a trend away from inscriptions but, more important, stems from a lack of material evidence for Antioch given its destruction by an earthquake in Late Antiquity and by the existence of modern-day Antakya over the ruins of the ancient city of Antioch. For respect of Jews under the Severans, especially in Syria see Pieter W. Van der Horst, “Porphyry on Judaism: Some Observations,” in Zeev Weiss et al., eds., “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 71–83 at 82.

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106. Stephen Mitchell, “Cult,” 105, 126. 107. Traditionally these groups have been called “Jewish Christians.” More recently that term has fallen out of use, because it can include so many groups and thus tends to lose its meaning. See Daniel Boyarin, “Rethinking Jewish Christianity: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category,” JQR 99 (2009): 7–36. 108. Adv. Jud. 1.5. 109. Ibid. 1.3. Charlotte Fonrobert suggests that this story is fabricated. See Fonrobert, “Jewish Christians.” 110. Adv. Jud. 1.1. 111. Ibid. 2.3. 112. Ibid. 1.4. Compare ibid. 1.2, where he says they dance with bare feet in the agora along with large crowds of Antiochenes, and m. Ta’anit 4.8. 113. Adv. Jud. 7.1. 114. Ibid. 3.3. 115. Marcel Metzger, Les Constitutiones Apostoliques, vol. 1, Sources Chrétiennes 320 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985), 56–57. 116. Marcie E. Lenk, “The Apostolic Constitutions: Judaism and Anti-Judaism in the Construction of Christianity,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2010. 117. Newman, “Normativity,” 169–70; Fonrobert argues that the use of the deuterōsis in the Didascalia Apostolorum of the third century demonstrates an awareness of rabbinic Law in the Mishnah and Tosefta. See Charlotte Fonrobert, “The Didascalia Apostolorum: A Mishnah for the Disciples of Jesus,” JECS 9.4 (2001): 483–509 at 496. 118. The prayers in Apostolic Constitutions are like the Jewish Amidah prayer. On the Jewish origins of prayers in Apostolic Constitutions see Esther G. Chazon, “ ‘A Prayer Alleged to be Jewish’ in the Apostolic Constitutions,” in Esther G. Chazon, David Satran, and Ruth A. Clements, eds., Things Revealed: Studies in Early Jewish and Christian Literature in Honor of Michael E. Stone (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 261–77; D. A. Fiensy, Prayers Alleged to Be Jewish: An Examination of the Constitutiones Apostolorum (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985); Soler, Sacré, 116. See Apostolic Constitutions 2.26.2 and 2.35.1. There is no evidence for Jewish prayer in third- or fourth-century Syria. See Ezra Fleischer, “Concerning the Text of the Sabbath (and Holiday) Amidah in the Land of Israel,” in Ezra Fleischer, ed., Eretz-Israel Prayer and Prayer Rituals as Portrayed in the Genizah Documents (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988), 19–92 (in Hebrew). Pieter W. van der Horst “The Greek Synagogue Prayers in the Apostolic Constitutions Book VII” in J. Taboury, ed., From Qumran to Cairo: Studies in the History of Prayer (Jerusalem, Orhot, 1999), 19–46. 119. Dominique Coté, “Le problème de l’identité religieuse dans la Syrie du IVe siècle,” in Simon C. Mimouni and Bernard Pouderon, eds., La croisée des chemins revisitée: Quand “l’église” et la “synagogue” se sont-elles distinguées? Actes du Colloque de Tours, 18–19 juin 2010 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2012), 339–70 at 358–60. Coté argues that Apostolic Constitutions also was written against the Pseudo-Clementine literature. She points out that Apostolic Constitutions Book 6 reimagines Acts 15 and uses pieces of the Pseudo-Clementine literature to neutralize the latter's impact. Pieter Van der Horst argues that Apostolic Constitutions attacks the Didascalia Apostolorum, the Pseudo-Clementine literature, and Chrysostom’s Against the Judaizers. See also Pieter Van der Horst, “Jews and Christians in Antioch,” 236–38. On the date see Metzger, Les Constitutiones Apostoliques, vol. 1, 54–60.

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120. Apostolic Constitutions 2.26.2–3. The only other group that does this is the rabbis. 121. Ibid. 4.1 and Didascalia Apostolorum 22 urge fathers to teach Scriptures to their children. 122. Lenk, “Apostolic Constitutions,” 53–57. On reading from Paul and the Gospels in addition to the Old Testament see Apostolic Constitutions 2.39.6. 123. Canon 16 of the Council of Laodicea, in Asia Minor, encourages reading the Gospels on the Sabbath, which invariably indicates that some Christians preferred reading the Old Testament. 124. Apostolic Constitutions 8.47.85. See Lenk, “Apostolic Constitutions,” 54–55. 125. Apostolic Constitutions 2.5.4–7. 126. Genesis Rabbah 19.4. 127. Shepardson highlights how many Judaizers were attracted to the synagogue and explains how Chrysostom attempted to convince them that the synagogue was dangerous and impure. Controlling, 98–116. 128. Alistair Stewart-Sykes, ed., The Didascalia Apostolorum: An English Version, Studia Traditionis Theologiae 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009); B. Steimer, “Didascalia Apostolorum,” in S. Döpp and W. Geerlings, eds., Lexikon der antiken christlichen Literatur (Freiburg: Herder, 1998), 167–68. Coté believes the Didascalia Apostolorum was redacted in Antioch, although that is not the consensus. See Coté, “Problème,” 357. 129. Didascalia Apostolorum 26. See Stewart-Sykes, Didascalia Apostolorum; Fonrobert argues that this applies not only to former Jews who have become Christians but to a wider circle. See Fonrobert, “Didascalia Apostolorum,” 499–501. 130. Newman, “Normativity,” 169–70; and Annette Yoshiko Reed and Lily Vuong, “Christianity in Antioch: Partings in Roman Syria,” in Hershel Shanks, ed., Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeological Society, 2013), 105–32 at 123–24. 131. Fonrobert argues that the authors of Didascalia Apostolorum likely knew of the formation of the Mishnah as a canonical text. See Fonrobert, “Didascalia Apostolorum,” 498. 132. For a dispute over which groups the Didasacalia Apostolorum protested see Charlotte Methuen, “Widows, Bishops and the Struggle for Authority of the Didascalia Apostolorum,” JEH 46 (1995): 197–213 at 204; Fonrobert, “Didascalia Apostolorum,” 492–95. 133. Fonrobert reads Didascalia Apostolorum as presenting a variety of “Jewish” identities as well. See “Didascalia Apostolorum,” 485. 134. For a useful review of the debate over its origins see Jan N. Bremmer, “PseudoClementines: Texts, Dates, Places, Authors and Magic,” in Jan N. Bremmer, ed., The PseudoClementines (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 1–23 at 6–7; F. Stanley Jones, “The Pseudo-Clementines: A History of Research, Part I,” Second Century 2 (1982): 1–33. For the document’s circulation all the way to Antioch see Georg Strecker, Das Judentum in den Pseudoklementinen, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 70 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1981), 260; Nicole Kelley argues that Recognitions was written in fourth century Antioch. See Nicole Kelley, Knowledge and Religious Authority in the Pseudo-Clementines: Situating the “Recognitions” in Fourth-Century Syria, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2, ed. Jörg Frey (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 181. 135. C. Biggs, “Clementine Homilies,” in Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890), 191–92. Jewish materials are used in Homilies 4–6. See James

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Carleton Paget, Jews, Christians, and Jewish Christians in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 427–92. 136. Homilies 7.8.1–3. 137. Homilies 8.6–7; cf. Recognitions 4.5–6. See Reed and Vuong, “Christianity,” 127. 138. Homilies 3.47.1. 139. Albert Baumgarten, “Literary Evidence for Jewish Christianity in the Galilee,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., The Galilee in Late Antiquity (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 39–50 at 43. 140. Homilies 3.45–46; Recognitions 1.30, 36–39. See Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Parting Ways over Blood and Water? Beyond ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’ in the Roman Near East,” in Mimouni and Pouderon, Croisée, 227–60 at 248–50. 141. Brooten, “Jews,” 29. 142. Adv. Jud. 8.7 (PG 48.938). 143. Adv. Jud. 8.5–8 (PG 48.935–41); 144. Adv. Jud. 1.7; cf. 8.5–8. See Kalleres, City, 72; Shepardson, “Between Polemic and Propaganda,” 176–77. 145. Or. 1.201, 25.67. 146. Wilken, John Chrysostom, 85. The name Iao, a transliteration of the Hebrew YHWH, appears frequently in the magical papyri. Even the rabbis approved of amulets with biblical verses and the names of angels: b. Shabbat 61b. 147. Although there is no direct evidence of Jewish amulets and magical bowls in Antioch, this is likely because of the paucity of archaeological finds there. Jews were thought to be experts in magic and in dream interpretation. See Michael D. Swartz, “Jewish Magic in Late Antiquity,” in Steven T. Katz, ed., The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4, The Late Roman–Rabbinic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 699–720 at 699– 700. That these were sold to non-Jews, see Swartz, “Jewish Magic,” 713; and G. Lacerenza, “Jewish Magicians and Christian Clients in Late Antiquity: The Testimony of Amulets and Inscriptions,” in Leonard V. Rutgers, ed., What Athens Has to Do with Jerusalem: Essays on Classical, Jewish and Christian Art and Archaeology in Honor of Gideon Forester, Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 1 (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 393–419. 148. Magic and divination were also common practices in late antique Antioch. See Amm. Marc. 19.12.1–19, 29.1.5–10. Libanius describes how he uses soothsayers, dreams, and waking visions to cure illnesses (Or. 1.3.1.244, 268). 149. John Chrysostom is horrified that Christians turn to Jews for expertise in expelling demons (1.7) and healing the sick through incantations and amulets (Adv. Jud. 8.5; PG 48.935; 8.7; PG 48.937–38). 150. Steven Fine, This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during the GraecoRoman Period, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity, ed. Gregory E. Sterling, vol. 11 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 73. In a synagogue of Maon, near Gaza, amulets were buried under the Ark. Fine argues that their placement shows the Ark to be a place of power. 151. Kondoleon, “City,” 9. 152. Aside from Christian daytime burial practices, Christians’ and Hellenes’ care of the dead were quite similar: Éric Rebillard, The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity, trans. Eliza-

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beth Trapnell Rawlings and Jeanine Routier-Pucci, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 59 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009). 153. Julian, Ep. 80. 154. Chrysostom, On Babylas. 155. Or. 11.235. See A. F. Norman, ed. and trans., Antioch as a Centre of Hellenic Culture as Observed by Libanius, Translated Texts for Historians, vol. 34 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), 55. 156. Cimok, Antioch, 66–67. 157. The oracle had been silent since the second century. See Amm. Marc. 22.12.8. Iamblichus spent some time in Daphne at the Temple of Apollo in the early fourth century and likely tried to revive the oracles there. See Sandwell, Religious Identity, 214. 158. Elizabeth Depalma Digeser, “An Oracle of Apollo at Daphne and the Great Persecution,” Classical Philology 99.1 (2004): 57–77. 159. 2 Macc. 4:33. 160. y. Shekalim 6:3, 50a. 161. Shepardson, Controlling, 108–12. 162. Raphaëlle Ziadé argues against an association between the cave and the Maccabean Martyrs. See Raphaëlle Ziadé, Les martyrs maccabées: De l’histoire juive au culte chrétien; Les homélies de Grégoire de Nazianze et de Jean Chrysostome (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 121–23. Martha Vinson argues that it is more likely found near the synagogue called Matrona’s Cave. It is possible that the bones or some of the bones were reinterred there in the late fourth century as homoousians and possibly homoians or other groups claimed different sites for the burial of the Maccabean Martyrs. See Triebel, “Angebliche Synagoge,” 473. In her final analysis Vinson concludes that John Malalas confused the basilica church built in the Kerateion by Chrysostom’s time and associated with homoousians, which is known to us from Augustine in the early fifth century. This was not built on the site of the synagogue there. Chrysostom sought to stop Christians from attending a Jewish site, which Vinson claims was frequented by homoians, while encouraging them to attend the church in the Kerateion. Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15.” 163. See the argument earlier in this chapter where I discussed the Kerateion. 164. Rutgers, “Importance of Scripture.” 165. Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15.” 166. Johan Leemans agrees with Vinson, as do Mayer and Allen. Johan Leemans et al., ‘Let Us Die That We May Live’: Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine, and Syria, c. AD 350–c. AD 450 (London: Routledge, 2003), 116. 167. See Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15,” 181. 168. See Triebel, “Angebliche Synagoge,” 477–80. 169. See Mayer and Allen, Churches, 92–93. 170. Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15,” 176. She thinks there are no annual processions and festivals even though Gregory says there are: PG 35.912A–913B. 171. Pieter W. van der Horst, “The Tombs of the Prophets in Early Judaism,” in Pieter W. van der Horst, ed., Japheth in the Tents of Shem: Studies on Jewish Hellenism in Antiquity (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 119–37. Given the Antiochene milieu, this does not seem farfetched. Allen Kerkeslager, “Jewish Pilgrimage and Jewish Identity in Hellenistic and Early

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Roman Egypt,” in David Frankfurter, ed., Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 99–128. 172. Diogenes claims that Pythagoras learned knowledge of dreams from the Hebrews. See Antonius Diogenes, Life of Pythagoras 11. 173. See Misop. 367D. Libanius, Or. 15.52, says Julian planned to make Antioch a city of marble. 174. Amm. Marc. 22.9.14. For standard practices for an adventus see S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 213. 175. Amm. Marc. 22.9.15. 176. Libanius, Or. 15.67; 18.23, 161. See Michael Bland Simmons, “Julian the Apostate,” in Philip F. Esler, ed., The Early Christian World, vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 2000), 1251–72 at 1252. 177. Misop. 365B. 178. Ibid. 367D. 179. Ibid. 368C. 180. Ibid. 368D–369D. 181. Ibid. 339C. 182. Ibid. 340A. 183. Ibid. 344A. 184. Ibid. 346A–C. 185. Ibid. 339B. 186. Ibid. 340B. 187. Ibid. 188. Ibid. 365D. 189. Libanius, Or. 1.129; see Graf, Roman Festivals, 133. Graf suggests Julian was encouraging the restoration of Hellenic traditions. 190. Libanius, Or. 12.80–82, 17.4; Socrates, HE 3.17. 191. Libanius, Or. 12.82. 192. Ammianus complains that Julian did not rein in the Petulantes and the Celts. Amm. Marc. 22.12.6. 193. Glenn W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 97. Julian, Misop. 346B–C; Libanius, Or. 1.121–22; 15.73, 79; 18.171–72; Amm. Marc. 22.14.4, 23.1.6; Malal. 13.19; Theodor. HE 3.16.2. See Soler, Sacré, 44–46. 194. Kalleres, City, 42–43. 195. Amm. Marc. 22.12.7. 196. Simmons, “Julian,” 1258. On Julian and signs see Amm. Marc. 21.1.6; 23.3.6–7, 5.8–9. 197. Emmanuel Soler, “D’Apollonios de Tyane à l’importance d’Antioche comme lieu de pèlerinage et centre philosophique grec,” in Cabouret, Gatier, and Saliou, Antioche, 381–99 at 395. 198. David Hunt, “The Christian Context of Julian’s Against the Galileans,” in Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher, eds., Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian the Apostate (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2012), 251–61 at 258–89. He took in Constantius’s enemy Aetius, who had radical doctrinal opinions. 199. Misop. 362A.

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200. According to Theodoret 3.12.4 Julian confiscated the church’s liturgical vessels. 201. Amm. Marc. 22.13.1–3. 202. Julian, Œuvres complètes, ed. Josef Bidez, tome 1, 2e partie, Lettres et fragments (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1972), no. 115, 424C–425A. See Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London: Routledge, 2012), 215. 203. Amm. Marc. 22.11. 204. Misop. 357C, 361A. 205. Ibid. 360D. C HA P T E R 3 . H E B R EWS , J EWS , A N D J U D E A N S : J U L IA N ’ S E T H N O G R A P H IC A R G UM E N T S A N D H I S H E L L E N I Z I N G C A M PA IG N

1. Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), 287. 2. Aaron P. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), vii. 3. At the beginning of Galileans fr. 3 (= 42E) he writes to a group called “we,” clearly identifying himself with a larger group of Hellenes and their shared conception of God. That this “we” is no royal “we” is apparent from his use of the first-person singular in fr. 1 (= 39A). Galileans functioned as a script for Hellenes in their arguments with Christians and therefore also served as a manual for Hellenic worship and identity. According to Cyril, Hellenes in fifth-century Alexandria used Galileans to argue against Christians. See Against Julian Prosphonema 5. See Christoph Riedweg, ed., Gegen Julian, Buch 1–5, Band 1, Teil 1 of Wolfram Kinzig, ed., Kyril von Alexandrien, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftseller der Ersten Jahrhunderte, n.F., Band 20 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016), LXXXVI–LXXXVII. We may imagine that Hellenes rallied around Galileans and used it to strengthen their own identity against Christians. 4. Ep. 70 to Magnus and Commentary on Hosea 2.1. 5. PG 76, col. 508, 29. 6. See Theodore of Mopsuestia, Replica a Giuliano imperatore: Adversus Criminationes in Christianos Iuliani Imperatoris; In appendice, testimonianze sulla polemica antigiulianea in altre opere di Teodoro, con nuovi frammenti del “Contro i Galilei” di Giuliano, ed. Augusto Guida, Biblioteca Patristica 24 (Florence: Nardini Editore, 1994). Thank you to Simone Agrimonti for his translation of this work. 7. Other Christians who responded to Julian are Alexander of Hierapolis and Phillip of Side. Theodore (fr. 1) also contributed a commentary on Julian’s remark about the election of Israel (106a = fr. 20). 8. Cf. Galileans 1, fr. 50 (Against Julian 6.42, 7.1) and 64 (Against Julian 8.15). 9. Emanuela Masaracchia, Giuliano imperatore: Contra Galilaeos (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1990.) 10. Efforts at dating Against Julian have ranged from 416 to 444 c.e., close to the date of Cyril’s death. Kinzig himself estimates a date ranging somewhere between 416 and 428. Kinzig in Riedweg, ed., Kyril, Band 1, CXV. Julian’s Galileans seems to have a following in

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the Hellenic world more widely. See Riedweg, ed., Kyril, Band 1, Teil 1, Gegen Julian, Buch 1–5, CXLVIII n. 475. 11. Masaracchia, Giuliano, 14–15. See the Justinian Code 1.1.3. 12. Kinzig argues, contrary to Neumann, that a fifth and sixth pentad did not exist. See Kinzig in Riedweg, ed., Kyril, Band 1, CXVII, n. 448. Kinzig believes that fragments of the fifth and sixth pentads would remain if they existed. Karl Johannes Neumann, Iuliani Imperatoris Librorum Contra Christianos Quae Supersunt (Leipzig: Teubner, 1880). Neumann thought there were 30 books of Against Julian, but Wolfram Kinzig demonstrates that only 20 books remain. See Kinzig in Riedweg, ed., Kyril, Band 1, CXVII. See also Jean Bouffartigue, “Porphyre et Julien contre les chrétiens: Intentions, motifs et méthode de leurs écrits,” in Sébastien Morlet, ed., Le traité de Porphyre “Contre les chrétiens”: Un siècle de recherches, nouvelles questions; Actes du Colloque international organisé les 8 et 9 septembre 2009 à l’Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne (Paris: Institut des Études Augustiniennes, 2011), 407–26 at 408. 13. Whether this indicates that Book 1 originally existed independently (see Kinzig in Riedweg, ed., Kyril, Band 1, CXIX) or rather that Cyril adjusted his form in the course of Book 2 (as he himself noted in the beginning of Book 2) is unclear. 14. Kinzig in Riedweg, ed., Kyril, Band 1, CXIX. 15. Ibid. LXVIII, LXXI. 16. See Riedweg, ed., Kyril, Band 1, Teil 1, Gegen Julian, Buch 1–5, LXXXIII. 17. Riedweg’s impression is that the feeling of the classical meter is already lacking in Cyril’s work, so that in some places a “false” form that is clearly traditional is left in the text. Riedweg, ed., Kyril, Band 1, Teil 1, Gegen Julian, Buch 1–5, CLXXV. 18. See Cyril, Against Julian Prosphonema 5. See Riedweg, ed., Kyril, Band 1, Teil 1, Gegen Julian, Buch 1–5, XCI. See also, Masaracchia, Giuliano, 16. 19. Against Julian, PG 76, 38D. Julian, Buch 1–5, XCVI–XCVIII. 20. For a number of other examples see Riedweg, ed., Kyril, Band 1, Teil 1, Gegen Julian, Buch 1–5, XCVI–XCVIII. 21. See Riedweg, ed., Kyril, Band 1, Teil 1, Gegen Julian, Buch 1–5, XCIII. 22. Ibid. XCIV. 23. Susanna Elm, “ ‘The Old Man from Tyre’: Julian’s Contra Galilaeos and the FourthCentury Nachleben of Porphyry’s Engagement with the Christians,” in Irmgard MännleinRobert, ed., Die Christen als Bedrohung? Text, Kontext und Wirkung von Porphyrios’ Contra Christianos (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017), 307–23 at 312. 24. See Masaracchia’s allocation in her Giuliano, 18–19. 25. From the start Julian sets out his desire to demonstrate the illogic of Christianity (fr. 1) and puts Christianity’s “so-called” doctrines on trial (fr. 2). In addition, Julian’s friend, Libanius, calls Galileans an anti-Christian polemic designed to outdo Porphyry of Tyre’s castigation of the Christians. See Or. 18.178. Galileans also does more than any other work aside from the Letter to Theodorus (89a–b) to define Hellenic practice. There are also points in Galileans that suggest he was writing for an audience of Hellenes. See Jeffrey W. Hargis, Against the Christians: The Rise of Early Anti-Christian Polemic, Patristic Studies, vol. 1 (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 93. At the beginning of Galileans Julian writes that he intends to prove to “all” that Christianity possesses false doctrines. Rowland Smith sees the final part of Galileans as Julian speaking to Hellenes as well. See Rowland B. E. Smith, Julian’s Gods:

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Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London: Routledge, 2012), 196. 26. The length of Galileans may mean that it was not posted in key places in the city. To understand how works were publicized in Late Antiquity see Jaclyn L. Maxwell, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 49. Libanius says imperial edicts were read aloud outside the bouleutērion in Antioch: Or. 1.157. Libanius speaks at the marketplace: Or. 11.173. 27. Galileans, fr. 2–3. 28. We hear about the impact of Galileans only in Cyril of Alexandria’s time. The emperor’s work continued to find an audience among Christians and Hellenes in the years following its publication. The fact that Gregory of Nazianzus did not mention it leads some to argue for a posthumous date for its publication. Libanius’s Oration 18 clearly refers to it. Responses to Galileans by Theodore of Mopsuestia, Alexander of Hierapolis, and Philip of Side, the latter two both lost, show that it was circulating among Christians within a decade or two of Julian’s death. In addition, Cyril of Alexandria’s comment that numerous adherents of the old beliefs used the work as an intellectual weapon until his day (Against Julian Prosphonema 5) demonstrates that Galileans circulated among Hellenes as well. 29. See my discussion on Porphyry’s Against the Christians in the section titled “Porphyry of Tyre” further on in this chapter. For now, it is not clear that Porphyry wrote a work called Against the Christians, and if he did write one, it is not clear what it contained and whether Julian read it directly or learned of it through Eusebius of Caesarea’s Preparation of the Gospels or Demonstration of the Gospels. 30. Julian also may have read Eusebius’s work Against Porphyry, which is completely lost. 31. Marie-Odile L. Boulnois, “La diversité des nations et l’élection d’Israël. Y-a-t-il une influence du Contre Celse d’Origène sur le Contre les Galiléens de Julien?” in Sylwia Kaczmarek, Henryk Pietras, and Andrzej Dziadowiec, eds., Origeniana Decima: Origen as Writer; Papers of the Tenth International Origen Congress, University School of Philosophy and Education “Ignatianum,” Kraków, Poland, 31 August–4 September 2009 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 803–30; eadem, “Le Contre les Galiléens de l’empereur Julien: Répond-il à Contre Celse d’Origène?” in Eugenio Amato, ed., EN KALOIS KOINOPRAGIA: Hommage à la mémoire de Pierre-Louis Malosse et Jean Bouffartigue, Revue des Études Tardo-Antiques, vol. 4, suppl. 3 (2014–15): 103–28. 32. Celsus is the first Hellene to use the Bible for Hellenic anti-Christian purposes; it is likewise a key device for Julian in Galileans. 33. Christians may claim to pray for the safety of the empire, but Celsus does not believe them or that it is effective. See Jeremy M. Schott, Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 49. 34. G. R. Boys-Stones, Post-Hellenic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 35. Crito 109b–c and Laws 4.713c–d. 36. True Doctrine, 5.25. 37. Although Celsus does allow that the names “Most High God,” “Adonai,” “Sabbaoth,” and “Heavenly One” can indicate the Supreme Being, he does not necessarily mean that the Judean God must be worshipped as such.

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38. Boulnois, “Diversité”; eadem, “Le Contre les Galiléens.” For a contrary view see Jean Bouffartigue, L’empereur Julien et la culture de son temps (Paris: Instituts des Etudes Augustiniennes, 1992), 380–82. Julian (Gal. frs. 6, 10) also compares Plato’s Timaeus with Scripture, as suggested by Origen in Against Celsus, in his effort to argue that Plato’s explanation of Creation and the cosmic order is superior to the Hebrew account in Genesis. Boulnois points out that Julian comments on biblical passages that Origen faults Celsus for ignoring and that Julian shows these passages are incoherent fables. See Boulnois, “Le Contre les Galiléens,” 105–7. 39. Origen quotes Celsus, who states that Joseph’s descendants in Egypt were Ioudaioi. See iv.47. 40. Boulnois argues that this emphasis is due to Julian’s need to respond to Origen. Boulnois, “Le Contre les Galiléens,” 125. 41. Or. 18.178. 42. For more recent views see Bouffartigue, “Porphyre,” and Elm, “ ‘Old Man of Tyre.’ ” 43. See Ariane Magny, Porphyry in Fragments: Reception of an Anti-Christian Text in Late Antiquity (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 20. 44. Some scholars include Philosophy from Oracles with Against the Christians. Mark Edwards, “Porphyry and the Christians,” in G. Karamanolis and A. Sheppard, eds., Studies on Porphyry, (London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2007), 111–26. R. M. Berchman includes in his Porphyry extracts from Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras, a commentary on the Chaldean Oracles, On Abstinence, On the Caves of the Nymphs, and the Letter to Gaurus. See R. M. Berchman, Porphyry, 123–34. In addition, Julian may have read Eusebius of Caesarea’s Against Porphyry in which he quoted Porphyry extensively. Another challenge of Porphyry’s writings against Christians is its dating. Most now date it sometime between 270 and the end of the third century. For this debate see Alan Cameron, “The Date of Porphyry’s Kata Christianōn,” CQ 18 (1967): 382–84; Matthias Becker, Porphyrios, Contra Christianos: Neue Sammlung der Fragmente, Testimonien und Dubia, mit Einleitung, Übersetzung und Anmerkungen, Texte und Kommentare, Band 52 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016); Anthony Meredith, “Porphyry and Julian against the Christians,” ANRW 23.2 (1980): 1119–49 at 1126; Magny, Porphyry, 15; Josef Bidez, Vie de Porphyre, le philosophe néo-platonicien (Ghent: Librairie Scientifique E. van Goethem, 1913); Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, “Lactantius, Porphyry, and the Debate over Religious Toleration,” JRS 88 (1998): 129–46; Schott, Christianity, 52–53, 177–88; Aaron P. Johnson, “Porphyry’s Hellenism,” in Morlet, Le traité, 165–81 at 166–67; Sébastien Morlet, “Comment le problème du Contra Christianos peut-il se poser aujourd’hui?” in Morlet, ed., Traité, 11–50. 45. See the articles in Morlet, Le traité; Irmgard Männlein-Robert, Christen; Adolf von Harnack, Porphyrius, “Gegen die Christen,” 15 Bücher: Zeugnisse, Fragmente und Referate (Berlin: Reimer, 1916). 46. See Magny, Porphyry, 24, on Laks, who argues that we should distinguish between a testimonium, which can be found in ancient literature about a lost text or its author, whereas a fragment is part of the lost text. See A. Laks, “De témoignage comme fragment,” in G. W. Most, ed., Collecting Fragments (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1997), 237–73 at 237–39. Magny argues that a distinction should be made between fragments that survive with a title or book number, or both, and those fragments without a title or a book number.

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See Magny, Porphyry, 25. The inquiry began a generation ago with the work of P. F. Beatrice. See her “Le traité de Porphyre ‘Contre les chrétiens’: L’état de la question,” Kernos 4 (1991): 119–38. It is only in recent years that a significant divide among scholars has developed over the number of Harnack’s fragments that can be considered reliable attestations of Porphyry. Berchman and Ramos Jurado take an expansive view and do not reject any of Harnack’s fragments. See Sébastien Morlet, “Comment le problème du Contra Christianos peut-il se poser aujourd’hui?” 32–33; Ramos Jurado et al., Contra los Cristianos: Recopilación de fragmentos, traducción, introducción y notas (Cádiz, 2006). 47. On Macarius Magnes see Timothy D. Barnes, “Porphyry Against the Christians: Date and Attribution of Fragments,” JThS, n.s., 24 (1973):424–42; Richard Goulet, Macarios de Magnésie: Le Monogénès (Paris: Vrin, 2002). A further divide exists between verbatim quotations, which Becker and Johnson would consider fragments, and other paraphrases of Porphyry, which Becker labels testimonia and Johnson may consider fragments in certain circumstances. Johnson’s more reasonable opinion allows for a weighing of the evidence depending on whether the paraphrase actually refers to a statement and Porphyry and ideally the work cited is named. Ariel Magny, borrowing insights from Sabrina Inowlocki on Eusebius, argues that ancient authors like Eusebius could hardly be relied on to produce a verbatim quotation, changing words to fit style. See Magny, Porphyry, 27–28. Sabrina Inowlocki, Eusebius and the Jewish Authors: His Citation Technique in an Apologetic Context (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 33–36. A quotation can be changed to fit its context. In some circumstances, a passage can contain both a quotation and a testimonium, which are sometimes difficult to tell apart. See Magny, Porphyry, 24. 48. Elm, “ ‘Old Man of Tyre,’ ” 312; Maria Carmen De Vita, Giuliano imperatore filosofo neoplatonico (Milan, 2011), 170–71. 49. Fr. 1 = 88D. See Bouffartigue, Empereur, 384. He says Porphyry finds Christians to be “doubly treasonous” against Greeks and Jews. 50. Aaron P. Johnson, “The Implications of a Minimalist Approach to Porphyry’s Fragments,” in Die Christen als Bedrohung?, 41–58; Ariane Magny, “Méthodologie et collecte des fragments de Porphyre sur le Nouveau Testament chez Jérôme,” in Le traité, 59–74; Richard Goulet, “Porphyre et Macarios de Magnésie sur la toute-puissance de Dieu,” in Morlet, ed., Le Traité, 205–30. 51. Sébastien Morlet, La “Démonstration évangélique” d’Eusèbe de Césarée: Étude sur l’apologetique chrétienne á l’époque de Constantin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 41–48; Johnson argues that the “someone” who offered these criticisms of Christianity referred to by Eusebius in fr. 1 often refers to a school of thought and aligns with the chapter title, “What is usually said against us by those who attempt to slander us.” Johnson’s arguments suggest more than one anti-Christian author behind this fragment. See Aaron P. Johnson, “Rethinking the Authenticity of Porphyry, c. Christ. Fr. 1,” Studia Patristica 46 (2010): 53–58 at 55. 52. Meredith, “Porphyry,” 1131. 53. Elm, “ ‘Old Man of Tyre,’ ” 310–11. 54. Schott, Christianity, 62. Aaron Johnson believes that Porphyry was attempting to reconstruct Hellenism not for the empire but rather for a small group of philosophers. Therefore, he differs with Schott’s argument that Porphyry was creating a universal Hellenic identity. What matters here is that an emperor and other interested elites might consider Porphyry’s work valuable and attempt to implement pieces of it as policy.

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55. Pieter W. van der Horst, “Porphyry on Judaism: Some Observations,” in Zeev Weiss et al., eds., “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 71–83 at 79. Van der Horst attributes Porphyry’s positive attitude to his appreciation for Numenius. 56. Hargis, Against the Christians, 82; and Schott, Christianity, 58. Porphyry searched for a Hellenic counterpart to Christian universal salvation. See Michael Bland Simmons, Universal Salvation in Late Antiquity: Porphyry of Tyre and the Pagan-Christian Debate, Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 57. Aaron Johnson, Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre: The Limits of Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 202. 58. In his Philosophy from Oracles, an early work, Porphyry calls Jews “Hebrews.” See Porphyry, Philosophy from Oracles, in Eusebius, Preparation 9.10.4. 59. Abraham Arazy, “The Appellations of the Jews (Ioudaios, Hebraios, Israel) in the Literature from Alexander to Justinian,” 2 vols., Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1977; Graham Harvey, The True Israel: Uses of the Names Jew, Hebrew and Israel in Ancient Jewish and Early Christian Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1996). 60. Aaron Johnson, Religion, 273. 61. Aaron Johnson explains that Porphyry looked for universal wisdom among particular ethnic entities like Hebrews and Jews to help him achieve his goal of the ascent of the Soul. Ibid. 8. 62. Schott has proposed that Porphyry’s work be read as a mechanism of imperializing forces to produce imperial knowledge using ethnographic practices and Scripture as authorizing Hellenic traditions that would best engender the support of the gods and thus contribute to the health of the empire. See Jeremy Schott, Christianity, 16–28. 63. Aaron Johnson, Religion, 198–99. Johnson argues that Porphyry identified with the Essenes, in particular, as he saw in them an example of a philosophical order. 64. In De Abst. 2.61 he admires Hebrews, who keep their dietary laws. 65. Schott, Christianity, 70. See John David Dawson, Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002). 66. Aaron Johnson, “Implications,” 56. 67. Interestingly, Johnson (ibid.) notes that the one possible criticism of the Old Testament is found in fr. 39, where Porphyry attacks Christian exegetes for not rejecting “the wickedness of the Jewish Scriptures.” Johnson suggests that this may be an echo of Origen’s language. 68. Schott, Christianity, 68. These can be found in Harnack fr. 40 (= Be12T; “Be” = Becker; T is for “testimonium” of Porphyry, which refers to Porphyry but not to a specific book) and in fr. 41 (= Be10F and 11F; F is for “fragment”). Matthias Becker divides Harnack’s fragments into F for fragments, those sections that can clearly be identified as quotations by Porphyry; T for testimonia, for those sections that likely reflect the ideas of Porphyry but are not quotations; and D for dubia, for those sections that have been unreliably associated with Porphyry. 69. For example, in his Letter to Gaurus, Porphyry uses Genesis to support Plato’s doctrine on the ensoulment of bodies. See To Gaurus 16.5. See Aaron P. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 276. 70. Porphyry shows that the Book of Daniel was written in the time of Antiochus IV, in the second century b.c.e., and therefore was not prophetic but historical. See fr. 43A =

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Becker 13T. See Becker, Porphyrios, Contra Christianos: Neue Sammlung der Fragmente, Testimonien und Dubia, 196–203. 71. Fr. 39 = Be6F; fr. 46 = Be121D. 72. Bouffartigue, Empereur, 387; Rokeah, Jews. 73. This argument appears already in Romans 9. However, the structure of Julian’s argument (fr. 3 = 42E) shows him to be responding to Eusebius (Preparation, and Demonstration Book 1). 74. Andrew S. Jacobs, Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 27–32. 75. Aaron Johnson, Ethnicity. 76. As Eduard Iricinschi argues, Eusebius reimagines the imperial map to make room for Christians. In effect, Eusebius attempts to create a Roman oikoumenē made up of Christians and Hellenes. Eduard Iricinschi, “Good Hebrew, Bad Hebrew: Christians as Triton Genos in Eusebius’ Apologetic Writings,” in Sabrina Inowlocki and Claudio Zamagni, eds., Reconsidering Eusebius: Collected Papers on Literary, Historical, and Theological Issues, (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 69–86 at 86. 77. Jacobs, Remains, 29–32. 78. Aaron Johnson, Ethnicity, 95–124 esp. 110–14. 79. Iricinschi, “Good Hebrew,” 86. 80. Jorge Ulrich, Euseb von Caesarea und die Juden (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999), 57–131. 81. Jacobs, Remains, 29. 82. Eusebius, Demonstration 5 prooem. 32. On Isaiah, Demonstration 1.4.7 (23:19); on Jeremiah, Demonstration 1.4.5.; David is the “king of the whole Hebrew nation” in Demonstration 4.15.34. Philo and Josephus are also Hebrews. See Ulrich, Euseb, 88–110. Even the Maccabees are Hebrews. See Demonstration 5 prooem. 35, 7.1.31. 83. Even while the Temple stood Diaspora Jews were unable to practice their ancestral laws. Kofsky, Eusebius of Caesarea against Paganism (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 109–12. Eusebius says Moses purposely limited the validity of his Law. Demonstration 1.2.16, 1.6.31–38. 84. Jacobs, Remains. 85. Kofsky, Eusebius, 113. Demonstration 1.6.40. 86. Schott writes that Christians are placed in “an elevated middle ground above both the polytheistic error of the Greeks and the laughable and anachronistic cult of the Jews.” Schott, Christianity, 151. 87. Jacobs, Remains, 31–32; Schott, Christianity, 153. 88. Jacobs, Remains, 32. 89. Julian actually calls Hebrews an ethnos. See Galileans fr. 19 = 99E. 90. Porphyry also focuses on ancestral laws when he discusses the most important elements of the ethnos. See Aaron Johnson, Religion, 198. 91. Valerio Ugenti, “Julien et la Bible: Lexique et stratégies interprétatives,” in Alessandro Capone, ed., Lessico, argomentazioni e strutture retoriche nella polemica di età christiana (III–V sec.), Recherches sur les Rhétoriques Religieuses 16 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 241– 51; Aaron Johnson, Religion, 276. 92. Fr. 72 = 306B. 93. Fr. 29 = 152C. 94. Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, Ep. 89b.295D.

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95. Fr. 17 = 94A. 96. For an example of Porphyry’s use of ethnic wisdom for this purpose see Aaron Johnson, Religion, 190–91. 97. Fragment of a Letter to a Priest 89b.295D–296A. 98. Boulnois, “Le Contre les Galiléens.” 99. Johannes Hahn, “Kaiser Julian und ein dritter Tempel? Idee, Wirklichkeit, Wirkung eines gescheiterten Projekts,” in Johannes Hahn and C. Ronning, eds., Zerstörungen des Jerusalemer Tempels: Geschehen—Wahrnehmung—Bewältigung, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 147 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 237–62. 100. Julian also uses “Hebrews” in fr. 36 = 171E. 101. See Galileans fr. 10 = 66A; fr. 19 = 100A; fr. 20 = 106A; fr. 20 = 106B; and fr. 20 = 106C. 102. See Galileans fr. 11 = 69B; fr. 19 = 99E; fr. 19 = 100B; fr. 19 = 100C; fr. 25 = 141C; fr. 25 = 141D. 103. True Doctrine, 5.25; Boulnois, “Le Contre les Galiléens,” 125. 104. Moses’s exclusivist claim that God chose the Hebrew nation from among all nations drives Julian as much as it did Celsus (Galileans, fr. 19 = 99E–100C). 105. Jean Bouffartigue argues that Julian’s ethnological doctrine in which each culture reflects its ethnarchic god is the emperor’s biggest contribution to philosophy. See “La diversité des nations et la nature des hommes: L’empereur Julien et Cyrille d’Alexandrie dans un controverse incertaine,” in Sylvie Crogiez Pétrequn, ed., Dieu(x) et hommes: Histoire et iconographie des sociétés païennes et chrétiennes de l’Antiquité à nos jours; Mélanges en l’honneur de Françoise Thelamon (Rouen: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2005), 113–26 at 114. 106. Meredith, “Porphyry” 1136. For a detailed analysis of where Julian relies on Celsus see Bouffartigue, Empereur, appendix 3, 685–86. 107. Niketas Siniossoglou argues that in Galileans we see a shift from a description of a philosophical monotheism to a description of the relation between gods and the One that makes the gods “politically exploitable.” See his “From Philosophic Monotheism to Imperial Henotheism: Esoteric and Popular Religion in Late Antique Platonism,” in Stephen Mitchell and Peter Van Nuffelen, eds., Monotheism between Greco-Romans and Christians in Late Antiquity, Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 12 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 127–48 at 138. 108. See Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods, 195. This is similar to Celsus’s argument in Against Celsus 4.7 and Porphyry’s in Harnack fr. 81 = Be76F. Moses offers no account of beings superior to God or of the angels, even though it is clear that he believes angels serve God. See Galileans, fr. 18 = 96C–E. John Granger Cook, The Interpretation of the Old Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 252–53. Evidence of preexisting matter in Genesis leads Julian to conclude that the Hebrew God did not create anything corporeal but merely disposed of existing matter. Galileans fr. 6 = 49D–E. 109. Fr. 28 = 148B–C. 110. Having contained the Judean God within a small region and having placed Him within a network of other gods, Julian, like Celsus before him, shrinks His power by comparing Him to other ethnic gods. A comparison of the ethnē’s scientific, military, and political achievements demonstrates that Hellenes received far better gifts (fr. 46 = 200A) from their gods than did the Jews from theirs (fr. 39 = 184B–194C; fr. 46 = 200A–B; compare with

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Hebrews in fr. 47 = 201E). Even the gifts of other barbarian nations are better than those of the Judeans. Julian mentions the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians. (See fr. 37 = 176A–B; fr. 38 = 178A–B. Celsus does the same thing: True Doctrine, 1.14, 6.78.) Julian concludes that the Judean God is not “the creator of the whole universe” but rather one god among many. 111. Bouffartigue, “Diversité,” 123. 112. On labeling see Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives, 2nd ed. (London: Pluto Press, 2002). The ethnonym “Galileans” is designed to set back Christians’ universalist claims by placing them within a circumscribed region. See Jan Stenger, Hellenische Identität in der Spätantike: Pagane Autoren und ihr Unbehagen an der eigenen Zeit, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, Band 97 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 365. 113. Galileans fr. 72 = 306B. 114. Hargis stresses the geographical limitation of the Galileans. See Hargis, Against the Christians, 118 n. 115. 115. Hans Lewy, “Julian the Apostate and the Building of the Temple,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., The Jerusalem Cathedra, vol. 3 of Studies in the History, Archaeology, Geography and Ethnography of the Land of Israel (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983), 70–96 at 75. 116. See Riedweg, Against Julian 9.13.7–20, 620 The apparatus here carefully separates out Julian’s voice on Jews and Hellenes sacrificing holocaust offerings (ibid. n. 9, 13.19). 117. Circumcision is also approved by priests among the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Saracens. 118. The only example that Julian borrows from Porphyry of a Jewish source for Hellenic wisdom regards the dietary laws. See Aaron Johnson, Religion, 276. 119. Cyril adds that following Galileans fr. 75 = 320C Julian discussed the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15, which forbids eating meat offered to idols and things strangled. This is an argument that appears in the Letter to Theodorus. 120. Aaron Johnson argues that Porphyry uses Jews as an ethnic example in service to his larger argument. They can serve as both positive and negative examples. See his Religion, 202. 121. See Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, “Weiser oder Scharlatane? Chaldäerbilder der griechisch-römischen Kaiserzeit und die chaldäischen Orakel,” in H. Seng and N. Tardieu, eds., Die chaldaeischen Orakel: Kontext—Intepretation—Rezeption (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg, 2010), 19–42 at 26–28. She points out that Hebrews are identified with the Chaldeans in Philo, On the Life of Moses II 26.31.38; On Abraham 99. One Neoplatonist tradition supports Julian’s claim that the Chaldeans and the Hebrews were the most treasured of all the barbarian ethnē. See Porphyry, Philosophy from Oracles as testified by Eusebius, Preparation 9.10.4. 122. See Josef Bidez, L’empereur Julien: Œuvres complètes, tome 1, 2e partie, Lettres et fragments (Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1972), 102. 123. 452C. 124. 453B. 125. For a full translation, see the section titled “The Letter to Theodorus and the Cult of the Maccabean Martyrs” in chapter 7 below. 126. Aaron Johnson, Religion, 202. 127. 453D.

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C HA P T E R 4 . P R O P I T IAT I N G T H E G O D S , S AV I N G T H E E M P I R E : T H E P L AC E O F J EW I SH S AC R I F IC E I N E M P E R O R J U L IA N ’ S H E L L E N I Z I N G P R O G R A M

1. Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015), 2. 2. Roman state religion often offered set prayers that were to accompany different sacrifices and were to be repeated correctly. In Hellenic religion the part of prayer when expressed in conjunction with sacrifice merely specified to which god the sacrifice was offered and clarified what the supplicant wanted from the gods. See Isabella Sandwell, Religious Identity in Late Antiquity: Greeks, Jews, and Christians in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 256; John Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion, trans. Janet Lloyd (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), 97–98. Plato claims that sacrifice to the gods and communicating by prayer are the best ways to secure well-being. See Laws 4.716d. Julian even created a pagan liturgy composed mainly of religious hymns: Ep. 89b.301D– 302A; Sozomen 5.16.2. See Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Routledge, 1992), 187. 3. Iamblichus characterized the “bonds of generation from which souls had to be cleansed” as daimones and argued that theurgic sacrifice could overcome them. Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 40. 4. Myst. 5.11; Shaw, Theurgy, 39. 5. Elizabeth Depalma Digeser, A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 113. 6. For the use of particular objects in sacrifice see Myst. 5.23. Iamblichus argued with Porphyry, who thought that the names of the gods mentioned in theurgic chants did not need to be offered in the original barbarian language. See Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo; Edward P. Butler, “Offering to the Gods: A Neoplatonic Perspective,” Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft 2.1 (2007): 1–20 at 6. On Iamblichus see Gregory Shaw, “The Neoplatonic Transmission of Ancient Wisdom,” in Nathaniel P. DesRosiers and Lily C. Vuong, eds., Religious Competition in the Greco-Roman World, Writings from the Greco-Roman World, Supplement Series, no. 10 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 107–18; Shaw, Theurgy, 179–88. 7. Myst. 3.15; Shaw, Theurgy, 48. 8. See Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion zur Philosophie in der Spätantike: Kaiser Julian und Synesios von Kyrene (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008), 148; Scott Allen Bradbury, “Julian’s Pagan Revival and the Decline of Blood Sacrifice,” Phoenix 49.4: 331–56. 9. Shaw, Theurgy, 83. For the theurgist, theurgic prayer lifts up the person’s thoughts to the gods and bestows on him the habits of the gods, turning him into a divine man. Myst. 5.26. 10. Ibid. 5.26. 11. Ibid. 5.11. 12. Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy in Late Antiquity: The Invention of a Ritual Tradition, Beiträge zur Europaïschen Religionsgeschichte [BERG], vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2013), 149–51. Julian even argues that people are descended from the gods: Ep. 89b.292B.

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13. Shaw, Theurgy, 149. Iamblichus discusses expiatory sacrifices and spiritual sacrifices. See Myst. 1.14. 14. See Myst. 5.18. 15. Shaw, Theurgy, 88. 16. Carine Van Liefferinge, La théurgie des Oracles chaldaïques à Proclus (Liège: Centre International d’Étude de la Religion Grecque Antique, 1999), 108–10. 17. Myst. 5.14; Shaw, Theurgy, 130. 18. For the idea of encosmic and hypercosmic gods see ibid. 135. For the idea that material gods require material forms of sacrifice see Myst. 5.14. 19. Myst. 5.18; Shaw, Theurgy, 148. 20. See Ep. 12, Hymn to the Mother of the Gods, Hymn to King Helios, 157D. 21. Bradbury, “Julian’s Pagan Revival,” 340. 22. In Galileans, fr. 86 = 354B–C, Julian says Abraham is skilled in theurgy. 23. Both the cult of Helios and the rabbis required prayer be performed three times a day. 24. Ep. 89b.302A–B. Here we have evidence of frequent sacrifice and prayer, a practice Julian followed himself. Libanius writes that Julian sacrifices daily in the palace: Or. 12.80– 82. Ammianus Marcellinus is unhappy with Julian’s frequent sacrifice: Amm. 22.12.6. 25. Ep. 89b.292B. 26. Fr. 86 = 354B–C. 27. Ep. 89b.292B. 28. T. Stäcker, Die Stellung der Theurgie in der Lehre Jamblichs (Frankfurt, 1995). 29. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion, 141; Van Liefferinge, Théurgie, 235. See also my chapter 1 above. 30. Ep. 89b.293A. 31. Ibid. 293A–B. 32. Tanaseanu-Döbler, “Theurgy,” 144–45. 33. Misop. 348B. 34. Ibid. 342B. 35. In Ep. 98, Julian’s letter to Libanius, he praises the people of Batnae for sacrificing, describing their acts in ethnic terms, as “Hellenic.” Unfortunately, the letter reveals nothing of the philosophical nature of Julian’s sacrifice. 36. Tanaseanu-Döbler finds that Salutius adopts Julian’s hermeneutics of telestic myths, which he uses in ways similar to theurgic rituals. See Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 149; and Van Liefferinge, Théurgie, 229–31, for her explanation of Julian’s theory of myth; On the Gods and the Universe 3–4. 37. Bradbury, “Julian’s Pagan Revival,” 341. 38. However, Salutius discusses not the Soul’s union with the One but rather the likeness of the human with the divine life, which is brought together by the intermediary of a living sacrifice. See Ibid. 39. Translation my own. 40. Myst. 1.11–13. On the Gods and the Universe 14.2–3; Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 149. 41. Ibid. 42. Bradbury, “Julian’s Pagan Revival.” 43. Daniel Ullucci, The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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44. For a different reading of Porphyry see Aaron P. Johnson, Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre: The Limits of Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). See De Abst. 2.38. On Porphyry and Neoplatonism see Heidi Marx-Wolf, Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority: Platonists, Priests, and Gnostics in the Third Century C.E. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 29–37, 52–55; Shaw, Theurgy 13–15, 82–87, 109, 155–56. Nicole Belayche argues that intellectual opposition to sacrifice did not affect actual practice: see Nicole Belayche, “Realia versus Leges? Les sacrifices de la religion d’état au IV siècle,” in Stella Georgoudi, ed., La cuisine et l’autel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 343–69. 45. Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100–400) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). 46. There is a polemic against sacrifice in the Pseudo-Clementine literature in Recognitions 1.34.4, 1.36.2. See Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Jewish Christianity after the ‘Parting of the Ways’: Approaches to Historiography and Self-Definition in the Pseudo-Clementines,” in Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 189–231 at 208–9. See also Nicole Kelley, Knowledge and Religious Authority in the PseudoClementines: Situating the Recognitions in Fourth-Century Syria (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), especially 200–208 at 203. 47. Julian calls the sacrifices of the people of Batnae “Hellenic” but complains that they sacrifice everywhere rather than in temples exclusively. Letter to Libanius, Ep. 98.400C. 48. 291A. This section appears here in Cyril of Alexandria’s Against Julian 9.13.7–20. 49. Jan Stenger claims the attempt to parallel the two was designed to persuade Hellenes that animal sacrifice is a natural way of worshipping the gods. See Jan Stenger, Hellenische Identität in der Spätantike: Pagane Autoren und ihr Unbehagen an der eigenen Zeit, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, Band 97 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 363. 50. Strangely, they do not quite prove his claim that Moses knew various sacrifices in fr. 71 = 305B. 51. Translation my own. 52. Aaron P. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 200. 53. Elm, Sons of Hellenism, 319. 54. Galileans, fr. 70 = 299B–C. 55. The same is said of Iamblichus. See Van Liefferinge, Théurgie, 103. 56. Myst. 1.13, 5.26. 57. On the authenticity of the Letter to the Community of the Jews see my appendix below. 58. Myst. 1.15. See Van Liefferinge, Théurgie, 113; Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1980), 568; Hans Lewy, “Julian the Apostate and the Building of the Temple,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., The Jerusalem Cathedra, volume 3 of Studies in the History, Archaeology, Geography and Ethnography of the Land of Israel (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1983), 70–96 at 76. 59. Michael Adler puzzled over the term in his essay more than a hundred years ago. See “The Emperor Julian and the Jews,” JQR 5 (1893): 591–651 at 602 n. 1.

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60. Michael Adler argues, as I do, that Julian is referring to ritual slaughter. See Adler, “Emperor,” 602 n. 2. Gedaliah Alon argued that Julian knew of šh. īțāh or ritual slaughter, which the rabbis coupled with prayer. See Gedaliah Alon, “Towards a Clarification of the Problem of Julian’s Knowledge of Jews,” in Gedaliah Alon, ed., Studies in Jewish History in the Times of the Second Temple, the Mishna and the Talmud, vol. 2 (Tel-Aviv: Kibbutz Ha-Meuhad, 1970), appendix 1, 313–14 (in Hebrew). David Rokeah proposed that Julian referred to the giving of a heave offering, which was comparable to a sacrifice. See David Rokeah, Judaism and Christianity in Pagan Polemics (Jerusalem: Dinur Center, 1991), 236 n. 168 (Hebrew); Moshe David Herr identified Julian’s comment with the ritual of the giving of h. allah in Rabbinic Law (m. h. allah 4:10). See Moshe D. Herr, “The Identity of the Jewish People before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple: Continuity or Change?” in Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz, eds., Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Permutations and Transformations; International Conference in Memory of Professor Menachem Stern (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007), 211–36 at 228 n. 66. Fergus Millar thought that Julian referred to the slaughter of the Paschal lamb, which some Jews continued to perform in Late Antiquity. See Fergus Millar, “The Jews of the Graeco-Roman Diaspora between Paganism and Christianity, a.d.312–438,” in Judith Lieu, John North, and Tessa Rajak, eds., The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire (New York: Routledge, 1992), 97–123 at 107; Claude Aziza, “Julien et le judaisme,” in René Braun and Jean Richer, eds., L’empereur Julien: De l’histoire à la légende, 331–1715, Vol. 1 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1978), 141–58 at 149. Aziza argues that Julian is describing a secondary ritual. See also my dissertation: Aryay (Ari) Finkelstein, “Julian among Jews, Christians and ‘Hellenes’ in Antioch: Jewish Practice as a Guide to ‘Hellenes’ and a Goad to Christians,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2011: 42. Jordan Rosenblum considers whether Jews sacrificed on household altars. See Jordan Rosenblum, “Home Is Where the Hearth Is? A Consideration of Jewish Household Sacrifice in Antiquity,” in Caroline Johnson Hodge et al., eds., “The One Who Sows Bountifully”: Essays in Honor of Stanley K. Stowers, Brown Judaic Studies, number 356 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2013), 153–63. 61. Deut. 12:21 provides that a zebah. , which can translate as “sacrificed animal” or “slaughtered animal,” could be killed and eaten in places far from the Temple. 62. Only b. h. ullin 132b attests the gifting of the shoulder, cheeks, and jaw of Deut. 18:3. Julian’s Galileans fr. 72 = 305D–306A is a second relevant source; however, it mentions only the shoulder. 63. Josephus, Ant. 4:74. 64. Both the Hebrew and the Greek use terms in Deuteronomy 18:3 and 12:21 that could mean “sacrifice” or “slaughter.” The term zebah. is the general term for “sacrifice” and is translated into Greek as thusia. See Royden Keith Yerkes, Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and Early Judaism (New York: Scribner’s, 1952), 146. Philo (De Spec. Leg. 1.147) uses the Greek root thu- to denote secular slaughter, as do later exegetes, but they also all suggest that such slaughter has a degree of sanctity. See Ari Finkelstein, “Julian,” 46–47; and MariaZoe Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Greek Religion, Judaism, and Christianity, 100 BC–AD 200, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 164–67. The rabbis of the Mishnah also distinguished between acts of nonsacral slaughter (h. ūllin) and acts of sacrifice (zebah. im). 65. t. Berachot 6:11. 66. Josephus, Ant. 4.74 (Thackeray, LCL vol. 490).

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67. According to the testimonia of Cyril, Julian accuses the Christians of not keeping the Sabbath, of not immolating a lamb “in the manner of Judeans,” and of not eating unleavened bread as Judeans do. The apparatus states: “Keep unleavened bread, etc.: He charges them in addition to these things that they do not keep the Sabbath, nor slaughter the lamb in the Judean manner, nor eat unleavened bread in addition to it” (my translation). See Against Julian 10.31.28–32. It is also possible that Julian had in mind the slaughter of the Passover lamb in the Bible. 68. Kim Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Bowes examines the development of the increasing regulation of the private sphere from a Christianizing perspective in the fourth and fifth centuries c.e. 69. Ibid. 202. 70. In Misopogon (363A), Julian castigates Antiochene senators for allowing their wives to offer charity to Christians. 71. This appears in Against Julian 9.13.7–20 and follows Galileans 291A, labeled in Masaracchia’s edition as fr. 69 = 298B. 72. Jay Bregman, “Elements of Emperor Julian’s Theology,” in John M. Dillon, ed., Traditions of Platonism (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1999), 337–50 at 338. 73. Stenger, Hellenische Identität. 74. Ep. 98. 75. Galileans fr. 72 = 306A. 76. Ullucci, Christian Rejection, 65. 77. Julian highlighted the incoherence of Christians’ positions on sacrifice by laying out their contradictory claims. They claimed that (1) Judeans no longer sacrifice (fr. 72 = 305D); (2) sacrifices can no longer be consumed by heavenly fire (fr. 83 = 343C); (3) sacrifice is sanctioned only in Jerusalem (fr. 85 = 351D); (4) the Eucharist is ritual sacrifice (fr. 72 = 306B), and therefore Christians had no need for Jerusalem; and (5) sacrifice was impossible, since Jesus was the most perfect sacrifice. 78. Galileans 262C–291A = fr. 64–67. 79. Louis Ligier, “Autour du sacrifice eucharistique: Anaphores orientales et anamnèse juive de Kippur,” NRT 82 (1960): 40–55 at 52. The Eucharist took on expiatory meaning, just like Moses’s sacrifices. See Ligier 53. 80. Sebastian P. Brock, “Fire from Heaven: From Abel’s Sacrifice to the Eucharist; A Theme in Syriac Christianity,” in E. A. Livingstone, ed., Studia Patristica 25 (Leuven: Peeters, 1993), 229–43 at 240. 81. Andrew B. McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship: Early Church Practices in Social, Historical and Theological Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Press, 2014), 54. 82. Justin Martyr also describes a Roman community of Syrian origin praying before they eat their meal. See Justin, Apology 1.67. See McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 36. 83. A. Gelston “Sacrifice in the Early East Syrian Eucharistic Tradition,” in S. W. Sykes, ed., Sacrifice and Redemption: Durham Essays in Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 118–25 at 119–20. 84. See Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.28; Greg. Naz. Or. 10.4; Tert. On Baptism 17.1; Giorgio Scrofani, “ ‘Like the Green Herb’: Julian’s Understanding of Purity and His Attitude Towards Judaism in Contra Galileos,” JLARC 2 (2008): 1–16 at 5.

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85. Ibid. 86. Daniel Ullucci demonstrates that these positions often were taken in response to intramural Christian arguments or to polytheistic accusations of Christian impiety for their failure to sacrifice. See Ullucci, The Christian Rejection, 95–116. 87. Christian positions on Judean sacrifice included claims that (1) animal sacrifice was insufficient and no longer needed after Jesus’s perfect sacrifice (see Hebrews 10:11–12); (2) God had never intended sacrifice (see Barnabas 16:2); (3) Judean sacrifice was always meant to be temporary and was given to the Israelites to keep them from apostatizing from God (see Justin Martyr, The Dialogue with Trypho 22; Tertullian, Against Marcion 2.18); (4) other varieties of Christian sacrifice can be found in Didache 14.1, where the daily bread is called a thusia, a thanksgiving sacrifice equivalent to the zebah. šlāmīm, which was not connected to Jesus’s death (Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 4.17.5, says Christians do sacrifice and mentions first-fruits offerings); and (5) some of these sacrifices were superior to animal sacrifice. 88. Against the Judaizers 6.7.2. 89. See Apostolic Constitutions 6.23.5. 90. PL 34.192; Genesis against the Manichees 1.23:40. 91. Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 309. 92. Seth Schwartz demonstrates that the rabbis remained on the margins of Jewish society through the fourth century. See Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 b.c.e. to 640 c.e. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). See chapter 5 below on how the rabbis polemicized against the priests and treated them like competitors. 93. Charlotte E. Fonrobert, “The Didascalia Apostolorum: A Mishnah for the Disciples of Jesus,” JECS 9.4 (2001): 483–509. 94. See Naftali S. Cohn, The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 13. 95. Michael Satlow explains that the rabbis replaced sacrifice with Torah study. See Michael Satlow, “ ‘And on the Earth You Shall Sleep’: Talmud Torah and Rabbinic Asceticism,” Journal of Religion 83 (2003): 204–25; Guy Stroumsa, The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformation in Late Antiquity, trans. Susan Emanuel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 67. See also Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Michael Swartz argues that these became ritualized acts of sacrifice in themselves and were therefore not substitutions. See Michael D. Swartz, “Ritual Is with People: Sacrifice and Society in Palestinian Yoma Traditions,” in Alberdina Houtman et al., eds., The Actuality of Sacrifice Past and Present (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 206–27 at 225. 96. The rabbis preserve instances of Jews who continued to sacrifice on the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e. See m. Eduyyot 8:6. See Alexander Guttman, “The End of Jewish Sacrifice,” HUCA 38 (1967): 137–48. See also Kenneth W. Clark, “Worship in the Jerusalem Temple after AD 70,” New Testament Studies 6 (1959–60): 269–80. Both Hebrews 10:11, which states that priests continued to make sacrifices in the Temple, and Josephus’s post-70 work Contra Apion (2.193) use the present tense when they discuss sacrificial practice. 97. m. Pesahim 4:4; m. Besah 2:7; cf. m. Ed. 3:11. See Baruch M. Bokser, The Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univer-

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sity of California Press, 1984), 101–5; t. Ahilot 3:9 (Beit Dagan), 18:18 (Ashkelon). There are two conflicting instructions in the Torah for the roasting and eating of the Paschal lamb. See Exodus 12; cf. Philo, De Spec. Leg. 2.148, and Deut. 16:5–6. 98. The term means “roasted whole,” with its head and legs in its innards. 99. t. Besah 2:15. 100. Rabbinic literature of the Amoraic period (mid-third to fifth centuries) rarely mentions Jews who sacrifice, and when such cases arise they seem to be literary tropes from the Mishnaic period being used for other purposes. See y. Pesah. 7:1, 34a; y. Besah 2:7, 61c; y. Moed Qat. 3:1, 81d. See also b. Pesahim 53a–b, with parallel accounts in b. Besah 23a and b. Berachot 19a. See Baruch M. Bokser, “Todos and Rabbinic Authority in Rome,” in Jacob Neusner et al., eds., Religion, Literature, and Society in Ancient Israel, Formative Christianity and Judaism (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), 117–30. 101. See Jean Juster, Les juifs dans l’empire romain: Leur condition juridique, économique et sociale, vol. 1 (Paris: Libraire Paul Geuthner, 1914), 357 n. 1. 102. Galileans fr. 85; Against Julian 10, 31. Translation is my own. 103. On Hypsistarian opposition to sacrifice see Pieter W. van der Horst, “Judaism in Asia Minor,” in Marvin A. Sweeney and Michelle Renee Salzman, eds., The Cambridge History of Religion in the Ancient World: From the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 321–40 at 333. 104. See Homilies 2.16, 34; 20:9. 105. See Reed, “Parting Ways over Blood and Water?” 248–50 at 249. 106. The encouragement of private animal sacrifice would have brought religious differences to the fore in Antiochene homes where Hellenes and Christians were intermarried. Hellenes living in the same home as Christians likely witnessed and possibly even participated in the weekly Eucharist at church. They may have offered prayers in private devotion, but they would have been subject to constant reminders that the Eucharist was sacrifice. Julian forced his own interpretation of true sacrifice from a bevy of meanings for sacrifice. (See Bradbury, “Julian’s Pagan Revival.”) This marking of boundaries meant renegotiating relationships not only between members of a family but also among and between larger groups and would have upset the delicate equilibrium in their homes. C HA P T E R 5 . A P R I E ST LY NAT IO N : T H E J EW I SH P R I E ST HO O D A S A M O D E L F O R J U L IA N ’ S P R I E S T LY P R O G R A M

1. Priests were simply not respected figures. Scrofani suggests that Julian’s portrait of Hellenic priests could be influenced by the biblical image of God’s people as a priestly race. See Giorgio Scrofani, La religione impura: La riforma di Giuliano imperatore, Studi Biblici Fondati da Giuseppe Scarpat 163 (Brescia: Paideia Editrice, 2010), 90–91. Thank you to Emilia Oddo for her translation of this work. 2. The high priest of the provinces sometimes received subsidies from the imperial government. Priests in office were exempted from the curial munera. See Matilde Caltabiano, Epistolario di Giuliano imperatore: Saggio storico (Naples: M. D’Auria Editore, 1991), 263 n. 9. Thank you to Gabriele Busnelli for his translation of this work. 3. They also discussed issues of common interest, approved vows of thanks for the governors, promoted judiciary actions at Rome, and sent embassies with petitions to the emperor.

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4. See Euseb. HE 8.14.9; Scott Allen Bradbury, “Julian’s Pagan Revival and the Decline of Blood Sacrifice,” Phoenix 49.4 (1995): 331–56 at 351–52. 5. Oliver Nicholson, “The ‘Pagan Churches’ of Maximinus Daia and Julian the Apostate,” JEH 45.1 (1994): 1–10. 6. Libanius, Or. 12:79–80. 7. Ammianus Marcellinus found Julian’s frequent sacrifice excessive (22.12.6). 8. Another letter about the priesthood, the Letter to Arsacius, Julian’s chief priest of Galatia, is a forgery. See Peter Van Nuffelen, “Deux fausses lettres de Julien l’apostat (la Lettre aux juifs, Ep. 51 [Wright], et la Lettre à Arsacius, Ep. 84 [Bidez],” VC 55 (2001): 131–50. 9. Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013), 6. 10. Ep. 89b.296B–C and 297C. 11. Ep. 89b.292A–B. 12. In Ep. 89b.296B priests occupy a middle ground between humans and the gods. See James B. Fleming, “Julian: The Apostle of Paganism,” M.A. thesis, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2006, 21. This middle space is reminiscent of the position of Helios uniting the intelligible world with its gods with the visible world and its gods. 13. Besides Nicholson see Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Routledge, 1992); Ruth Stepper, Augustus et sacerdos: Untersuchungen zum römischen Kaiser als Priester (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004), 202–7; Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion zur Philosophie in der Spätantike: Kaiser Julian und Synesios von Kyrene (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008); Koch argued that Julian’s choice of priests reveals that his program was not inspired by theurgic Neoplatonism. See W. Koch, “Comment l’empereur Julien tâcha de fonder une église païenne: Les lettres pastorales,” RBPh 7 (1928): 49–82, esp. 68–71. 14. Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden argues for the influence of Iamblichean Neoplatonism. See Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian; See also Thomas Brauch, “The Political Philosophy of the Emperor Julian as Found in His Writings, Administration, and Propaganda,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1980, 283; Laura B. Dingeldein, “Julian’s Philosophy and His Religious Program,” in Nathaniel P. DesRosiers and Lily C. Vuong, eds., Religious Competition in the Greco-Roman World, Writing from the Greco-Roman World Supplement Series, no. 10 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2016), 119–29; Carine Van Liefferinge, La théurgie des Oracles chaldaiques à Proclus (Liège: Centre International d’Étude de la Religion Grecque Antique, 1999), 238–39. Several scholars disagree with this thesis. See Rowland B. E. Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate, (London: Routledge, 2012); Stepper, Augustus, 202–7. Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy in Late Antiquity: The Invention of a Ritual Tradition, Beiträge zur Europaïschen Religionsgeschichte (BERG), vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2013), 143–47. She argues that theurgy does not appear in Julian’s discussion of ancestral laws. Rather Julian refers to ta patria. The theurgists in Ep. 89b.292A–B refer to the idea of kinship of all humankind. This ignores the fact that the lawgivers were exegetes of divine wisdom contained in the laws—which is what Julian likely means here. 15. Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion, 146–47. 16. Even Iamblichus did not expect local priests to engage in the theurgic practices of a theurge such as himself. For a different view see Brauch, “Political Philosophy,” 283.

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17. Like Julian, Theodorus was a pupil of Maximus of Ephesus. A friend of Maximus, Chrysanthius of Sardis, and his wife, Melite, were appointed High Priests of Lydia (Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers 478). Seleucus, a philosopher and friend of the emperor, perhaps was appointed a high priest (Lib. Ep. 92.3, 4). The hierophant of Eleusis, who supervised the temples in Greece, was likely another chief priest (Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers 476). For a discussion of Julian’s choices for the position of chief priest see Fleming, “Julian,” 52–54. 18. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 144–45. 19. Ibid. 146. 20. Ibid. 144. 21. Heidi Marx-Wolf, Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority: Platonists, Priests, and Gnostics in the Third Century C.E. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 30; Carine Van Liefferinge, “La théurgie, outil de restructuration dans le De Mysteriis de Jamblique,” Kernos 7 (1994): 207–17 at 209; Georg Luck, “Theurgy and Forms of Worship in Neoplatonism,” in Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher, eds., Religion, Science and Magic in Concert and in Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 192–228. 22. Myst. 1.12; 2.10. Stäcker argues that Iamblichus presented himself as an Egyptian priest to stress that only priests could be theurgists. See his Die Stellung der Theurgie in der Lehre Jamblichs (Frankfurt, 1995), 180–82. 23. Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian, 187. Many bishops were wealthy. See Rapp, Holy Bishops, 199–203. 24. Ep. 89a.453a. Sara Stöcklin-Kaldewey, Kaiser Julians Gottesverehrung im Kontext der Spätantike, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 86 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 327. The awe with which Julian hoped Hellenes would regard his priests was much like the phenomenon described by Peter Brown. See Peter L. Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man,” JRS 61 (1971), 80–101 at 87. 25. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion, 145. 26. Ep. 89b.305A–B. 27. Julian did not follow Plato’s criteria for the selection of priests. See Plato, Laws 759b–c. 28. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 112. 29. One key difference between Pythagorean knowledge and that of theurgy in On the Mysteries is that the latter requires ritual acts to establish connections between theurgists and the gods whereas the Pythagorean life occurs via some rituals but reaches beyond them through philosophical paideia. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 116. Therefore, a Pythagorean holy man would not need a ritual expert like a theurgist. 30. Garth Fowden, “The Pagan Holy Man in Late Antique Society,” JHS 102 (1982): 33–59 at 37. Iamblichus brought together the philosophy of Plotinus and Porphyry with the theurgical doctrines of the Chaldean Oracles. 31. Fowden, “Pagan Holy Man,” 35. 32. Myst. 3.31. 33. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy, 116. 34. Ep. 89b.302D. One had to be pure to enter a sacred area. Garth Fowden, “Late Polytheism,” in Alan Bowman, Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 12, The Crisis of Empire, AD 193–337, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 521–37.

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35. Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 86. 36. Ep. 89b.302D. 37. This was driven by the “cultic expression of theurgy centered on the worship of the sun.” Shaw, Theurgy, 225. 38. Here Julian follows Pythagorean-Neoplatonic tradition, which requires that priests present themselves to the god as awe-inspiring figures. See Proclus, In Remp. 2.246; Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian, 187. See Ep. 89b.303D–304A. 39. The model of the theios anēr also explains why Julian’s priests did not perform all the same functions as Christian bishops. While bishops strove for personal virtue they were in contact with governors and magistrates, and therefore were subject to bribes. As Peter Brown argues, the bishop’s exemplarity was vital to his ability to effectively dispense pastoral care. See Peter Brown, “The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity,” Representations 1 (1983): 1–25. 40. Ep. 89b.303D. 41. Ep. 89b.304B–C. 42. See Ep. 89b.290D, 291A–B, 289C. See also Ep. 89b.304D–305B. For a Christian parallel see Rapp, Holy Bishops, 226. Julian’s insistence on Hellenic acts of charity is likely driven by “the Homeric notion of philoxenia, and the broader Hellenistic ideal of philanthropia”: Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian, 188. The bulk of Julian’s charitable program is contained in the now-discredited Letter to Arsacius. 43. Susanna Elm describes Julian’s philanthropic requirement in terms of his philosophy. See her Sons, 323. 44. In Ep. 89b.305B–D he actually refers to Christian charity. 45. Ep. 89b.300D–301A. For the role of philosophy in the priestly program see Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion, 141–50. The curriculum included the works of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Chrysippus, and Zeno (Ep. 89b.300D) but also banned others (Ep. 89b.300D– 301C) lest through contact his priests would become tainted with uncleanness and would attract daemons. 46. Greg. Naz. Or. 4.111. 47. Bradbury, “Julian’s Pagan Revival,” 348–49. 48. Fleming, “Julian,” 40. 49. The Apostolic Constitutions 2.20 says that a layperson should revere the bishop as his “High Priest.” 50. Julian writes about the hieratikon bion in his Fragment of a Letter to a Priest. See Ep. 89b.289A. In Epistle 89b.296B–C Julian compares the priestly life (hieratikos bios) to civil life. 51. As attested by Porphyry De Abst. 2.26, Bouffartigue, L’empereur Julien et la culture de son temps (Paris: Institut des Études Augustiniennes, 1992), 86. Julian mentions Theophrastus. See Hymn to the Mother of the Gods, 162B. Bezalel Bar-Kochva, The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature: The Hellenistic Period (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010), 22–37 at 34. Hecataeus of Abdera also writes favorably about Judean priests. 52. Julian conspicuously does not quote Exodus 19:6 to present Judeans as priests, which is surprising since he prodigiously cites Scripture throughout Galileans. Giorgio Scrofani suspects that the biblical notion of Hebrews as a priestly nation undergirds his holiness program. See Scrofani, Religione, 90; Hans Lewy, “Julian the Apostate and the Building of

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the Temple,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., The Jerusalem Cathedra, vol. 3 of Studies in the History, Archaeology, Geography and Ethnography of the Land of Israel (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983), 70–96 at 76. 53. Fr. 86 = 356C. 54. Fr. 84 = 347C. 55. On Moses’s special knowledge see Galileans fr. 71 = 305B. 56. Letter to Theodorus, 89a.453C. The term scholē means “school” or “teaching.” Julian likely means that the Judeans are a philosophical school. 57. De Abst. 2.161. 58. Elsewhere, in the Hymn to the Mother of the Gods 177C, Julian offers a theurgic Neoplatonist reason why pig is to be avoided. Porphyry also uses Scripture (Genesis) in To Gaurus as a source of Hellenic wisdom. See Aaron P. Johnson, Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre: The Limits of Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 276. 59. Giorgio Scrofani argues that Julian’s notion of holiness may be inspired by biblical Judaism. See Scrofani, Religione, 91. 60. This even though the atonement sacrifice was never eaten. 61. Ep. 89b.291B. 62. Van Nuffelen, “Deux fausses lettres.” 63. Admittedly, a forger may have based the letter on Ep. 89b. 64. Ep. 89b.305C–D. Rapp, Holy Bishops, 223–24; Dominic O’Meara argues that Julian may have modeled his clergy on Hellenic sources. See his Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), 122; Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire, Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Brandeis University, 2001). It is also possible that any mention of Christian acts would have triggered a parallel Jewish act in Julian’s mind. 65. Van Liefferinge, Théurgie, 239–40. 66. Fr. 54 = 224C–E. Julian suggests that we not read King Solomon’s turn to polytheism because of his wives literally. See I Kings 11:4. 67. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion, 139. 68. Misop. 362D. See Bradbury, “Julian’s Pagan Revival,” 349–50. 69. See discussion in Giles Brabsbourg, “Julien, l’immunitas Christi, les Dieux et les cités,” Au Tard 17 (2009): 151–58. 70. The Hebrew of Deut. 18:3 requires the arm, which anatomically would include the shoulder. 71. Galileans fr. 84 = 347B. 72. Julian mentions the “shoulder with the upper arm” (ōmos) as opposed to just the arm mentioned in Deut 18:3. Jacob Milgrom explains that the shoulder is integral to the forearm because the muscles encompass the upper bones, which explains why the upper arm was included with the shoulder. See Jacob Milgrom, “The Shoulder for the Levites,” in Yigael Yadin, ed., An Appendix to the Temple Scroll, vol. 1, Introduction (Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society, 1983), 169–76. 73. b. H.ullin 132B. 74. Philo (De Spec. Leg. 1.147), and Targum Onkelos on Deut. 18:3 do not identify a specific shoulder. On the other hand, Josephus (Ant. 4:74, ton dexion brachiona), m. Hullin

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10:4, a baraita in the Babylonian Talmud, a variant version of a fourth-century Bohairic text of the Septuagint, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan of the seventh century or later, all identify the right shoulder. 75. 11QT 20.14–16 and 21.1–4. 76. Ep. 89b.291B–D. 77. Ep. 89b.302A–B. 78. Misop. 362D. 79. Philip S. Alexander, “What Happened to the Jewish Priesthood after 70?” in Zuleika Rodgers, Margaret Daly-Denton, and Anne Fitzpatrick McKinley, eds., A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Sean Freyne (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 5–33 at 7. 80. See the appendix below. 81. For prayer with hands raised toward heaven in the Temple and by Jews outside the Temple see I Kings 8:22, Nehemiah 8:6, Psalms 28:2, Ezra 9:5, Daniel 12:7, Lamentations 3:41, Sirach 50:20. 82. There is no direct evidence that Julian exempted Jewish priests from the curiae. One would expect that he would have done so if they did not already have such an exemption from Constantine’s law of 331. Most scholars agree that the term hiereis in CT 16.8.4 cannot possibly mean “priests.” Amnon Linder argues that hiereis is a general term referring to all leaders of the community. See Amnon Linder, “Roman Rule and the Jews in the Age of Constantine,” Tarbiz 44 (1985): 121–24 (in Hebrew). For a contrary opinion see Oded Irshai, “The Priesthood in Jewish Society in Late Antiquity,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., Continuity and Renewal: Jews and Judaism in Byzantine-Christian Palestine (Jerusalem: Dinur Center for the Study of Jewish History, 2004), 67–106 at 95 n. 71 (in Hebrew). 83. For the status of the Patriarch in the Roman empire see Lee I. Levine, “The Status of the Patriarch in the Third and Fourth Centuries: Sources and Methodology,” JJS 47 (1996): 1–32; idem, “The Jewish Patriarch (Nasi) in Third-Century Palestine,” ANRW 2.19.2 (1979): 649–88; and Martin Jacobs, Die Institution des jüdischen Patriarchen: Eine quellen- und traditionskritische Studie zur Geschichte der Juden in der Spätantike (Tübingen: Mohr, 1995). 84. See the section below entitled “Undermining the Christian and Jewish Orders: The Jewish High Priest and Jewish Priests in Christianity and Judaism” on the persistent social prominence of Jewish priestly families in Palestine in Late Antiquity. We have no knowledge of Jewish priests in Antioch. 85. Lee I. Levine, “Contextualizing Jewish Art: The Synagogues at Hammat Tiberias and Sepphoris.” in Richard Kalmin and Seth Schwartz, eds., Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 92–131 at 108–10; Michael Avi-Yonah, suggests that Julian must have given the Patriarch the status of praefectus praetorio: The Jews under Roman and Byzantine Rule: A Political History of Palestine from the Bar Kokhba War to the Arab Conquest (New York: Schocken, 1976), 195, 206 n. 32. 86. Johannes Hahn suggests that the weakening of the Patriarch would have included compensation or an appropriate form of autonomy. See Johannes Hahn, “Kaiser Julian und ein dritter Tempel? Idee, Wirklichkeit, Wirkung eines gescheiterten Projekts,” in Johannes Hahn and C. Ronning, eds., Zerstörungen des Jerusalemer Tempels: Geschehen—Wahrnehmung—Bewältigung, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 147, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2002), 237–62 at 253–54. 87. Levine, “Status.”

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88. For a reproduction see Levine, “Contextualizing.” Levine dates the mosaic to the mid-fourth century and specifically to Julian’s reign. One register on the floor of this synagogue shows an inscription that claims the support of someone who is connected to the House of the Patriarch just below a picture of what appears to be Helios holding a whip and the world in the palm of his hand as he rides in a chariot across the sky. Many recognize this image as Helios, Julian’s personal protector. This may suggest an alliance between the House of the Patriarch and the Flavian Dynasty under Julian, especially since the only known alliance between the Flavians and the Patriarch comes to us via Julian’s Letter to the Community of the Jews. 89. Günter Stemberger identifies this as a possibility. See Günter Stemberger, Jews and Christians in the Holy Land: Palestine in the Fourth Century, trans. Ruth Tuschling (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000), 208. 90. It also appears in the Temple Scroll, where the messianic government consists of a royal messiah from the House of David and a priestly messiah from the House of Aaron, as well as during the Bar Kochba Revolt. (See 1QS 9.11; 1QSa 2.11–22; 1QSb 5.20; CD 12.23–13.1, 19.10–11, 20.1). Julian is unlikely to have been familiar with either of these. For a detailed discussion see David M. Goodblatt, The Monarchic Principle: Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994), 57–76. 91. Haggai 2:20–23 and Zechariah 4:1–14. 92. Ep. 89b.296B–C. 93. 1 Corinthians 9:13–14. 94. The Didache designates the prophet as a “High Priest.” 95. Bryan Alan Stewart, “ ‘Priests of My People:’ Levitical Paradigms for Christian Ministers in the Third- and Fourth-Century Church,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 2006, 65; Bernard Botte, ed., La Tradition Apostolique, Sources Chrétiennes 11 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1968), 42–46. 96. The Pseudo-Clementine Homilies polemicize against the Jerusalem Temple and its priesthood. See Hom. 2.16, 34. Aaron is condemned as a false prophet, and Moses and Israel are distanced from the Temple and sacrifice. 97. Apost. Const. 2.26, in Marcel Metzger, ed., Les Constitutions Apostoliques (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1985), 1:236–41. 98. Apostolic Constitutions 1.6; Metzger, ed., Constitutions Apostoliques 1:116–18. For a discussion of this perspective in the Didascalia Apostolorum, see R. Hugh Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, with an Introduction and Notes by R. Hugh Connolly (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), lxii–lxiv. Stewart, “Priests,” 118. 99. For him God’s promise to Abraham is fulfilled in the Church. See HE 1.4.13. 100. See HE 10.3.3, Sources Chrétiennes vol. 3:80, for an example. 101. Rabbinic success has tended to discount the power of priests after the destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e. Scholars believed that the rabbis became Jewish leaders upon the Temple’s fall. Recent scholarship shows that priests remained a cohesive group in the Tannaitic period. Naftali S. Cohn, The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); See Matthew Grey, “Jewish Priests and the Social History of post-70 Palestine,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2011, 152–239.

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102. Steven Fine, “Between Liturgy and Social History: Priestly Power in Late Antique Palestinian Synagogues,” JJS 56.1 (2005): 1–9; Zeev Weiss, “Were Priests Communal Leaders in Late Antique Palestine? The Archaeological Evidence,” in Daniel R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss, eds., Was 70 ce a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 91–111. 103. Oded Irshai, “Priesthood”; idem, “The Role of the Priesthood,” in Christoph Cluse, Alfred Haverkamp, and Israel Jacob Yuval, eds., Jüdische Gemeinden und ihr christlicher Kontext in kulturräumlich vergleichender Betrachtung (Hannover: Hahnische Buchhandlung, 2003), 75–85; Rachel Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism, trans. David Louvish (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004). 104. See Grey, “Jewish Priests,” chap. 5. Significant communities of priests are found in Tiberias, Sephorris and Lydda. 105. In the Amoraic period the rabbis try to establish their authority over priestly issues such as ritual purity. See y. Berachot 3.1, 6a; cf. y. Nazir 7.1, 56a; y. Gittin 1.2, 43c; y. Sanhedrin 1.1, 18b; see Lee I. Levine, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1989), 101. See also m. Bikkurim 3.12; Sifre Numbers Qorah 121; y. Ma’aser Sheni 5.5, 56b. 106. In other cases, they even assert a claim to these priestly funds or at least claim that its recipients should be priests who are also rabbis. See y. Demai 2.1; y. Mo’ed Qatan 3.1, 81c. Exodus Rabbah 38.3; See Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 485–86. 107. Burton L. Visotzky, Golden Bells and Pomegranates: Studies in Midrash Leviticus Rabbah (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 6–7. 108. Ibid. 60. For instance, rabbinic study and prayer will replace the priesthood. See Leviticus Rabbah 19.5; Visotzky, Golden Bells, 62–63. 109. Michael D. Swartz, “Ritual Is with People: Sacrifice and Society in Palestinian Yoma Traditions,” in Alberdina Houtman et al., eds., The Actuality of Sacrifice Past and Present (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 206–27. 110. y. Ma’aser Sheni 56d, 5.9. 111. Epiphanius, Panarion 30.11.1–4. The terminology used here is priestly, but its use by Epiphanius is hotly debated. Grey argues that “tithes and first-fruits” are technical terms used incidentally and therefore should be trusted as sources for actual practice. See Grey, “Jewish Priests,” 248 n. 18. Goodblatt argues that these terms may have been a metaphor for a Patriarchal tax. See Goodblatt, Monarchic Principle, 136–37. 112. Grey, “Jewish Priests”; Ari Finkelstein, “Julian among Jews, Christians and ‘Hellenes’ in Antioch: Jewish Practice as a Guide to ‘Hellenes’ and a Goad to Christians,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2011, 113–20. 113. y. Sanhedrin 2.6, 20d; Genesis Rabbah 80.1. Genesis Rabbah was likely redacted in the early fifth century but contains material that dates to Julian’s time. 114. For the view that the priests represent the rabbis see Levine, Rabbinic Class, 182 n. 185. See also Jacobs, Institution, 169–70. The following scholars believe there were real priests being usurped: Goodblatt, Monarchic Principle, 138–41; Hezser, Rabbinic Movement, 487–88; Irshai, “Priesthood”, 78–79 ; Geoffrey Herman, “The Priests of Babylon in the Talmudic Period,” M.A. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1998, 117–20 (in Hebrew).

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115. John Chrysostom, Against the Judaizers 6.5.6; P. Harkins, “Saint John Chrysostom, Discourses against Judaizing Christians,” trans. P. Harkins, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 68 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1979), 164–65. 116. Hagith Sivan argues that the rabbis would have suspected Julian’s plan for Jerusalem as his endeavors there would have dislodged the memory of Jerusalem as portrayed by the rabbis and turned it into a reality. See Hagith Sivan, Palestine in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 208. C HA P T E R 6 . T H E G O D O F J E RU S A L E M A N D H I S T E M P L E : F I X I N G T H E J EW I SH G O D I N J U L IA N ’ S C O SM O S

1. Yaron Z. Eliav, God’s Mountain: The Temple Mount in Time, Place, and Memory (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). He also changed the provincial name of Judea to Palaestina. 2. Following Martin Goodman, Naftali Cohn argues that the Temple was subject to the discourse of Roman emperors. See Naftali S. Cohn, The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 111–15; Goodman shows how the destruction of Judea and its Temple became central to successive emperors’ claims to legitimacy. See Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (New York: Vintage, 2008). Hecataeus of Abdera is the first known Greek intellectual to conclude that the Judean God is the ruler of the universe and that Judeans refer to Him as “Heaven.” See Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1980), 30 (GLAJJ). Varro identifies the Judean God as the highest god (summum deum), the same as Zeus or Jupiter, the chief Roman deity. See Augustine, De Consensu Evangelistarum 1.22.30 = GLAJJ 1, no. 72b; cf. also no. 72c. The founding of Aelia Capitolina came on the heels of the Panhellenion. Aelia Capitolina became one of a string of Roman centers tied to the House of Hadrian and bearing a temple to Zeus/Jupiter. 3. The name Capitolina was the Roman manifestation of Hadrian’s chief deity, ZeusJupiter, while Aelia was the emperor’s family name. William Horbury, Jewish War under Trajan and Hadrian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 282. 4. Goodman argues that Jerome’s identification of the Temple with Jupiter is theologically significant if true because Christ would have supplanted the chief god of Hellenic Rome. See Jerome, Ep. 58.3 and Goodman, Rome, 540. 5. Life of Constantine 3.33. Jonathan Z. Smith argues that Constantine sought to create a Christian Holy Land “laid palimpsest-like over the old.” See Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward a Theory of Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 79. 6. The letter to Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem, ordering the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was issued immediately after the conclusion of the conference. 7. Constantine ordered the removal of the Hellenic god at the site and built a new, beautiful church, which announced to the world Constantine’s personal protective deity. Life of Constantine 3.30.4. In an earlier part of the Life the pagan temple is that of Venus/Aphrodite (Life 26.3).

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8. Van Dam argues that Constantine and his family were similar to Jesus and his Father in a manner that rooted his reign in the cosmic order. See Raymond Van Dam, The Roman Revolution of Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 304. 9. Eliav argues that Christian leaders “borrowed names, concepts, images, and ideas that were linked to the city’s Jewish past and especially to the Temple” to inaugurate the new Christian space of the city. See Eliav, God’s Mountain, 184; Harold Allen Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 273; Goodman, along with many other scholars, argues that there is no indication that Constantine, unlike Eusebius, sought to frame Christian-Roman Jerusalem against Judaism. See Goodman, Rome, 539. 10. Christ’s Sepulcher 12.16 and 14. 11. Against Heraclius Or. 7. Susanna Elm emphasizes that Julian’s explanation of the divine order was also an attempt to justify his rule. See Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), 290. 12. Polymnia Athanssiadi-Fowden offers no substantive treatment of Julian’s attempt to rebuild the Temple or of his attempt to fix the Judean God in his pantheon. Rowland Smith presents the Jerusalem rebuilding episode briefly as just another attempt to restore a city and its cult. See Rowland B. Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London: Routledge, 2012), 216–17. 13. Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Konversion zur Philosophie in der Spätantike: Kaiser Julian und Synesios von Kyrene (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008), 132; John Dillon, “The Theology of Julian’s Hymn to King Helios,” Itaca: Quaderns Catalans de Cultura Clàssica 14–15 (1998–99): 103–15 at 107; Maria Carmen De Vita, Giuliano imperatore filosofo neoplatonico (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2011), 142–52. 14. Hymn to King Helios 142. In 139 Helios is an intellectual substance that sits among the intelligible gods. Andrew Smith, “Julian’s Hymn to King Helios: The Economical Use of Complex Neoplatonic Concepts,” in Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher, eds., Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian the Apostate (Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2012), 229–37 at 232. 15. Hymn to King Helios 139. 16. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, “Julian’s Hymn to the Mother of the Gods: The Revival and Justification of Traditional Religion,” in Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher, eds., Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian the Apostate (Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2012), 213–27 at 223. 17. Jason König and Tim Whitmarsh, “Ordering Knowledge,” in Jason König and Tim Whitmarsh, eds., Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1–42 at 15. 18. Johannes Hahn, “Kaiser Julian und ein dritter Tempel? Idee, Wirklichkeit, Wirkung eines gescheiterten Projekts,” in Johannes Hahn and C. Ronning, eds., Zerstörungen des Jerusalemer Tempels: Geschehen—Wahrnehmung—Bewältigung, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 147 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2002), 237–62 at 255–56. 19. See Hans Lewy, “Julian the Apostate and the Building of the Temple,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., The Jerusalem Cathedra, vol. 3 of Studies in the History, Archaeology, Geography and

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Ethnography of the Land of Israel (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983), 70–96; John G. Gager, “The Dialogue of Hellenism with Judaism—Bar Kochba to Julian,” Hebrew Union College Annual 44 (1973): 89–118; Stern, GLAJJ 2, 502–12; Robert J. Penella, “Emperor Julian, the Temple of Jerusalem and the God of the Jews,” Koinonia 23.2 (1999): 15–31; Michael AviYonah, The Jews under Roman and Byzantine Rule: A Political History of Palestine from the Bar Kochba War to the Arab Conquest (New York: Schocken, 1984). 20. It is unclear whether Julian’s cosmic order in King Helios is Middle Platonist or Neoplatonist. See John Dillon, “The Theology of Julian’s Hymn to King Helios,” Ithaca 14 (1998): 103–15 at 107; Andrew Smith, “Julian’s Hymn to King Helios: The Economical Use of Complex Neoplatonic Concepts,” in Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher, eds., Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian the Apostate (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2012), 229–38. 21. Galileans fr. 25 = 141D. 22. For a discussion on this issue see chapter 3 herein. Marie-Odile L. Boulnois, “La diversité des nations et l’élection d’Israël: Y-a-t-il une influence du Contre Celse d’Origène sur le Contre les Galiléens de Julien? In Sylwia Kaczmarek, Henryk Pietras, and Andrzej Dziadowiec, eds., Origeniana Decima: Origen as Writer; Papers of the Tenth International Origen Congress, University School of Philosophy and Education “Ignatianum,” Kraków, Poland, 31 August–4 September 2009 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 803–30. 23. Jean Bouffartigue, “La diversité des nations et la nature des hommes: L’empereur Julien et Cyrille d’Alexandrie dans un controverse incertaine,” in Sylvie Crogiez Pétrequn, ed., Dieu(x) et hommes: Histoire et iconographie des sociétés païennes et chrétiennes de l’Antiquité à nos jours; Mélanges en l’honneur de Françoise Thelamon (Rouen: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2005), 113–26. 24. True Doctrine, 5.25. 25. Fr. 19 = 100C. My translation. 26. “The goatherds and shepherds thought that there was one God called the Most High, or Adonai, or the Heavenly One, or Sabaoth, or however they like to call this world; and they acknowledged nothing more.” See GLAJJ 2:240, 265. Later Celsus writes: “I think, therefore, that it makes no difference whether we call Zeus the Most High, or Zen, or Adonai, or Sabaoth, or Ammon like the Egyptians, or Papaeus like the Scythians”: True Doctrine, 5.41, GLAJJ 2:286. 27. Porphyry likely follows Numenius of Apamea, who argued that the Jewish God is the Father of all the gods, occupying the highest place in the cosmos. See John Lydus, De Mens. 4.53. See John Granger Cook, The Interpretation of the Old Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 155–57. Recent scholarship by Aaron Johnson argues that Porphyry positions the Jewish God as the Second God, the Demiurge or Divine Intellect. See Aaron P. Johnson, Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre: The Limits of Hellenism in Late Antiquity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 64, 274. See also Gager, “Dialogue,”107; and Pieter W. Van der Horst, “Porphyry on Judaism: Some Observations,” in Zeev Weiss et al., eds., “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 71–83. 28. Hecataeus of Abdera and Varro are two examples of this phenomenon. 29. Jay Bregman, “Elements of Emperor Julian’s Theology,” in John M. Dillon, ed., Traditions of Platonism, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 337–50 at 338.

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30. In regard to the Greek rendered “the Most High God” at the close of this block quotation, Peter Schäfer writes that “the term tōi kreittoni, Julian uses here for the designation of the “Most High God,” seems to be rather late and distinctively pagan and Christian.” It is used by Constantine (see Life of Constantine 2.24–26, 28, 33, 67, 68, 71, 72) and by Porphyry (De Abst. 2.50), and is found in the Hermetic Corpus (10.22 and 14.3). See Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes Towards the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997) 49; GLAJJ 2:567. Not surprisingly, Julian also used the earlier biblical term, hypsistos theos, as he was familiar with biblical terms. Schäfer says that kreittoni can mean “the Highest Power” = “the God” in classical Greek. 31. See Gen. 14:18; Num.24:16; Mic. 6:6. Mark Edwards writes: Theos Hypsistos in the LXX is an epithet which translates the Hebrew El Shaddai, “which functions as a personal designation of the God of Abraham.” See Edwards, Religions of the Constantinian Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 130. 32. Fergus Millar, “Rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple: Pagan, Jewish and Christian Conceptions,” in Fergus Millar, Empire, Church and Society in the Late Roman Near East: Greeks, Jews, Syrians and Saracens; Collected Studies, 2004–2014 (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 121–45 at 125. 33. The term “demiurge” is Hellenic, but the Jews likely understood it. 34. John Lydus, De Mens. 4.53. 35. Jan Opsomer, “Weshalb nach Julian die mosaisch-christliche Schöpfungslehre der platonischen Demiurgie unterlegen ist,” in Christian Schäfer, ed., Kaiser Julian ‘Apostata’ und die philosophische Reaktion gegen das Christentum (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 127–56 at 147; Jay Bregman, “Judaism as Theurgy in the Religious Thought of the Emperor Julian.” The Ancient World 26.2 (1995): 135–49 at 136. Bregman argues that Julian considers the Jewish God to be Helios-Mithra, an intellectual god, but Julian’s statement in the Letter to Theodorus leaves this in some doubt. See Bregman, “Judaism,” 142. 36. Penella, “Emperor,” 27. Scholars debate whether Lydus’s statement reflects agreement between Porphyry and Iamblichus over the nature of the Jewish God or whether He is demoted. Jeffery Brodd, “Apostate, Philo-Semite, or Syncretic Neoplatonist? Julian’s Intentions for Rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1992, 58–68. See also Gager, “Dialogue,” 107. Lewy, Günter Stemberger, and Fergus Millar all argue that Julian claims that the Jewish God is Helios. See Lewy, “Julian”; Günter Stemberger, Jews and Christians in the Holy Land: Palestine in the Fourth Century, trans. Ruth Tuschling (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000), 199; Fergus Millar, “Rebuilding.” 37. De Vita, Giuliano, 150–51. 38. Fr. 47 = Gal. 201E; fr. 48= 206A. Having limited the Judean God geographically and culturally in Part One of Galileans, he denies Jesus space within the cosmological and geographical area of imperial Rome. 39. Fr. 43 = 194D. This argument comes from Celsus. See Origen, Against Celsus, 7.68. 40. Fr. 79–81 = Gal. 327C–335B. 41. David Hunt, “The Christian Context of Julian’s Against the Galileans,” in Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher, eds., Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian the Apostate (Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2012), 251–61 at 256–59. Julian also befriended Aetius, who disagreed with the council of 359–60 and argued that the Father and the Son were essentially unlike.

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42. For how Diodore and Theodore deal with this issue see: John Behr, ed. and trans., The Case against Diodore and Theodore: Texts and Their Contexts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 66–82. 43. Hunt, “Christian Context,” 258–59. 44. Peter W. L. Walker, Holy City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 53. In the Demonstration he argued that interest in the physical Jerusalem was “the characteristic hallmark of Judaism.” 45. Life of Constantine 3.33. 46. Glenn Bowman, “ ‘Mapping History’s Redemption’: Eschatology and Topography in the Itinerarium Burdigalense,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Continuum, 1999), 163–87; See also Oded Irshai, “The Christian Appropriation of Jerusalem in the Fourth Century: The Case of the Bordeaux Pilgrim,” JQR 99.4 (2009): 465–86 at 486. 47. Hagith Sivan explains that the shift in the center of worship from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to the Temple would wreak havoc on Cyril’s ritualistic monopoly in the city. See Hagith Sivan, Palestine in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 208. 48. Andrew Jacobs, Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 27–32. 49. Hahn, “Kaiser,” 250. 50. Gen. 14:18; Num. 24:16; Mic. 6:6. 51. Daniel Boyarin, Borderlines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 116. 52. See Targum Neofiti on Exodus 3:12; Boyarin, Borderlines, 121–23. See also Boyarin’s analysis of the min’s memra theology in b. Sanhedrin 38b at 121–23. 53. Letter to Theodorus 454A. 54. Letter to the Community of the Jews. 55. Avi-Yonah, Jews, 195–96. 56. See chapter 5 on the mosaic floor of the Hamat Tiberias synagogue. 57. Julian never visited Jerusalem. 58. Oration to the Uneducated Cynics, 186D; Jean Bouffartigue, “Les villes saintes dans la vision religieuse de l’empereur Julien,” in B. Caseau, J.-C. Cheynet, and V. Déroche, eds., Pèlerinages et lieux saints dans l’antiquité et le Moyen Âge: Mélanges offerts à Pierre Maraval, Monographies 23 (Paris: Centre de Recherche d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2006), 85–99. C HA P T E R 7 . C R E AT I N G A N D M A I N TA I N I N G H E L L E N IC T E M P L E S I N A N T IO C H

1. 186D. Translation my own. 2. Jan Stenger, Hellenische Identität in der Spätantike: Pagane Autoren und ihr Unbehagen an der eigenen Zeit, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, Band 97 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 48–49. 3. On the danger of pollution see Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966). On separating

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holy from profane space see Jean Bouffartigue, “L’empereur Julien et les nouvelles dimensions de l’espace profane,” in Les frontières du profane dans l’antiquité tardive, ed. Éric Rebillard and Claire Sotinel, Collection de l’École Française de Rome 428 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2010), 109–26 at 120. 4. Jean Bouffartigue, “Les villes saintes dans la vision religieuse de l’empereur Julien” in B. Caseau, J.-C. Cheynet, V. Déroche, eds., Pèlerinages et lieux saints dans l’antiquité et le Moyen Âge: Mélanges offerts à Pierre Maraval, Monographies 23 (Paris: Centre de Recherche d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2006), 85–99, esp. 85–90. 5. That temple had an oracle associated with it, now long silent. Bouffartigue, “Villes saintes,” 89–90. 6. Kim Knott, The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis (Oakville, CTL Equinox Press, 2005). 7. Jonathan Z. Smith, ed., To Take Place: Toward a Theory of Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), especially chapters 4 and 5. Smith follows the work of Henri Lefebvre. See his The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). 8. Thomas A. Tweed, Crossings and Dwellings: A Theory of Religion, (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2006), 54. 9. Lynn Meskell, “Back to the Future: From the Past in the Present to the Past in the Past,” in Norman Yoffee, ed., Negotiating the Past in the Past: Identity, Memory, and Landscape in Archaeological Research (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 2007), 215–26 at 221. 10. “Claiming, controlling, and maintaining” space is language borrowed from her work. See Christine Shepardson, Controlling Contested Places: Late Antique Antioch and the Spatial Politics of Religious Controversy, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2014). 11. Ep. 136b. 12. Christians are never mentioned by name. Juana Torres argues that Julian sought to curtail the Christian cult of the martyrs. See Juana Torres, “Emperor Julian and the Veneration of Relics,” in Jean-Michel Carré, ed., Antiquité Tardive 17 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 205–14. 13. My translation. Josef Bidez and Franz Cumont, eds., L’empereur Julien: Œuvres complètes, tome 1, 2e partie, Lettres et fragments (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1924), no. 136, 197–200. 14. J. M. C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971), 50; Rowland Smith argues that the edict claims to reestablish ancestral customs but that this may be derived from a strict interpretation of Neoplatonist teaching rather than Roman sacral law. See Rowland B. E. Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London: Routledge, 1995), 112. The actual law is found in Cod. Theod. 9.17.5. For funerary rites in the Roman world see the classic works of Franz Valéry Marie Cumont, After Life in Roman Paganism, (New Haven, 1922); Franz Valéry Marie Cumont, Lux Perpetua, (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1949); Louis Moulinier, Le pur et l’impur dans la pensée des Grecs (Paris: Klincksieck, 1952); and Nicole Belayche, “La neuvaine funéraire à Rome; ou, «La mort impossible,»” in La mort au quotidian dans le monde romain, ed. François Hinard (Paris: De Boccard, 1995), 155–69. 15. Twelve Tables, Table 10, Law 3. Upon death bodies were taken by procession often held at night to the place of their burial. On returning from a funeral people had to undergo the suffitio, a rite of purification. See Toynbee, Death and Burial, 50.

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16. My translation of the Edict Banning Daytime Funerals. Bidez and Cumont, L’empereur Julien: Œuvres complètes, Tome 1, 2e partie, no. 136, 197–200. 17. Purification was not required after contact with a tomb. See Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollutions and Purification in Early Greek Religion, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 32–48; François Hinard, ed., La Mort au quotidian dans le monde romain (Paris: De Boccard, 1995), 135–44. 18. Amm. Marc. 22.12. Julian prepares for his campaign against the Persians by consulting oracles and engaging in divinations, and by relying on soothsaying and prophecies. 19. Eusebius offers evidence of this reaction earlier in the fourth century. See his Ecclesiastical History 7.22.7–10. 20. Nathanael J. Andrade, “The Processions of John Chrysostom and the Contested Spaces of Constantinople,” JECS 18.2 (2010), 161–89. 21. Elsewhere in Edessa, located in eastern Syria, Julian chose to sanction and likely encourage Hellenes to overturn and burn Christian tombs. The cosmopolitan nature of Antioch and its heavily Christian and Christianophile milieu ruled out this strategy. 22. Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chapter 3. 23. Robert A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 24. See my chapter 2. 25. Peter W. L. Walker. Holy City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 1990. 26. David Braake, “ ‘Outside the Places, within the Truth’: Athanasius of Alexandria and the Localization of the Holy,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. David Frankfurter, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, vol. 134 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 445–81. In his Life of Antony 91, Athanasius demonstrates that holiness is located in the person. 27. Euseb. Demonstration 3.2.10, 4.12.4, 10. 8.64. 28. Ep. 2. 29. See Juana Torres, “Emperor Julian,” 208. 30. Christians likely kept Jewish laws on corpse impurity for the first two centuries of the Common Era. The Didascalia and the Apostolic Constitutions attacked these practices. See Byron R. McCane, Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus, (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003), 115. 31. Moshe Blidstein, “Polemics against Death Defilement in Third-Century Christian Sources,” in Studia Patristica 63, ed. Markus Vincent (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 373–84 at 375–76. Alistair Stewart-Sykes argues that the section in the Didascalia Apostolorum arguing against Jewish purity laws should be dated to the early fourth century. See Alistair Stewart-Sykes, The Didascalia Apostolorum: An English Version (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 49–55. 32. In I Cor. Hom. 20.4; Catech. 9.16. See Christine Shepardson, “Between Polemic and Propaganda: Evoking the Jews of Fourth-Century Antioch,” JJMJS 2 (2015): 147—82, 174–75. 33. Andrade, “Processions,” 168. 34. Ibid. 35. See chapter 2 on Antioch. Gregory Nazianzen, Homily 15, written in 363, is the first evidence supporting a cult of the Maccabean Martyrs in Antioch.

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36. Christine Shepardson, “Controlling Contested Places: John Chrysostom’s Adversus Iudaeos Homilies and the Spatial Politics of Religious Controversy,” JECS 15.4 (2007), 483– 517 at 501–4. It is now chapter 4 of her book Controlling Contested Places. 37. Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 112–16. 38. Or. 62.10. 39. Whether the rabbis influenced Jewish practices around corpse impurity is impossible to know. For the place of corpse impurity within the rabbinic overall conception of impurity see Vered Noam, “Ritual Impurity in Tannaitic Literature: Two Opposing Perspectives,” JAJ 1 (2010): 65–103. 40. This also fits the general interest in Jewish Law in the Didascalia, the Apostolic Constitutions, and the Homilies of Pseudo-Clementine literature. 41. Apostolic Constitutions 2.5.4–7. I use Marcie Lenk’s translation here. Marcie E. Lenk, “The Apostolic Constitutions: Judaism and Anti-Judaism in the Construction of Christianity,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2010: 61–62. 42. Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place, especially chapters 4 and 5. 43. Biblical and archaeological evidence shows that Judahites and Israelites had a cult of the dead in the First Temple Period. See Elizabeth M. Bloch-Smith, “Cult of the Dead in Judah: Interpreting the Material,” JBL 111 (1992): 213–24 at 223. The dead were thought to possess “preternatural powers.” Judahites fed and sacrificed tithed food to the dead at tombs. See Isa. 57:8, 2 Chr. 6:14, 32:33. 44. It is the Septuagint that Julian quotes here; the Hebrew Bible leaves out “for the sake of dream visions.” 45. “Those who sit inside tombs” and those who “spend the night among the preserved” refer to the same cultic practice of ancestor worship. If they are two different acts, sitting or crouching among tombs may mean to obtain oracles from the dead or to pour libations on their tombs. See Claus Westerman, Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), 401. Spending the night in caverns or among the rocks likely signifies incubation rites to obtain a dream vision from one’s ancestors. These acts were prohibited by Deut. 18:11. See Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 56–66: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, vol. 19B of The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2003). 46. Near Eastern incubation was not the same as Greek incubation. The latter always meant sleeping in a temple or in another holy place to gain nocturnal advice for healing from a god. Near Eastern incubation was not done only to obtain healing dreams and neither did it occur only in temples. People slept at a temple or another sacred place seeking a dream. See A. Leo Oppenheim, The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1956); Frances Lynn Flannery-Dailey, “Standing at the Heads of Dreamers: A Study of Dreams in Antiquity,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 2000, 19. 47. Chrysostom accused Christians of incubating at a Jewish site, the Cave of Matrona. Chrysostom, Adv. Jud. 1.6.2. In another reference to it he does not call the site a synagogue. See In Titum Hom. 3.2; Martha Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15 and the Genesis of the Christian Cult of the Maccabean Martyrs,” Byzantion 65 (1994): 166–92. 48. The translation is taken from Emma J. Edelstein and Ludwig Edelstein, eds., Asclepius: A Collection and Interpretation of Testimonies, vol. 1 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), 143.

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49. Michael J. Hollerich, Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary on Isaiah: Christian Exegesis in the Age of Constantine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 33. 50. Yet Eusebius is aware that cemeteries were the principal place of congregation for Christians until large churches were built beginning in Constantine’s period. Many of them housed koimetēria, places where Christians slept (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 7.13), built no doubt to fulfill Christian practice. See also Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200–400 (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 9 51. Margaret Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 389. This method was once associated with the School of Antioch. More recently this theory has been discredited as scholars dismiss the sharp division between the Antiochene School and the Alexandrian School, which used allegory in its interpretation of Scripture. John J. O’Keefe points out that concern of grammatical and historical instructions in exegetical practices are not limited to Antiochenes, nor did they apply such methods consistently: John J. O’Keefe, “ ‘A Letter That Killeth’: Towards a Reassessment of Antiochene Exegesis, or, Diodore, Theodore, and Theodoret on the Psalms,” JECS 8.1 (2000), 83–104; John Behr, ed. and trans., The Case against Diodore and Theodore: Texts and Their Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 38. 52. Behr, Case, 70–71; Robert C. Hill, Reading the Old Testament in Antioch, (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 53. Julian himself incubates at temples of Asclepius. See Galileans 235B. What is more significant, Iamblichus, the father of theurgic Neoplatonism, wrote favorably about incubation: Iamblichus, Myst. 3.3. Julian believed in the divine origins of dreams. See Julian, Ep. 4, to Oribasius. 54. Dayna Kalleres describes how John Chrysostom diabolizes various healing methods such as the use of amulets and incubation. See Dayna Kalleres, City of Demons: Violence, Ritual, and Christian Power in Late Antiquity, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015), 70–72. 55. John Allen has noted that successful imaginative geographies make it difficult to see or make sense of things in ways other than those represented. See John Allen, “Introduction,” in Doreen Massey, John Allen, and Phillip Sarre, eds., Human Geography Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 44. 56. Doreen Massey, “Issues and Debates,” in Doreen Massey, John Allen, and Phillip Sarre, eds., Human Geography Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 3–21. 57. Borrowing from Michel de Certeau, Aaron Johnson describes the technique whereby an apologist uses another group’s own voice against that group as “poaching.” Poaching shows the origins of the source and indicates that the other group’s interpretations of their own holy books are misinterpretations. See Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument, 60–62. 58. In general, Julian’s interpretation of Scripture tends to focus on the literal and historical, not very different from the literary, grammatical, and historical skills he would have learned from his grammar teachers. This sits in contrast with his reading of myths of Homer and Hesiod, which he freely interprets figuratively when he needs to: Robert Lamberton, Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 134–39. 59. The hermeneutical approach of John Chrysostom and Christian leaders like him relied heavily on skills learned in such rhetorical schools as that of Libanius in Antioch.

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Training in grammar gave them the tools to parse texts. Students in the Roman East would have learned the study of grammar and with it textual interpretation, which would have been combined with rhetorical exercises. See Rafaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Writers, Teachers and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996). 60. Julian is capable of using allegory or a more literal approach when it suits him. I agree with Margaret Mitchell’s argument that the very dichotomy between literal and allegorical interpretation originated within the rhetorical tradition itself as a means of debasing controversies that turn upon texts. 61. Shepardson, “Controlling Contested Places,” 483–517. 62. Julian, Ep. 98. 63. See Greg. Naz. Hom. 15; Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15,” 166–92. See my discussion in chapter 2. 64. Adv. Jud. 1.6.2. 65. Dying for the Law was a common theme in late Second Temple Judaism, from Maccabean times through the rabbinic period. See Tessa Rajak, “Dying for the Law: The Martyr’s Portrait in Jewish Greek Literature,” in Tessa Rajak, ed., The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 99–113. 66. Hymn to the Mother of the Gods, 177B. See Julian, Or. 5, Hymn to the Mother of the Gods (Wright, LCL 13), 176C. 67. Giorgio Scrofani, “ ‘Like the Green Herb’: Julian’s Understanding of Purity and His Attitude Towards Judaism in Contra Galileos.” JLARC 2 (2008): 1–16. 68. See Wilmer Cave Wright, ed. and trans., The Works of the Emperor Julian, vol. 3, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 157 (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1923), 61 n. 2. 69. Porphyry also shows his familiarity with Hebrew food laws in De Abst. 4.14, where he shows knowledge of Lev. 11:4–7, 10–12; Deut. 14:7–8, 10; 22:16. 70. See Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of the Humanities, 1980), no. 454, 434–35. 71. Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes Towards the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 75–76. 72. I am not the first person to find the Maccabean Martyrs lurking behind Julian’s Letter to Theodorus. See Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15,” 171 n. 18. 73. In addition, as he does in earlier cases, Julian changes “Hebrews” to “Judeans,” a change that fits his ethnological argument in Galileans that the Judeans rather than the Christians are the Hebrews. 74. Wright follows Ezechiel Spanheim, Iuliani Imperatoris Opera (Leipzig, 1696), who adds pniktou. Stern pace Bidez and Cumont has kreōs tou mē parachrēma instead of pniktou mēd’ ara. Wright, Julian, vol. 3 (LCL 157), at 59; Stern, GLAJJ vol. 2 at 551–52; Bidez, Œuvres complètes. Tome 1, 2e Partie. M. Ezekiel Spanheim, Iuliani Imperatoris Opera quae Supersunt Omnia, (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1696). 75. De Spec. Leg. 4.122. 76. The prohibition against blood is subject to many possible interpretations, including a prohibition against eating blood from a strangled animal, in which case it was a gloss on strangled meat; or a prohibition on murder. Origen, Against Celsus 8.30. Ed Sanders argued that strangled meat was prohibited because it left blood in the carcass. See Ed Parrish Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 354

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n. 11. He cites Josephus, War 2.591, Ant. 12.120. Sanders argues that strangulation was a common mode of animal slaughter in the Mediterranean of the first century. 77. Acts 15:20, 29 and 21:25 have a few different manuscripts and many different meanings. There is a whole body of text-critical research on the Apostolic Decree. For an excellent synopsis see William A. Strange, The Problem of the Text of Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 78. This was not the only time Julian used Acts 15. See Wright, vol. 3, 411 n. 6. 79. Annette Yoshiko Reed and Lily Vuong, “Christianity in Antioch: Partings in Roman Syria,” in Hershel Shanks, ed., Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeological Society, 2013), 105–32 at 126. 80. Ibid. 123. 81. Irenaeus’s text: Against the Heresies 3.12.14. 82. Barnabas, 2; 4.6–8; 14.1–4; Tertullian allegorized blood to mean “murder.” Tertullian, On Modesty 12.4–5. Origen identified all items in the Apostolic Decree as items related to the activity of demons. Origen, Against Celsus 8.28. 83. In the fourth century, Apostolic Constitutions 7.20 allowed Christians to eat every kind of meat except meat with blood. See Augustine, Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.13. 84. Edicts and letters were often read to the public and displayed. John F. Matthews, Laying Down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 17. In this case the content of the Letter to Theodorus would have been heard in Galileans. 85. I disagree with Leonard Rutgers’s argument that the Maccabean Martyr site was made up from whole cloth. See Leonard V. Rutgers, “The Importance of Scripture in the Conflict between Jews and Christians: The Example of Antioch,” in L. V. Rutgers and Pieter Willem van der Horst, eds., The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 287–303. 86. See my argument about the dating and the site of the reliquary in chapter 2. 87. Saint John Chrysostom: Discourses against Judaizing Christians, trans. Paul W. Harkins, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 68 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1979). 88. Pieter W. van der Horst, “The Tombs of the Prophets in Early Judaism,” in Pieter W. van der Horst, ed., Japheth in the Tents of Shem: Studies on Jewish Hellenism in Antiquity (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 119–37. 89. Gregory Nazianzen, Homily 15; see Gerard Rouwhorst, “The Cult of the Seven Maccabean Brothers and Their Mother in Christian Tradition,” in Marcel Poorthuis and Joshua Schwartz, eds., Saints and Role Models in Judaism and Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 183–204 at 190; and, Rutgers, “Importance.” 90. The new basilica church was likely built by Chrysostom’s time as priest. 91. See George Heyman, The Power of Sacrifice: Roman and Christian Discourses in Conflict (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 162–70. On Christian use of martyrdom discourse in the fourth century see Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 69–70. 92. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

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93. Thomas Sizgorich, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 71. 94. Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, vol. 34 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 46–54. C O N C LU SIO N S : A N T IO C H I N T H E A F T E R M AT H O F J U L IA N

1. Natalie Dohrmann and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 2. Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 3. See my discussion of Cyril of Alexandria and the circumstances of the publication of Against Julian in chapter 3. 4. Theodoret, HE 3.20.1; Ephrem, Against Jul. 1; Chrysostom, Adv. Iud. 5.11. Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 5. 5. Adv. Jud. 6.7; The Apostolic Constitutions 6.23.5 is not as strident but claims that sacrifice has been transformed from a bloody sacrifice in a certain place (the Temple) to a mindful sacrifice. 6. Andrew S. Jacobs, Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 26–34. 7. PG 63.525. See Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, Christian Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 44. 8. Christine Shepardson, Controlling Contested Places: Late Antique Antioch and the Spatial Politics of Religious Controversy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2014); and Dayna S. Kalleres, City of Demons: Violence, Ritual, and Christian Power in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015). A P P E N D I X : T H E L ET T E R T O T H E C OM M U N I T Y OF T H E J EW S

1. Peter Van Nuffelen, “Deux fausses lettres de Julien l’apostat (la lettre aux juifs, Ep. 51 [Wright], et la lettre à Arsacius, Ep. 84 [Bidez],” VC 55 (2001): 131–50; Josef Bidez and Franz Cumont, Récherches sur la tradition manuscrite des lettres de l’empereur Julien (Brussels: Hayez, 1898), 21. Others who have argued that it is a forgery include: Josef Vogt, Kaiser Julian und das Judentum, (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1939); Jean Bouffartigue, “L’authenticité de la Lettre 84 de l’empereur Julien,” RPh 79.2 (2005): 231–42. The following find the letter to be legitimate: Michael Bland Simmons, “The Emperor Julian’s Order to Rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem: A Connection with Oracles?” ANES 43 (2006): 68–117 at 72; Robert J. Penella, “Emperor Julian, the Temple of Jerusalem and the God of the Jews,” Koinonia 23.2 (1999): 15–31 at 26; M. Hack, “Is Julian’s Declaration a Forgery?” Yavne 2 (1940–41): 118–39 (in Hebrew); Willem Den Boer, “Two Letters from the Corpus Iulianeum,” VC 16 (1962): 179– 97 at 188–97; Michael Avi-Yonah, The Jews under Roman and Byzantine Rule: A Political History of Palestine from the Bar Kochba War to the Arab Conquest (New York: Schocken, 1984), 199; François Blanchetière, “Julien philhellène, philosémite, antichrétien: L’affaire du Temple de Jerusalem (363),” JJS 31 (1980): 61–81 at 62.; David B. Levenson, “The Ancient and

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Medieval Sources for the Emperor Julian’s Attempt to Rebuild the Jerusalem Temple,” JSJ 34.4 (1990): 409–60; Michael Adler, “The Emperor Julian and the Jews,” JQR 5 (1893): 615–51 at 627; Flavius Claudius Julianus, The Works of the Emperor Julian, vol. 3, ed. and trans. Wilmer Cave Wright, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 157 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923) xxii; Hans Lewy, “Julian and Rebuilding of the Temple,” Zion 1–2 (1941) 1–32 at 3 (in Hebrew); Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1980), 508–10 (GLAJJ); Claude Aziza, “Julien et le judaisme” in René Braun and Jean Richer, eds., L’empereur Julien: De l’histoire à la légende, 331–1715, Vol. 1 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1978), 141–58 at 150–52. 2. Julian could not have consulted en tois emois skriniois, while words like brebia and skriniois in this letter are anachronistic. See also Den Boer, “Two Letters,” 187–97 at 188. 3. Robert Penella points out that the letter’s forgery does not invalidate it as an accurate source for information about Julian’s project. See Penella, “Emperor Julian,” 26. If a Christian hand edited or wrote this letter outright, why would he not have written more directly about the Temple? It is the restoration of the Temple that exercises all Christian writers from Gregory Nazianzen, Ephrem of Nisibis, John Chrysostom, the author of the Julian Romance, and the Church historians Socrates and Sozomen. These terms are more likely the work of a later copyist. 4. He is careful here to blame Constantius II’s staff rather than the former emperor directly for the heavy taxes levied against them. In addition, Julian’s attack on his cousin Constantius II is consistent with his sentiments in his other works. See his Letter to the Athenians. That Julian praised Constantius for not raising taxes in Or. 1.21D is a function of his panegyric of Constantius and reflects his need at the time to remain in the emperor’s good graces lest he suffer the same consequences as his brother Gallus, whom Constantius put to death. 5. Peter Van Nuffelen argues that Constantius II did not collect taxes on behalf of the Patriarch. See Van Nuffelen, “Deux fausses Lettres,” 134. 6. We know from Libanius that the Patriarch had close ties to Antioch. Libanius’s Letter 1098, written only twenty years later, reveals that the Patriarch sent his son to study with the rhetor. 7. The term “demiurge” is Hellenic, but the Jews likely understood it. See chapter 6. 8. Claude Aziza argues that Julian presents himself as a new Cyrus the Great. See Aziza, “Julien,” 152. 9. Julian tells Jews to pray for his success. 10. Günter Stemberger argues that Julian does not likely refer to the fiscus Iudaicus imposed by Vespasian on Jews but on regional taxes that were common at the time. See Günter Stemberger, Jews and Christians in the Holy Land: Palestine in the Fourth Century, trans. Ruth Tuschling (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000), 200. 11. Other cities did not receive permanent cancellations of taxes, and it is not clear whether Julian was offering an abatement or a permanent cancellation of taxes. His language suggests the latter. 12. Oded Irshai, “Constantine and the Jews: The Prohibition against Entering Jerusalem—History and Hagiography,” Zion 60 (1995): 129–78 (in Hebrew). 13. Yaron Z. Eliav, God’s Mountain: The Temple Mount in Time, Place, and Memory (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 116–17.

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14. The connection between the Temple, the holiest place in Judaism, and Jerusalem as the holy city stretches back to at least Hellenistic times. See Daniel R. Schwartz, “Temple or City: What Did Hellenistic Jews See in Jerusalem?” in M. Poorthuis and C. Safrai, eds., The Centrality of Jerusalem (Kampen: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1996), 114–27. 15. Oration to the Uneducated Cynics 186D. 16. Fergus Millar, “Rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple: Pagan, Jewish and Christian Conceptions,” in Fergus Millar, Empire, Church and Society in the Late Roman Near East: Greeks, Jews, Syrians and Saracens; Collected Studies, 2004–2014 (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 121–45. 17. Stern, GLAJJ vol. 2, 561. 18. Jeffrey Burnham Brodd, “Apostate, Philo-Semite, or Syncretic Neoplatonist? Julian’s Intention for Rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1992, 45.

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Index

Abraham, 3, 16, 22, 50, 63, 78, 81–82, 92, 98, 103, 107, 112, 125–26, 183n22, 194n99, 199n31 Acts of the Apostles. See Bible Adler, 151n23, 157n69, 184n59, 185n60, 208n1 adraktois, 73, 75, 77, 80, 157n69 Aedesius, 11, 152n1 Ammianus Marcellinus, xvi, 42–44, 102, 120, 160n3, 163n49, 170n148, 171n157, 172n174, 172n175, 172n192, 172n193, 172n195, 172n196, 173n201, 173n203, 183n24, 189n7, 202n18 ancesteral laws (ta patria), ix, x, 3–4, 10–11, 13, 16, 22–24, 27, 33, 42, 48–50, 52–60, 62–64, 70–74, 76, 80, 82, 87–89, 92–95, 101, 103, 110, 116, 118, 120, 123, 129–30, 132–36, 141–42, 146, 148, 153n15, 158, 179n83, 179n90, 189n14 Antioch: bouleutē´rion, 30, 34, 49, 129, 175n26; comes orientis, 30; Daphne, 29, 31–33, 39–42, 44, 114, 116–17, 120–21, 126, 128, 133, 135–36, 166n85, 171n157, 171n158; Golden Church, Octagonal Church, 31–32, 44; hippodrome, 32; Hulta Valley, 29–30, 34, 161n26; Kerateion, 29, 32–33, 38–41, 135, 142, 171n162, 171n163; Mt. Silpius, 29–30, 32; New City, 29–30, 163n56; Nymphaeum 30–31; Old City, 29, 32; Orontes River, 29–31; Palace, 8, 43, 87, 101–2, 162n35, 183n24; Praetorian Prefect, 32, 97 —temples: Aphrodite, 162n29; Apollo, 39, 40–42, 44, 71, 117, 120–21, 128, 171n157, 201n5; Ares, 162n29; Artemis, 31, 162n29, 162n32;

Demeter, 43, 162n29, Hekate, 43; Hermes, 43, 162n29; Isis, 43, 162n29; Kalliope, 43; Pan, 43, 162n29; Tyche, 30, 162n32; Zeus Kasios, 43; Zeus Philios, 43, 162n29; Zeus Xenios, 93 Against the Galileans. See Julian, under specific works Apamea, 29–30, 159n2 Apollinaris, 143 Apostles, 8, 46, 122, 126–27 Apostolic Constitutions, 28, 34, 36, 62, 77, 82, 98, 131, 142, 168n118, 168n119, 169n120, 169n122, 169n124, 169n125, 181n119, 187n89, 191n49, 194n98, 202n30, 203n40, 203n41, 206n83, 207n5 Apostolic Decree, 8, 31, 65, 132, 134, 181n119, 206n77, 206n82 Apothlibeis, 131; apothlibentos, 132 Arius, 102 Athanassiadi-Fowden, 153n3, 155n30, 155n31, 156n39, 156n51, 167n100, 167n101, 182n2, 189n13, 189n14, 190n23, 191n38 Augustine, 40–41, 82, 134, 164n67, 171n162, 196n2, 206n83; Genesis against the Manichees 82, 187n90 Babylas, 39, 117, 121, 171n154; shrine of, 39, 120, 128 Barnabas 164n58, 187n87, 206n82 Batnae 19, 78, 127, 183n35, 184n47 Berzon, 152n37, 152n38

245

246

index

Bible, 22–23, 31, 54, 57–58, 62, 79, 85, 92, 124, 126–27, 132, 175n32, 175n91, 186n67, 203n44; Genesis, 34, 47–48, 54, 176n38, 178n69, 180n108, 192n58; Exodus, 82, 188n97, 191n52, 200n52; Leviticus, 61, 73, 78, 80, 93, 95, 99, 205n69; Numbers, 199n31, 200n50; Deuteronomy, 26, 76–77, 84, 94–95, 185n61, 185n62, 185n64, 188n97, 192n70, 192n74, 203n45, 205n69; Isaiah, 63, 122, 124–28, 136, 179n82, 203n43; Haggai, 97, 194n91; Micah, 199n31, 200n50; Zechariah, 97, 194n91; Gospel of John, 110–11; Gospel of Matthew, 112, 123; Acts of the Apostles, 31, 58, 65, 131–32, 142, 164n58, 168n119, 181n119, 206n77, 206n78; Galatians, 31; 1 Corinthians, 98, 194n93; 2 Macc., 131, 171n159 Bidez, 108, 145, 150n12, 150n13, 152n1, 155n31, 173n202, 176n44, 181n122, 189n8, 201n13, 202n16, 205n74, 207n1 Bouffartigue, 19–20, 55, 115, 150n12, 153n5, 154n20, 155n32, 157n58, 157n60, 174n12, 176n38, 176n42, 177n49, 179n72, 180n105, 180n106, 181n111, 191n51, 198n23, 200n58, 201n3, 201n4, 201n5, 207n1 Boulnois, 51, 175n31, 176n38, 176n40, 180n98, 180n103, 198n22 Bowersock, 153n2, 155n31, 156n51, 157n56, 158n81, 167n98, 172n193 Boyarin, 3–4, 113, 151n21, 152n44, 157n57, 168n107, 200n51, 200n52 Bradbury, 70, 162n31, 182n8, 183n21, 183n37, 183n42, 188n106, 189n4, 191n47, 192n68 Bregman, 3–4, 150n11, 151n28, 158n68, 186n72, 198n29, 199n35 Celsus, 5–6, 19, 25–26, 45, 49–54, 58–59, 104–6, 122, 139, 175n32, 175n33, 175n37, 176n38, 176n39, 180n104, 180n106, 180n108, 180n110, 198n26, 199n39, 205n76; satrap theology, 50–51, 59, 105, On the True Doctrine, 49–51, 54, 106, 139, 175n36, 180n103, 181n110, 198n24, 198n26, 206n82 Chaldean, 3, 13, 15–16, 22–23, 53, 57, 63, 66–68, 72, 78, 92, 94, 107–8, 151n29, 154n23, 181n110, 181n117, 181n121; Chaldean Oracles, 15–16, 72, 154n16, 154n20, 154n22, 155n30, 155n32, 155n33, 176n44, 190n30 Christians, Galileans ix–x, 2, 5–8, 11, 20, 24–25, 60, 62, 64, 73, 81, 103, 110, 123, 129, 181n112, 181n114; homoousians, 32, 36, 41, 134–35, 142, 158n81, 171n162; homoians, 32, 39–41, 44, 102, 134, 142, 158n81, 171n162; Nicene Creed, 102

Church of Holy Sepulcher. See Jerusalem, Church of the Holy Sepulcher Cod. Arabicus, 286, 41, 164n69 Cod. Theodosius, 201n14 Constantine, 1, 8, 12, 17, 26, 31, 42–43, 60, 70, 87, 99, 101–3, 110–11, 113, 117, 120, 147, 162n31, 193n82, 196n5, 196n7, 197n8, 197n9, 199n30, 204n50 Constantius II, 11–13, 17, 31–32, 39, 42–43, 70, 101, 103, 146, 158n81, 162n31, 162n32, 164n62, 172n198, 208n4, 208n5 corpse, 110, 116, 119, 122, 130; corpse impurity, 33, 120–21, 123, 129, 165n71, 202n30, 203n39 Council of Laodicea, canons, 36, 169n123 Cult of the Christian Martyrs 120, 122–23, 127 Curta, 5, 19, 152n42, 157n58, 157n59, 157n60 Cyril of Alexandria, 6, 9, 21, 45–47, 51, 61, 72, 78, 94, 140–41, 173n3, 173n10, 174n13, 174n17, 174n18, 175n28, 180n105, 181n119, 184n48, 186n67, 207n3; Against Julian, 6, 21, 45–48, 51, 72, 78, 94, 173n8, 174n12, 174n18, 174n19, 175n28, 181n116, 184n48, 186n67, 186n71, 188n102, 207n3 Cyril of Jerusalem, 112 Daphne. See Antioch, Daphne Dead Sea Scrolls, Temple Scroll, 95, 192n72, 194n90, 193n75 Demiurge. See gods Deuterōsis, 34, 36–37, 121, 166n89, 168n117 Didache, 187n87, 194n94 Didascalia Apostolorum, 34, 37–38, 41, 62, 77, 85, 98, 120, 132, 135, 152n50, 168n117, 168n119, 169n121, 169n128, 169n129, 169n131, 169n132, 169n133, 187n93, 194n98, 202n30, 202n31, 203n40 dietary laws. See Jews, dietary laws Diodore, 111, 200n42, 204n51 Doxa, 64 Edessa, 37–38, 44, 121, 202n21 Elm, 12–13, 24, 45, 52, 74, 151n35, 153n4, 153n8, 153n10, 155n30, 155n31, 158n81, 159n89, 164n64, 173n1, 174n23, 176n42, 177n48, 177n53, 182n1, 184n53, 191n43, 197n11 Ephrem, 141–42, 207n4, 208n3 Epiphanius, Panarion, 195n111 ethnos, ix, 1–2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 14, 17, 19–22, 24–25, 46, 49–50, 53–60, 62, 66, 69, 73, 76, 79, 81–82, 86, 88, 92, 97, 101, 103, 105, 107, 110, 114, 125, 129, 133–35, 139, 142, 145–48, 157n58, 179n89, 179n90

index ethnological discourse, ix–x, 1, 5, 49, 56, 69, 105, 110, 118, 123, 125, 127, 141; ethnic argumentation, 5- 6, 21, 44–46, 49–50, 55, 58, 78, 101, 154n19 Eusebius of Caesarea, 1–2, 5–7, 19, 25, 45–46, 49–53, 55–58, 60–61, 63, 71, 73, 78–79, 81–82, 85, 98, 101, 103–4, 111–13, 120, 125–26, 133, 142, 147, 173n2, 177n47, 177n51, 178n69, 197n9 —Against Porphyry, 51, 53, 175n30, 176n44 —Commentary on Isaiah, 49, 124–27 —Demonstration of the Gospels, 2, 7, 9, 19, 26, 32, 35, 49, 53, 55–56, 60–61, 79, 81, 112, 125, 139, 175n29, 179n73, 179n82, 179n83, 179n85, 202n27 —Ecclesiastical History, 189n4, 202n19, 204n50 —Life of Constantine, 28, 33, 67–68, 71–72, 112, 186n84 —On Christ’s Sepulcher, 103, 197n10 —Preparation of the Gospels, 2, 7, 9, 19, 20–21, 26, 35, 49, 52–53, 55, 60–61, 78, 81–82, 85, 112, 125, 133, 139, 152n40, 154n19, 158n74, 175n29, 178n58, 179n73, 179n76, 181n121 festivals at Antioch, Festival of Adonis 31, 42; Festival of Aphrodite, 31; Festival of Artemis, 31; Festival of Athena, 31; Festival of Dionysius, 31; Kalends, 31; Maiouma, 31 festivals (Jewish). See Jews, holidays Fowden, 7, 90, 152n46, 190n30, 190n31, 191n34 George of Cappadocia, 26, 44, 49 gods: Adonis, 31, 42; Ares, 43; Cybele, 155n39, 156n40; Demiurge, 4, 15–16, 19, 57, 59–60, 67–69, 101, 105–9, 111, 113–14, 147, 153n8, 198n27, 199n33, 208n7; Helios, 4, 6, 12–13, 16, 22, 104, 106, 109, 114, 115, 119, 153n5, 154n20, 183n23, 189n12, 194n88, 197n14, 199n35, 199n36; Hermes, 43, 162n29; Highest God, 2, 6, 8, 102, 104, 107, 109, 111, 113, 167n99, 196n2; Jupiter, 102, 196n2, 196n4; Most High God, 35, 107–9, 147, 175n37, 199n30; satraps/viceroy, 59, 105–6; Zeus, 12, 16, 20, 22, 32, 39, 43, 93, 106, 115, 162n29, 196n2, 196n3, 198n26 Gregory Nazianzen, 41, 62, 90, 142, 145, 157n60, 175n28, 208n3; Homily 15, 128, 133, 163n52, 163n53, 202n35, 206n89; Or. 4, 18; Or. 5, 206n4 “groveling among tombs”/ “roll among the tombs,” 122 habitus, 26–27 Harnack, 51–52, 54, 176n45, 177n46, 178n68, 180n108

247

healing, 19, 33, 39, 124–25, 166n82, 170n149, 203n46, 204n54 Hebraioi/Hebrews, ix, x, 2–7, 13, 21–24, 37, 49–51, 53–61, 63–64, 66, 68, 72–73, 78–79, 81–82, 92, 94, 98, 103, 106, 108, 113, 126, 130–31, 133, 151n29, 154n16, 158n74, 172n172, 178n58, 178n61, 178n64, 179n82, 179n89, 180n100, 180n104, 181n110, 181n121, 191n52, 205n69, 205n73 Helios. See god(s) hellenizing, ix, x, 2–8, 11–13, 17–19, 21–22, 24–25, 42, 44–45, 51, 61–63, 65, 74, 78, 87–88, 97, 100, 109, 115–16, 121, 129, 139–40, 143, 145, 147, 155n30 Highest God. See god(s) histōria, 125, 127 “holy city,” hieron chorion, 8, 114–16, 120, 128, 135, 137 Homoians. See Christians, homoians Homoosians. See Christians, homoousians h.ullin. See rabbis Hymn to King Helios. See Julian, under specific works Hymn to the Mother of the Gods. See Julian, under specific works Hypsistarians, 35, 49, 62, 84, 105, 109–10 Iamblichus, 4, 7, 12–16, 18, 22, 39, 42, 63, 66–70, 74–75, 84, 88–90, 92–93, 104, 107, 109, 152n1, 153n4, 154n20, 154n22, 155n29, 155n30, 155n32, 155n33, 156n40, 156n51, 171n157, 182n3, 184n55, 189n16, 190n22, 190n30, 199n36, 204n53; On the Mysteries, 7, 14, 70, 74, 89–90, 154n20, 154n22, 154n25, 154n26, 155n27, 182n4, 182n6, 182n7, 183n13, 183n14, 183n17, 183n18, 183n19, 183n40, 184n56, 184n58, 190n22, 190n29, 190n32, 204n53 incubation, 33, 71, 121, 124–27, 203n45, 203n46, 204n53, 204n54; Greek incubation, 124–25; Near Eastern incubation, 203n46 interpretatio Graeca, 11, 22 interpretatio Neoplatonica, 107 Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, 187n87, 206n81 Israel, 34, 82, 85, 98, 125, 136, 173n7, 194n96; true Israel, ix, 55, 73, 76, 79, 84–85, 98, 124, 126–27, 133–34; Israelites, 71, 74, 85, 125–26, 136, 187n87, 203n43 Jacobs, 1, 56, 141, 150n3, 150n17, 179n74, 179n77, 179n81, 179n84, 179n87, 179n88, 200n48, 207n6 Jerome, 46, 196n4; Ep. 58, 196n4; Ep. 70, 173n4

248

index

Jerusalem, 2–3, 9, 21, 25, 37, 55, 59–60, 63, 80–81, 96–97, 100–103, 110–11, 113–14, 134, 141, 143, 145–48, 158n81, 164n69, 186n77, 194n96, 196n116, 196n6, 197n9, 197n12, 200n44, 200n57, 209n14; Aelia Capitolina, 102, 147, 196n2; Church of the Holy Sepulcher, 8, 60, 101–3, 111–14, 146, 196n6, 200n47; (Jewish) Temple, 2–3, 5, 8–10, 21, 24–25, 37–38, 40, 42, 45, 49, 55–57, 59, 73–74, 78–86, 92, 94–98, 100, 102–4, 109–10, 112–14, 124, 126, 133–35, 139, 142–43, 145–47, 158n81, 179n83, 185n61, 187n96, 193n81, 194n96, 194n101, 196n2, 196n4, 197n9, 197n12, 200n47, 203n43, 205n65, 207n5, 208n3, 209n14; Jesus, as manifest in Jerusalem, 8, 31, 36–38, 41, 44, 46, 48, 51, 55–66, 79, 101–3, 110–13, 122–23, 126, 142, 167n100, 186n77, 187n87, 197n8, 199n38 Jews, Judeans, Ioudaioi, x, 50, 58–59, 176n39; ancestral laws, see ancestral laws; chosenness, 57–58; circumcision, 21–22, 33, 61–62, 72, 82, 94, 107, 181n117; dietary laws, 7–8, 23–24, 35, 38, 41, 53, 62, 64–65, 71, 84, 93, 95, 128, 130, 132–34, 178n64, 181n118; Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), 4, 7, 21, 33, 73–74, 80, 93; doxa, 64; dyarchy, 97; Festivals, Rosh Hashanah, 33, 36; Herod the Great, 29; Judeaness, x, 10, 76, 81, 102, 110, 133; koinē of the Judeans, 148, 159n92; as a mystery cult 10, 16, 22, 68, 75–77, 89, 154n22; neighborhoods, 29, 39, 116, 161n24, 161n26; occupations, 32; Passover (Pascha), 21, 33, 62, 76–77, 82–83, 186n67, 187n97; passover lamb, 76–77, 83–84, 186n67; scholē, 64, 92, 192n56; Solomon, 22, 102, 192n66; synagogue, 6, 30, 32–41, 82, 84, 97, 99, 113, 128–29, 133, 135, 149n1, 151n22, 161n28, 164n67, 164n69, 165n71, 165n81, 166n85, 166n94, 169n127, 170n150, 171n162, 194n88, 200n56, 203n47; Tabernacles (Sukkot), 33, 36 John Chrysostom, 9, 26, 28, 31, 33, 35–36, 38, 40–41, 62, 80, 82, 95, 100, 116, 121, 123, 127, 128, 133–35, 141–43, 162n30, 163n51, 164n66, 165n79, 165n80, 166n82, 168n119, 169n127, 171n162, 203n47, 204n54, 204n59, 206n90, 208n3 —Against the Judaizers, 9, 26, 33, 35–36, 38, 40–42, 133, 141, 163n51, 166n83, 166n84, 166n85, 168n108, 168n110, 168n113, 168n119, 169n127, 170n142, 170n143, 170n144, 170n149, 187n88, 196n115, 203n47, 205n64, 207n4, 207n5 —Catech, 33, 123, 202n32 —In I Cor. hom., 33, 123, 202n32

—In Gal. comm., 33 —In Ioh. hom., 33, 123 —In Kalendas hom., 162n30, 163n43 —In Martyres hom., 162n30, 164n66 —In II Tim. hom., 3, 123 —In Titus hom., 36, 40 —On Babylas, 171n154 —On Eleazar and the Seven Sons, 142, 207n7 John Lydus, 2, 104, 107, 109, 145, 147, 198n27, 199n34, 199n36 John Malalas, 28, 32, 41, 160n3, 164n68, 171n162; Chron. 8, 40, 168n68 Johnson, 3, 5, 14, 19–21, 23, 45, 52, 54, 150n8, 151n26, 152n39, 152n40, 152n42, 154n18, 154n19, 154n23, 156n45, 156n46, 157n58, 157n61, 158n72, 158n75, 173n2, 176n44, 177n47, 177n50, 177n51, 177n54, 178n57, 178n60, 178n61, 178n63, 178n66, 178n67, 178n69, 179n75, 179n78, 179n90, 179n91, 180n96, 181n118, 181n120, 181n126, 184n44, 184n52, 192n58, 198n27, 204n57 Josephus, Against Apion, 165n73, 167n102, 187n96; Ant., 161n19, 165n73, 185n63; War, 160n9, 161n19, 165n74, 165n75, 165n77, 166n94, 206n76 Judaizers 9, 41, 62, 80, 124, 141, 167n101, 169n127 Julian: adventus, 42, 172n174; Caesar, 11, 31, 164n61; correct worship, 4, 44; interpreter, 13, 23–24, 76, 127 —Against the Galileans: Abraham as Chaldean, 78, 92, 151n29, 183n122; Aetius, 199n41; anti-Christian bias, 24, 158n81; audience, 4, 35, 48, 70, 158n82, 163n51, 173n3, 173n10, 175n28; Celsus, as source, 175n31, 175n32, 176n38; circumcision, 21, 61; creation account incomplete, 58, 176n38, 180n108; chosenness, 58, 180n104; Christian, double apostasy, 52; cosmic order, 105, 150n9; Cult of Christian martyrs, 121; Demiurge, 106–9, 198n21; dietary laws, 62, 93, 131–32, 134; Diodore, 111; division of work, 48; ethnic argumentation, 3, 5, 44–46, 49–50, 55, 58, 78, 101, 154n19; ethnic exempla, 13–14, 23, 54, 128, 135, 140; ethnographic reasoning, 3, 5, 7, 9, 20–21, 46, 51, 60, 64, 101, 103, 145, 205n73; Eucharist, 7, 21, 79, 81; Eusebius, 55, 79; expiatory sacrifice, Day of Atonement, 4, 7, 21, 73; Galileans, as Christians, 5, 7, 60, 181n112; Galileans claim to be Israelites/Hebrews, 55, 73, 79; geographical limitations, 60, 181n114; God, as ethnarchic god, 105; God, as Hellenes understand Him, 59, 106–8; God, Hellenic worship of, 49; God

index not universal, 59, 176n38, 180n108; God as “great god,” 107; groveling among tombs, 121–23; heaven, praying to, 58, 96, 176n38, 180n101; Hebrews as ancestors of the Judeans, 58–59, 180n101, 180n102, 180n103; Hebrew priestly life and profession, 72, 92, 130, 145; Hebrews, as ethnos, 179n89; Hebrews of Judea 21, 58; Hellenes, ethnic term, 19–20, 25; Hellenes and Israelites/Judeans, comparison of, 6–7, 57, 61; Hellenic orthopraxy, shaped by Judean law, 7, 61, 65–66, 108, 147; incubation, 121, 124–27, 204n53; Isaiah 65:4, see Bible, Isaiah; Jewish food as sacred, 74, 79, 151n32; Jewish prayer, 22, 75–76, 145, 147; Jewish priests, 72; Jewish sacrifice, private, 7–8, 21, 58, 60, 71–79, public, 75, 77–78; Jews share with Hellenes temples, altars, purifications, 64, 130; Jews as Judean ethnos, 21; Jesus, as corpse, 122, 130; Jesus, divinity of, 110, 130, 199n38; Jesus says tombs impure, 123, 126; Jerusalem, sacred and only place to worship, 56, 147; Jewish refusal to worship other gods, 64, 110, 113; Judean laws: Christians rejection of, 48, 60–61, 86, 130; Judeans, negative exempla, 57, 62, 128; Julian worships God, 49; Moses knowledge of sacrifice, sacrifice not impure, 74, 80, 184n50, 192n55; myths, interpretation of, 94; Origen as source, 105, 175n31, 176n38, 176n39, 176n40; paschal lamb, 82–84, 185n60, 186n67, 188n97; Passover, 21, 61, 82, 186n67; priestly first fruits, 8, 73–74, 78, 80, 94–95, 187n87, 195n111; priestly life, 86, 91–92, 145; publication, 175n26, 175n28; purification laws, 93, 123; satrap theology, 50, 51, 59, 105; Scripture, 191n52; shoulder, 73, 77, 94–95, 185n62; sources, 26, 49, 52, 174n23; state of work, 46–48; Temple, 114, 145, see also Jerusalem, Temple; theurgy, 16, 75, 183n122 —Edict Banning Daytime Funerals, 117, 120, 123, 137, 170n152, 102n16; audience, 70, 75 —Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, Christian charity, 191n42, 192n64; curriculum, 191n45; dress, 191n38, 191n40; ideal leadership, 88, 145, 189n10, 194n92; image of gods, 69, 117, 183n30; interpreters, prophets and exegetes, 21, 58, 57n64; Judean God, 104, 108; lawgivers, 69, 93, 156n41; liturgy, 182n2; priestly life, regulation, 91, 191n50; priests as middle, 189n12; philosophy, 191n45; philanthropia, 93–94, 191n42; philoxenia, 191n42, 192n61; prayer, 16, 74, 93, 183n24; private and public, 75; purity of priests, 190n34, 191n36, 157n64, 179n94, 180n97;

249

regulation of priestly lives, 77, 93, 191n41; sacrifice, 16, 68, 74, 93, 95, 183n24, 193n77; sungeneis, 20, 182n12, 189n14; symbols of the gods, theurgists, 16, 93 —Hymn to King Helios, 109, 153n5, 155n37, 183n20, 197n14 —Hymn to the Mother of the Gods, 62, 156n40, 191n51, 192n58, 205n66 —Letter to Arsacius, 19, 94, 157n60, 189n8, 191n42 —Letter to the Community of the Jews, 2, 9, 45, 59, 66, 75, 86, 95, 97, 103–4, 107–9, 113, 145–47, 150n14, 184n57, 194n88, 200n54 —Letter to Libanius, 19, 183n35, 184n47, 186n74, 205n62 —Letter to Oribasius, 204n53 —Letter to Priscus, 44, 155n33, 183n20; Ep. 78, 19; Ep. 80, 171n153; Ep. 114, 19 —Letter to Theodorus, 23, 63–64, 110, 129–30, 206n84 —Misopogon, 69, 75, 122, 153n9, 156n55, 163n48, 172n177, 172n178, 172n179, 172n180, 172n181, 172n182, 172n183, 172n184, 172n185, 172n186, 172n187, 172n188, 172n193, 173n204, 173n205, 173n204, 172n199, 183n33, 183n34, 186n70, 192n68, 193n78 —Oration to the Uneducated Cynics, 209n15 —Rescript against Christian Teachers, 18 Jupiter. See god(s) Justin Martyr, 186n82; The Dialogue with Trypho, 187n87 Kalleres, 43, 166n82, 166n84, 170n44, 172n194, 204n54, 207n8 Kinzig, 47, 173n3, 173n10, 174n12, 174n13, 174n14 koimētērion, 39, 128; koimetēria, 204n50 labeling, x, 17, 25, 60, 105, 109–10, 158n83, 181n112 Letter to Libanius. See Julian, under specific works Letter to a Priest. See Julian, under specific works Libanius, 19, 26, 28–29, 34, 38–39, 43–44, 51, 53, 62, 87, 119, 122, 140, 160n3 —Ep. 176, 162n32, 162n33 —Ep. 1098, 159n88, 166n93, 208n6 —Ep. 1251, 166n92 —Or. 1, 79, 170n145, 170n148, 172n189, 172n193, 175n26 —Or. 5, 163n45 —Or. 11, 160n14, 161n16, 161n17, 161n20, 161n21, 162n29, 162n34, 164n57, 164n65, 171n55, 175n26 —Or. 12, 172n190, 172n191, 183n24, 189n6 —Or. 15, 172n173, 172n176, 172n193

250

index

—Or. 17, 172n190 —Or. 18, 172n176, 172n193, 175n128 —Or. 25, 170n145 —Or. 30, 162n29, 162n30 —Or. 41, 163n46 —Or. 47, 161n26 —Or. 62, 203n38 Limberis, 5, 18, 156n53 logos, 103, 110–11, 113 Maccabean Martyrs (cult of Maccabean Martyrs), 8, 31–33, 40–42, 116, 120–21, 126, 128, 130–36, 142–43, 163n53, 164n67, 164n70, 166n85, 171n162, 202n35, 205n65, 205n72, 206n85, 207n7 Maccabean reliquary, 40–42, 120, 126, 128, 133, 135, 142, 206n86 Maximus of Ephesus, 11, 15, 44, 64, 88, 108, 155n31, 190n17 Metroac rites, 16, 155n38, 156n40 Middle Platonism, 104–5, 155n30, 198n20 Misopogon. See Julian, under specific works Mitchell, 35, 167n99, 167n101, 167n102, 167n104, 167n105, 168n106, 180n107 Neoplatonism: henōsis, 12, 14–15, 65, 67–69, 88; intelligible (noeric) realm or god, 15, 67, 109, 189n12, 197n14; intellectual (noetic) realm or god, 104, 109, 199n35; theurgy, x, 2–4, 7, 13–16, 22, 24, 57, 68–70, 75, 78, 84, 88–92, 94, 107, 150n7, 150n18, 151n28, 152n1, 154n21, 154n22, 154n23, 154n24, 154n26, 155n31, 155n34, 155n39, 156n40, 157n68, 157n71, 182n3, 182n6, 183n22, 183n28, 183n29, 183n36, 189n14, 190n21, 190n29, 191n37; sunthēmata, 4, 15, 67, 69, 88; technē, x, 4, 14–15, 68, 90–91, 154n23, 157n71; visible realm or god, 104, 107, 109, 114, 189n12 Numenius, 55, 104, 140, 178n55, 198n27 On the Mysteries. See Iamblichus Origen, 5–6, 25, 41, 45, 49–53, 105; Against Celsus, 19, 26, 49–51, 139, 176n38, 180n108, 199n39, 205n76, 206n82 pagan monotheists, 101, 110, 147 paideia, ix, 18–20, 42, 90, 95, 122, 157n60, 190n29 Patriarch, the (Jewish), 26, 33–34, 86, 96–97, 99–100, 113, 145–46, 148, 166n92, 193n83, 193n85, 193n86, 194n88, 195n111, 208n5, 208n6; apostolē tax, 96, 113, 146

Philo, 56, 131; De Spec. Leg., 185n64, 188n97, 192n74, 205n75 Photinus, 44, 111, 127 Plato: Crito, 175n35; Laws, 175n35; Phaedo, 122; Timaeus, 153n8, 176n38 Plotinus, 14, 140, 190n30 pniktos, 131–32, 205n74 pontifex maximus, 6, 11, 13, 22, 57, 66, 76, 87, 97, 153n14, 153n15, 154n17 Porphyry: Harnack, 51–52, 54, 176n45, 177n46, 178n68, 180n108 —Against the Christians, 52, 178n67, 180n108 —Letter to Anebo, 14, 154n23, 155n27, 182n6 —Letter to Gaurus, 14, 176n44, 178n69, 192n58 —Letter to Marcella, 14 —On Abstinence, 53, 178n64, 184n44 —On the Return of the Soul, 154n23 —Philosophy from Oracles, 14, 23–26, 49, 51, 53, 158n74, 176n44, 178n58, 181n21 priests, 2, 7–8, 21, 23, 25, 30, 37, 40, 61–64, 66, 68, 70–72, 74–75, 79–80, 85, 88–100, 103, 113–15, 117, 120, 124, 134, 145, 147, 181n117, 187n92, 187n96, 188n1, 188n2, 189n8, 189n12, 189n13, 189n16, 190n17, 190n22, 190n24, 190n27, 191n38, 191n39, 191n45, 191n50, 191n51, 191n52, 193n82, 193n84, 194n90, 194n94, 194n96, 194n101, 195n102, 195n104, 195n105, 195n106, 195n108, 195n111, 195n114, 206n90; bios hieratikos, bioi hiertikoi, 86, 89–90, 191n50 Pseudo Clementines, Homilies, 37–38, 41, 85, 132–33, 135, 168n119, 169n134, 169n135, 170n136, 170n137, 170n138, 170n140, 184n46, 188n104, 194n96, 203n40; Recognitions, 36–39, 169n134, 170n137, 170n140, 184n46 psogos, 122 purification, 90, 93, 118, 120, 123, 130, 145, 201n15, 202n17 Pythagoras, Pythagorean life, 12, 14, 62, 89–90, 92, 155n29, 155n30, 172n172, 176n44, 190n29, 191n38, 191n45 rabbis, 1, 7, 28, 30, 33–34, 36–38, 40, 76–77, 83, 94–95, 98–100, 139, 160n6, 161n26, 162n28, 166n85, 166n88, 166n90, 168n117, 169n120, 170n146, 183n23, 185n60, 185n64, 187n92, 187n95, 187n96, 188n100, 188n101, 195n105, 195n106, 195n108, 195n114, 196n116, 203n39, 205n65 Rabbinic works: b. Berachot, 188n100; b. Besah, 188n100; b. h.ullin, 185n62, 192n73; b. Kethuboth, 166n90; b. Sanhedrin, 200n52; m. Besah, 187n97; m. Bikkurim, 195n105; m.

index Eduyyot, 187n96; m. h.allah 185n60; m. h.ullin 77, 192n74; m. Pesahim, 187n97; t. Ahilot, 188n97; t. Berachot, 185n65; t. Besah, 188n99; t. Demai, 34, 161n26; y. Berachot, 166n88, 195n105; y. Besah, 188n100; y. Gittin, 195n105; y. Horrayot, 161n26, 166n88; y. Ma’aser Sheni, 195n105, 195n110; y. Moed Qat., 188n100; y. Nazir, 195n105; y. Pesahim, 188n100; y. Sanhedrin, 166n85, 195n105, 195n113; y. Shekalim, 171n160; Genesis Rabbah, 34, 166n90, 169n126, 195n113; Exodus Rabbah, 195n106; Leviticus Rabbah, 99, 195n107, 195n108; Sifre Numbers, 166n87, 195n105; Deuteronomy Rabbah, 166n8; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan 193n74; Targum Neofiti on Exodus, 200n52; Targum Onkelos, 192n74 religion, x, 4–5, 16, 19, 23, 89, 152n44, 157n57, 157n60, 162n30, 182n2 Riedweg, 47–48, 173n3, 173n10, 174n12, 174n13, 174n14, 174n16, 174n18, 174n19, 174n20, 174n21, 181n116 Romanness, 10, 12, 140; Romanitas 12–13, 23, 53 sacrifice, 21, 73, 77, 80, 185n64, 187n87; non-sacral slaughter (zebah), 71, 74, 77, 80, 185n64, 187n87; Passover, 77, 82–84, 186n67; paschal, 76, 83, 185n60, 188n97. See also Jews Salutius, 18, 20, 68–70, 74, 91, 104, 183n36; On the Gods and the Universe, 68–70, 74, 91, 183n36, 183n40 Sandwell, 26, 158n85, 159n91, 162n31, 171n157, 182n2 scholē. See under Jews Schott, 23, 53–54, 158n72, 158n73, 158n76, 175n33, 176n44, 177n54, 178n56, 178n62, 178n65, 178n68, 179n86 Scrofani, 4–5, 80, 130, 150n4, 150n19, 151n31, 151n33, 157n66, 186n84, 188n1, 191n52, 192n59, 205n67 Shaw, 154n25, 154n26, 182n3, 182n4, 182n6, 182n7, 182n9, 183n13, 183n15, 183n17, 183n19, 184n44, 191n35, 191n37

251

Shepardson, 1, 28, 40, 116, 121, 127, 150n3, 160n5, 160n7, 160n8, 161n15, 161n22, 165n79, 165n81, 166n92, 169n127, 170n144, 171n161, 201n10, 202n32, 203n36, 205n61, 207n8 Socrates, Historia Ecclesia, 172n190, 208n3 Solomon. See Jews Sozomen, Historia Ecclesia, 160n3, 182n2, 208n3 Synagogue. See Jews, synagogues Tanaseanu-Döbler, 4, 16, 22, 69, 88–89, 150n11, 151n29, 153n1, 154n21, 154n22, 154n24, 155n30, 155n31, 155n34, 155n38, 156n40, 157n70, 181n21, 182n8, 182n12, 183n29, 183n32, 183n36, 183n40, 189n13, 189n14, 189n15, 190n18, 190n25, 190n28, 190n29, 190n33, 191n45, 192n67, 197n13 temples. See under Antioch Tertullian, On Baptism, 186n84; Against Marcion, 187n87 theios aner, 89–90, 191n39 Theodore of Mopsuestia, 46, 141, 173n6, 175n28 Theodoret, Historia Ecclesia, 173n200, 207n4 theurgy. See Neoplatonism, theurgy Tiberias, 33–34, 148, 195n104; Hammat Tiberias synagogue, 97, 193n85 topophobia, 40 Van Liefferinge, 94, 153n1, 154n22, 155n30, 155n31, 157n71, 183n16, 183n29, 183n36, 184n55, 189n14, 190n21, 192n65 Vinson, 40–41, 163n53, 165n72, 166n85, 170n137, 170n140, 171n162, 171n165, 171n166, 171n167, 171n170, 188n5, 203n47, 205n63, 205n72 Yoshiko-Reed, 139, 150n4, 152n48, 169n130, 170n140, 184n46, 206n79, 207n1 zebah. See sacrifice