Julian the Apostate and His Plan to Rebuild the Jerusalem Temple

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Of the Roman emperors after Constantine, only Julian (331–363) rejected Christianity in favor of the pagan gods. A nephew of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, Julian incurred the wrath of a burgeoning Christian community by deciding to rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by Roman legions in 70 C.E. Actually, Constantine (288–337) was not baptized—and therefore not formally converted—until he lay on his deathbed. But his spiritual conversion came earlier, before he defeated the “usurper” Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge, near Rome, in 312. Even in Constantine’s lifetime, his success in that […]

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Footnotes

Although Julian consistently uses the term “Hellene” when writing about himself and those he regards as followers of his religion, “pagan” is at least as appropriate and was not necessarily used pejoratively in antiquity. See Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 7–9.

Julian was also an initiate of the Magna Mater and the Greek Eleusinian mysteries. For information on Mithraism, see David Ulansey, “Solving the Mithraic Mysteries,” BAR 20:05.

Endnotes

Julian, Rescript on Christian Teachers, in W.C. Wright, trans., The Works of the Emperor Julian, vol. 3 (London: William Heinemann, 1913–1926), pp. 117–123.

Julian, Rescript on Christian Teachers, Works.

Julian, To the Community of the Jews, Works, vol. 3, pp. 177–181.

Julian, To the Community of the Jews.

Julian, Fragment of a Letter to a Priest, Works, vol. 2., pp. 297–339.

Lydus, De Mensibus, in Julian, Works, vol. 3, pp. 301–302.

Ammianus Marcellinus, John C. Rolfe, trans., Ammianus Marcellinus, vol. 2, (London: William Heinemann, 1939), 23.1,2.

Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio V contra Julianum, 4, in C.W. King, trans., Julian the Emperor (London: George Bell and Sons, 1888).

Ephraem of Syria, Hymni contra Julianum, 1.16 and 2.7, in Samuel N.C. Lieu, trans., The Emperor Julian: Panegyric and Polemic (Liverpool, England: Liverpool Univ. Press, 1986).

10.

Ammianus Marcellinus, 23.1,3.

11.

Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio V contra Julianum, 4.

12.

Ephraem of Syria, Hymni contra Julianum 1.16 and 2.7.

13.

The Hebrew inscription reads: adk µtwmx[w µkbl w µtyarw. Benjamin Mazar points out that the words “shall flourish” are omitted in the western wall inscription (Mountain of the Lord [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975], p. 23).

14.

Mazar, Mountain of the Lord, p. 94.

15.

This view is taken by Michael Avi-Yonah (The Jews Under Roman and Byzantine Rule: A Political History from the Bar Kokhba War to the Arab Conquest [Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1984], p. 190).

16.

Julian, To the High-Priest Theodorus, Works, vol. 3, pp. 55–61.

17.

Julian, To the High-Priest Theodorus. See also Julian’s Fragment of a Letter to a Priest; some believe these were originally parts of the same letter.

18.

Julian, To the Community of the Jews; see also a brief fragment in which Julian refers to rebuilding “the temple of the Most High God” (Works, pp. 301–302).

19.

Julian, To the High-Priest Theodorus.

20.

The specific terminology Julian elsewhere uses to describe the demiurge leaves little room for doubt regarding this identification. Compare, for example, the description of the demiurge in his “Hymn to the Mother of the Gods” (Oration V 166d, Works, vol. 1). Julian refers to the god of the Jews as demiurge in his letter To the Community of the Jews; in another instance, Julian asserts that the Jewish god “governs this world of sense” (To the High-Priest Theodorus), which is the role of the demiurge in Neoplatonic philosophy.

21.

For Porphyry, in Commentarii in Oracula Chaldaica, as quoted in Lydus, De Mensibus, in Menahem Stern, trans., Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1980), p. 433. For Iamblichus, quoted in Lydus, De Mensibus, in Stern, p. 485.

22.

Julian, letter To Maximus, the Philosopher, Works, vol. 3, pp. 24–25.

23.

Ammianus Marcellinus, 25.4,17.

24.

See, for example, section 16 of Sallustius’s Concerning the Gods and the Universe, in Arthur Darby Nock,trans., Sallustius: Concerning the Gods and the Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1926).

25.

Julian, Julian contra the Galilaeans, Works, vol. 3, pp. 404–407.