Endnote 20 – Julian the Apostate and His Plan to Rebuild the Jerusalem Temple

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.