Toto

Julian lived in the 5th century, but if he had been able to travel back in time, he believed that he would have seen Jesus. There is no evidence that Julian was a fictionalist.

Cesc

Thanks :- )
I'm gonna read that at some point.

mountainman

Since Julian legislated that the name Galilaeans should be applied to the upstart cult under Constantine, we may infer he believed he would have seen a Galilaean, in the context of a Hebrew rebel/gangster.

Since Julian referred to the christian churches (ie: Constantinian basilicas) as charnel houses it is dubious that Julian believed Jesus to be any form of god of the living.

Julian's belief about Jesus is revealed adequately in his satire on Jesus and Constantine -- see the The Caesars of c.361 CE. Julian describes that Constantine finds Jesus while living a life of pleasure and incontinence. Julian places the following words into the mouth of Jesus, and finally has Constantine and his sons punished by avenging deities for their impiety, and utter irreligiousness:

"He that is a seducer, he that is a murderer,
he that is sacrilegious and infamous,
let him approach without fear!
For with this water will I wash him
and will straightway make him clean.

And though he should be guilty
of those same sins a second time,
let him but smite his breast and beat his head
and I will make him clean again."

The Emperor Julian's authored a text Against the Galilaeans c.362 CE. Within 50 years of this codex being prepared by Julian, we have the christian bishop of Alexandria, Cyril, reporting that:

1) The book was causing a stir in the populace.
2) It was turning people away from the charnel houses.
3) It contained a bunch of lies.

Cyril also quoted verbatim in the first place the opening adress of Julian in his quite obviously polemical work :


When you say "There is no evidence that Julian was a fictionalist" just what do you think Julian meant when he authored the above opening address? He uses the work fiction, and he implies strongly that it involved mal-intent. If he is describing the new testament (and IMO he is doing so) then it may be argued that Julian believes the new testament to be a fiction, and a fable, and a monstrous tale.

His references to wicked men, and indeed the entire sense and meaning of the invectives of Emperor Julian against the Galilaeans has not been adequately explained. Scholarship in ancient history is quite aware of this contraversial issue, but it may not yet have had its full repercussions in the realm of BC&H.


Best wishes


Pete

aa5874

Now, if Jesus was just a Galillean, then Julian was right.

Jesus, presented as the Son of God of the NT, was a monstrous lie.

If Jesus was just a Galillean, a mere human living in Galilee, then the following cannot be denied. It must be true.

spamandham

(4th century, not 5th....but anyway)

Reading through Julian's polemic against Christianity, I do get the impression he is claiming the whole thing was made up, although I agree he seems to accept the historicity of Jesus:

for nowhere did either Jesus or Paul hand down to you such commands. The reason for this is that they never even hoped that you would one day attain to such power as you have; for they were content if they could delude maidservants and slaves, and through them the women, and men like Cornelius and Sergius. But if you can show me that one of these men is mentioned by the well-known writers of that time,----these events happened in the reign of Tiberius or Claudius,----then you may consider that I speak falsely about all matters.

I take this to mean, "Paul and Jesus were insignificant charlatans preying off the weak minded and all that son of god nonsense about Jesus was made up later"

I find it interesting that he notes that none of the well-known writers of the time mention them (the reference must be to Paul&Jesus, not Cornelius &Sergius), meaning that the famous Tacitus and Josephus blurbs about Jesus must have been unknown to him (Julian).

aa5874

But the passage itself clearly shows that Julian did not accept the historicity of Jesus when he stated "But if you can show me that one of these men is mentioned by the well known writers of that time...............then you may consider I speak falsely about all matters."

Julian clearly implies that up to the 4th century no well known writer had any information whatsoever about Jesus.

Julian, it would appear, did not accept the historicity of Jesus unless he could get documented written information from well known writers.

And perhaps, Tacitus and Josephus were interpolated after Julian.

Ishtar

Toto - every book I listed has massive caveats around it, which you can only negotiate your way through after many years studying this subject, which I have.

If you're looking for authoriatative authentification on this subject area, forget it - you will only ever be able to take an educated view on any of this, and you can thank the Romans who burned down the libraries for that.

Secondly, I am extremely unlikely to ever read anything that is shoved at me with the order: "read this", especially from someone who a) knows less than I do on a given subject and also doesn't realise b) that Richard Carrier's work needs also to be surrounded with caveats and warnings that only the most knowledge in this area will find their way through safely.

mountainman

To be specific, it was in fact christianised Romans under the administration of christian bishops and christian emperors of the fourth century, commencing with the pagan Constantine (who may have waffled on and converted just before he went to the underworld). The burning of knowledge in the fourth century is associated with an epoch of persecution and intolerance stemming from the military supremacy of Constantine, and his chosen right, as Pontifex Maximus, to favour any one of the extant cults in the collegiate environment.

Best wishes,


Pete

Ishtar

Of course ... were there any other kind that had the right to go into any country they liked within Constantine's empire and burn down libraries?

My guess is that they were just soldiers following order from their superiors. If Constantine had chosen Mithraism instead of Christianity, then they would have been Mithraic soldiers doing the dirty work .. except that the book burning and such like need not have been so extensive, for this simple reason.

In ordering the destruction of the libraries and the Mystery groves of Eleusis and so on and so on, what they were actually trying to do was hide the true roots of Christianity. Otherwise, it would have been obvious that a form of Christianity existed more than a hundred years before the so-called birth of Jesus in the form of the Essenes, the Thereputae, the Zadokites and many other Gnostic sects who mostly understood the story as myth, and not history.

That's why the libraries had to be burned ... otherwise, why bother? It's not as if the 'heretics' were forming themselves into a raging mob and rising against them.

spamandham

Read the whole thing and not just this select paragraph.

Julian is arguing that Jesus and Paul were insignificant in their own time, and were later turned into mythical figures. He's pointing out that no-one contemporary wrote about them as proof of their insignificance in their own day, not as proof that that they never existed.

This is the most interesting thing I get from Julian. He certainly would have been aware of Josephus' and Tacitus' writings, and he does not believe those writings mention Jesus (or Paul). In fact, he puts his entire reputation on the line on that point.

To me, this is as close as we can get to hard historical proof that neither Josephus nor Tacitius had ever heard of Jesus called Christ - something that was suspected anyway.

Why do historians who question the veracity of those passages in Josephus and Tacitus not lean on Julian's polemic to close the case? Am I missing something?