mountainman

Julian's persective on Jesus (and Constantine btw) is adequately provided in his satire Kronia


I get the impression that Julian did not think Jesus was an historical character at all.

Best wishes,


Pete

ynquirer

Why must Julian be reckoned to be an authority on the issue?

He was born and raised in Constantinople. He further studied in Athens. In all likelihood he would never have labelled Josephus a ‘classic’. During his later career in Italy as a soldier, politician and emperor, he doesn't seem to have had much time to spend in reading Tacitus, buried in the libraries of Rome.

Ben C Smith

The English translation is accurate enough, but not as clear as the Greek is.

There is little or no creativity involved. What exactly is your hang-up with the interpretation of this paragraph? Admittedly it is not modern writing, but why is its basic gist and meaning not clear?

Let me quote the translation again (letters added):

[A] ...and you slaughtered not only those of us who remained true to the teachings of their fathers, but also men who were as much astray as yourselves, heretics, because they did not wail over the corpse in the same fashion as yourselves. [B] But these are rather your own doings; for nowhere did either Jesus or Paul hand down to you such commands. [C] The reason for this is that they never even hoped that you would one day attain to such power as you have; [D] for they were content if they could delude maidservants and slaves, and through them the women, and men like Cornelius and Sergius. [E] 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.

Now let me run through the passage, point by point:

A. You Christians slew pagans who were just being faithful to their own traditions; you also slew fellow Christians, heretics, just because they differed from you in their interpretations of Jesus.
B. But slaying people is not something Jesus or Paul commanded you to do; you were acting completely on your own.
C. Why did Jesus and Paul not command the slaughter of pagans and heretics? Because they could not even imagine coming into such political power as to be able to do so (that is, they could not imagine converting an emperor... like Constantine).
D. To the contrary, they were content to convert the unimportant elements of society, such as slaves, women, and nondescript men like Sergius and Cornelius.
E. That men like Sergius and Cornelius were, in fact, unimportant is clear from the fact that none of the historians of the time mentions them. (That slaves and women were, in fact, unimportant goes without saying.)

There are no great mysteries in the thought sequence here; it is manifestly clear and easy to follow.

Ben.

Jeffrey Gibson

And it is eminently clear that the point of the passage, let alone it's entire point, is not that Jesus was a nobody when compared to Greco-Roman and Imperial standards of what one had to accomplish to be reckoned as a "somebody". Thought that claim is expressed here, it is subordinate to a laregre point that has nothing to do with what Julian is up to in this passage -- which, BTW, shows that Julian believed not only that Jesus and Paul existed, and that Jesus and Paul lived during the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius respectively, but that Christianity existed before Constantine.

Jeffrey

Ben C Smith

Shhhh! Mountainman might hear you.

Ben.

spamandham

I never said he was an authority. I said he was unaware of any mentioning of Jesus or Paul in Josephus or Tacitus, and he staked his reputation on that. As emperor, he certainly had access to such information, as well as advisors to read them on his behalf.

Julian does not list who the 'well known' authors are he was referring to. But I don't see any validity to the idea that Josephus and Tacitus would not fit that category. They are refered to in that vein today, so why not in ancient times as well?

spamandham

At least we can agree on those points, even if we speak different languages that both look a lot like English.

Amaleq13

Is this an idiom or were funeral rites actually a contentious issue?

Jeffrey Gibson

It appears to be a reference to docetists.

Jeffrey

Ben C Smith

I am not aware of it being an idiom, nor do I have any reason to suspect the real issue is funerary rites, although Julian does accost the Galileans (the Christians) for paying homage to the tombs of martyrs.

I suspect Julian is merely using strong rhetoric; he is saying that Christians differ with each other over how they treat or respond to (the death of) Jesus, and for Julian Jesus is still a corpse, as he affirms elsewhere:

Would not any man be justified in detesting the more intelligent among you, or pitying the more foolish, who, by following you, have sunk to such depths of ruin that they have abandoned the ever living gods and have gone over to the corpse of the Jew?

But who could detest as they deserve all those doctrines that you have invented as a sequel, while you keep adding many corpses newly dead to the corpse of long ago?

(The added corpses, I think, are the bones and relics of the martyrs. The corpse of long ago, or the corpse of the Jew, is that of Jesus.)

The point would be that Christians call each other heretics over the slightest differences, and it is all for nothing, all over a corpse.

But I may well be wrong on all counts here. I am no expert on Julian the apostate.

Ben.