Hebrews, Jews, and Judeans

Abstract

chapter 3 situates Julian’s Against the Galileans in the context of imperial ethnographic literature that constructs and positions Hebrews/Jews with Hellenes and Christians to define these ethnic entities. It examines Cyril of Alexandria’s Against Julian, the main source of our knowledge of Against the Galileans and then places Julian in dialogue with Celsus, Origen, Porphyry of Tyre, and Eusebius of Caesarea, who all wrote about Jews in polemical or apologetic works. This comparison reveals the emperor’s methodology of using Jews as Judeans to shape Hellenic identity and weaken Christianity. This is especially apparent in Against the Galileans, where Julian adopts Porphyry’s framework that Christians are truly heretical Jews, but he changes the content of his attack to shape Hellenic orthopraxy via his presentation of Jewish practices. Here Julian uses a Neoplatonist tactic of using Hebrews/Jews as sources for Hellenic wisdom. Responding to Eusebius, who argued that Jewish law and ethnicity is defunct after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, Julian demonstrates that Jewish law remains efficacious and its continuity with Hebrew law proves that Jews are the true successors to the ancient Hebrews. Meanwhile, Christians are Galileans, a non-ethnos with no relation to the ancient Hebrews. This dynamic is repeated in the Letter to Theodorus, and its implications can be found in Julian’s other works about Jews.