Julian’s Hellenizing Program and the Jews

Abstract

chapter 1 offers a framework for understanding the rest of the book. The emperor Julian’s imperial hellenizing program is explained as his attempt to right the cosmic order overturned by Constantine and his son, Constantius II, in order to save the Roman oikoumenē. As a philosopher partially trained in theurgic Neoplatonism, Julian applies these teachings to his imperial program in an attempt to define the correct hierarchy of ethnic gods who ensured the health and success of the Roman oikoumenē and to articulate the correct worship that would gain their beneficence. Ethnographic thinking is introduced as an important element in Julian’s program, and he applies it to the Hellenes, an “imagined community” defined by the emperor; to Jews, who are portrayed as the Judean ethnos, with theurgic ancestral laws that can be mined to develop and sometimes authorize or model Hellenic orthopraxy; and to Christians, as Galileans, a people without any ethnic legitimacy.