Julian: Rome's Failed Turning Point
Armstrong discusses how Rome's new Emperor, Julian, renewed Jewish hope by promising to destroy Christianity in the empire. The Roman Empire had been officially Christian for a few decades before Julian's reign, so Rome's subjects thought it was astonishing to witness him reveal himself as a staunch Hellenist. Since "paganism was alive and well" in the empire and surrounding areas, Julian found several supporters (Armstrong p.193). His successful military campaign in Gaul was partly due to his protection of the Roman military's pagan faiths. Although the Jews aren't pagan and Julian wasn't interested in Judaism, his commitment to undermine Christianity and rebuild the Jewish Temple sparked their approval. Before his death in Persia—the place he tried to conquer because he fancied himself the next Alexander—Julian had backed Jewish welfare in numerous ways.
Julian thought that the Jews had a legitimate religion because they can claim a common ancestry, a homeland, and a place to worship, whereas he condemns the Christians because they lack all of this (Liccardo p.901). A group with a shared ancestry and religion was called an ethnos, the latin root word for "ethnicity." Julian wanted the Jews and other ethnic groups under the Roman empire to freely practice their faiths because the prosperity of their gods would bolster the empire's might. As an aside, I wonder if Christianity was able to spread rapidly because it didn't require an ethnic or land-based bond. This type of religion would function well in an empire working to colonize and unite several ethnic groups. Julian recognized the importance of sacred space, so he emphasized Christianity's lack of it in his speeches and writings (Liccardo p.902). Although many scholars believe that Julian wasn't interested in Jews beyond using them to threaten Christianity, he actually thought that ancient Jewish practices could be "used to shape Hellenic identity" (Finkelstein p.3). Many aspects of Judaism paralleled Hellenism, like sacred rites and temple sacrifice. Ironically, while Julian was accusing Christianity of lacking an ethnos, Hellenism didn't have a specific ethnic group either. To resolve this issue, he urged Hellenists to create their own community by emulating "a number of other Judean practices" (Finkelstein p.5). Julian also wanted to structure communities in Jewish ways: he appreciated that Judaism had a hierarchy of holiness that held priests as the most important mortal figures, and he wanted to promote priests to "the highest levels of leadership in the empire" (Finkelstein p.8).
When Christians found Jesus's tomb and built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, they thought they had laid Judaism to rest. But when Julian took office, Jews became "a potentially real danger for Christians" again (Finkelstein p.9). Although Julian earnestly wanted to empower the Jews and revive their ability to worship, he failed to acknowledge some of the Jews' own worries. Many rabbis remembered what happened to their people when they tried to overthrow previous religions and governments, and they worried that an idolator like Julian rebuilding the Jewish temple would harm its integrity.
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