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TOWARDS A NEW EDITION OF JULIAN'S CONTRA GALILAEOS: ASSESSING THE MATERIAL FROM THE SYRIAC TRANSMISSION OF CYRIL'S CONTRA IVLIANVM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2023

Matthew R. Crawford
Matthew R. Crawford*
Affiliation:
Australian Catholic University
*
matthew.crawford@acu.edu.au
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Abstract

Emperor Julian's three-book treatise Contra Galilaeos survives solely in those Christian sources that quoted it in order to respond to its forceful attack on Christianity. The bulk of these survivals comes from Cyril of Alexandria's twenty-book Contra Iulianum. The recent publication of the first modern critical edition of Cyril's work creates the occasion for a fresh study of the remnants of Julian's text that can be recovered from it. This is especially true for Books 11–20 of Cyril's treatise that are themselves lost and survive only in quotations in later Greek and Syriac sources. The present article undertakes a reassessment of the Julianic material preserved via the Syriac transmission of Contra Iulianum, including several passages hitherto unknown or ignored in earlier studies of Julian's treatise. It provides the Syriac text and English translation of eight passages and contextualizes them in the wider argumentative aim of Contra Galilaeos.

Keywords

JulianCyrilEusebiusOrigenstarmartyrsapologeticgenealogy

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , December 2022 , pp. 850 - 867
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

In the winter of 362/3, while making preparations in Antioch for his fateful invasion of Persia, Emperor Julian composed a three-book polemical treatise in which he aimed ‘to set before all humanity the reasons that persuaded [him] that the Galileans’ fraud [Christianity] is a human fabrication constructed with maliciousness’ (τὰς αἰτίας ἐκθέσθαι πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, ὑφ’ ὧν ἐπείσθην ὅτι τῶν Γαλιλαίων ἡ σκευωρία πλάσμα ἐστὶν ἀνθρώπων ὑπὸ κακουργίας συντεθέν).Footnote 1 Lost in the direct manuscript tradition, scattered traces of Julian's text survive thanks to subsequent Christian refutations. The bulk of these survivals comes from Cyril of Alexandria's Contra Iulianum (henceforth, CI), which probably originally comprised twenty books and quoted lengthy verbatim extracts from Contra Galilaeos (henceforth, CG) in an effort to respond to the emperor's arguments. Unfortunately, only half of Cyril's own work has survived intact, with the latter ten books being preserved merely in later Greek and Syriac sources that cited passages from it for their own purposes. Fortunately, on occasion these chance survivals preserve testimonia to, and even fragments from, Julian's original text. The task of reconstituting and publishing the text of Julian's CG is, therefore, largely dependent upon scholarly efforts to provide a reliable text for as much of Cyril's lengthy refutation as we can recover.

PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS TO RECOVER JULIAN'S CONTRA GALILAEOS

Not until the eighteenth century were the fragments of Julian's CG extracted from Cyril's CI and published independently; in 1764 the Marquis d'Argens presented the Greek passages of Julian's work cited by Cyril along with a French translation reissued in a lightly revised version four years later by Voltaire.Footnote 2 The first properly critical edition was published by Neumann in 1880, who used Spanheim's 1696 edition of Cyril's CI for the passages from CG cited in Cyril's first ten books and also included eighteen fragments he discovered in other sources.Footnote 3 Neumann's edition was largely reprinted in Wright's Loeb volume in 1923.Footnote 4 Both of these editions printed the passages extracted from Cyril's first ten books as a continuously running text, which misleadingly gives the impression that we have a more or less complete text of much of Julian's CG rather than a collection of fragments from a hostile source. Both of them also dispensed with testimonia, including only those extracts where Cyril cited Julian verbatim. These two defects were remedied in Masaracchia's edition of CG in 1990, the primary basis for all subsequent scholarship. Ninety-four of Masaracchia's one hundred and seven fragments derive from Cyril's CI (frr. 1–89, 91, 96–9 Mas.), with the remainder coming from Jerome (frr. 90, 101, 102), Theodore of Mopsuestia (frr. 92–5, 100, 104–6), Photius (fr. 100), the Suda (fr. 103) and Arethas (fr. 107).Footnote 5

New remnants of Julian's treatise have since been discovered in several sources. In 1994 Guida edited and translated the fragmentary remains of Theodore of Mopsuestia's reply to Julian's CG, including an appendix containing several new Julianic passages uncovered in the process.Footnote 6 He followed this up with a study highlighting two more new testimonia and a new fragment of Julian's lost work that are found in quotations of Cyril's CI preserved in a later Chalcedonian florilegium.Footnote 7 In 2006 Bianchi identified three testimonia to Julian's CG preserved in homilies of the twelfth-century Italo-Greek monk Philagathos of Cerami. Two are new; one reports a Julianic criticism previously published as CG fr. 100 Mas.Footnote 8 Following this discovery, Trovato published in 2012 what he regarded as another new fragment from Julian's treatise, this one coming from the Enarratio in Evangelium Marci by Theophylact of Ohrid,Footnote 9 although Riedweg has suggested that this passage is merely a testimonium to one of the same passages preserved by Philagathos.Footnote 10 In 2018 Giavatto and Muller released a Greek–French edition of Julian's CG, based on Masaracchia's edition and adding some of the new passages that have come to light since 1990.Footnote 11 Next, in 2020 Guida identified yet another unexpected testimonium to CG, this one in an early sixteenth-century work by Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola.Footnote 12 A final text containing remnants of Julian's treatise has been identified but has yet to be properly published: an extended version of Ps.-Justin Martyr's Quaestiones et responsiones ad Graecos, recently discovered by Toth, contains a section of text that seems to draw heavily upon the second decade of Cyril's CI, containing two further fragments of Julian's treatise that have not survived elsewhere.Footnote 13

A new edition of CG is needed for at least two reasons. First, scholarship on the text has advanced remarkably over the past three decades, with new fragments and testimonia appearing subsequent to Masaracchia's 1990 edition. As a result, accessing the text as is it known today requires knowing where to find all the recently discovered Julianic material. Second, the years 2016–17 witnessed the publication of the first modern critical edition of Cyril's CI,Footnote 14 which has brought to light still more new Julianic material, of two different types. First, the first ten books of Cyril's treatise may contain testimonia that have long lain in plain sight. For example, Cyril's response to CG fr. 47 Mas. (quoted at CI 6.25.4–15) indicates that the dominical saying at Matthew 10:28 is an example of the kind of ‘harsh law’ that Christians have taken from Judaism (CI 6.27.11–15), alluded to but otherwise not specified in the quoted extract. A careful study of CI, taking into account a more sophisticated understanding of Cyril's method of handling his source material, is needed to determine if more Julianic material can be recovered.Footnote 15

A second tranche of Julianic material from the new edition of Cyril's CI is fortunately more readily accessible. The editors have uncovered new Greek and Syriac fragments from the second decade of CI, several of which contain further testimonia to lost portions of Julian's CG. The present article sets forth these new remnants surviving in Syriac sources and contextualizes them within the wider argumentative scope of Julian's CG in so far as that can be determined.Footnote 16 For the prolegomenon to Neumann's 1880 edition of CG, Nestle edited and translated into Latin twenty-seven Syriac fragments from Cyril's CI, of which fourteen derived from the lost Books 11–20. However, Neumann included only a few extracts from these fragments of CI in his edition of CG (specifically CG frr. 2, 8, 9, 10, 13 Neu.), even though several others that he excluded illuminate lost portions of Julian's text. Masaracchia included even less Syriac material in her edition and printed merely a Latin translation, omitting the Syriac text altogether (CG frr. 91, 96, 97, 98 Mas.). In contrast, for the new GCS edition of Cyril's CI, Hubert Kaufhold has edited fifty-five Syriac fragments, of which twenty-three come from the lost second decade.Footnote 17 This recent reassessment and enlargement of our knowledge of the Syriac transmission of Cyril's CI has laid the foundation for a fresh study of the traces of Julian's CG preserved there, which the present article aims to provide.Footnote 18 I propose that within these twenty-three fragments from CI Books 11–20 we can identify seven new testimonia to be added to Masaracchia's edition and one expanded version of a fragment she already included.

The question of how best to refer to these fragments of CG is complex. Masaracchia's edition enumerated the fragments beginning with the first one cited by Cyril in CI and continuing to the last one cited in Book 10. Riedweg has proposed that the new fragments from Cyril's second decade be numbered according to where they likely occurred in the course of Julian's CG, ‘using mainly the narrative sequence of the gospels as an aid to orientation’,Footnote 19 since the gospels seem to have been Julian's main focus in his second book from which these passages presumably come.Footnote 20 This, however, makes the current numbering system more complex, since it keeps Masaracchia's existing enumeration but uses the addition of letters after the numbers to indicate the proposed location of new fragments (for example, designating one such passage CG fr. 91c since it presumably should have originally come after fr. 91b). To simplify matters, I number these new passages starting where Masaracchia left off, at 108, with the exception of the passage that is an expanded version of an already numbered fragment and a new fragment clearly related to it. When a full edition of the text is finally produced, its editors may decide to renumber these fragments according to their own scholarly judgements about the original sequence of CG and about how to manage the unwieldy and complex state in which it has reached us.

NEW FRAGMENTS

CG fr. 91 apud CI fr. 3a (page 878.2–7, 22–6 Kaufhold):

And, O friend of ours, what is so novel about the fact that in keeping with God's will a star arose contrary to its normal pattern at that time when God the Word took on a body and it went ahead as a herald? Is it not the case that, owing to the occurrence of great events all throughout the world, there have often appeared those stars that are also called ‘comets’ or ‘in the form of beards’, though others also give them the name ‘meteors’?Footnote 21 And this star was not one of those known stars, nor was it, as [Julian] claims, the daystar.

…

So then, this is how the marvel should be understood and it is worthy of being believed, even if that star did not remain until now. Moreover, it was not one of the stars that are known—not the daystar or Pleiades or Aldebaran. And even if it was standing over Bethlehem and over the house and over the place where the child was lying, one should not doubt the story.Footnote 22

. .

The first new fragment is an expanded version of a fragment published in Latin translation as fr. 91 Mas. This passage comes from a lengthy extract from Book 11 of Cyril's CI included in a Syriac biblical catena surviving solely in the seventh-century lacunose MS British Library Add. 17214, which contains three extracts from Cyril's treatise, alongside passages from mostly Greek patristic authors in addition to the Syriac writers Ephrem and Philoxenus.Footnote 23 The passage above is found on fols. 38r–39r. In the prolegomenon to Neumann's edition of CG, Nestle designated the Syriac text of this passage as CI fr. 15 and the corresponding Latin translation as CI fr. 3. Neumann extracted one sentence from the Latin translation of the Cyril passage and published it as Julian, CG fr. 2 stella autem illa non ex numero harum ordinariarum erat neque ἑωσφόρος, ut iste [sc. Iulianus] eam dicit.Footnote 24 Masaracchia kept the sentence highlighted by Neumann and added the preceding sentence to it to create her slightly lengthier CG fr. 91, in bold text above. I propose that the fragment, or rather testimonium, be expanding still further to include yet more of Cyril's rebuttal that further illuminates Julian's argument.Footnote 25

This passage focusses on the star of the magi and no doubt derives from Julian's treatment of the birth narratives in the gospels early in his second book. Neumann probably isolated the sentence which he included as his fr. 2 because it seems to report Julian's actual words (ut iste eam dicit = ), specifically the claim that the magi's star is to be identified with the daystar or Venus. Masaracchia's additional sentence highlights the main point of Cyril's response, namely that the star should be understood as some sort of more unusual or irregular celestial phenomenon such as a meteor or comet. However, if one takes into account the prior sentence, which was excluded by Masaracchia but is the first sentence of the testimonium offered here, we gain a further glimpse into Julian's argument. The direct address with which the passage opens, characteristic of Cyril's style,Footnote 26 implies that Julian objected to the story of the magi's star on grounds that it was somehow ‘novel’ (). This emphasis on novelty is further elucidated in the latter portion of the extract printed above. Cyril's defence of the account as plausible despite the star's disappearance suggests that Julian had raised this point too, probably because an appearing and disappearing star would be a novel heavenly phenomenon that did not obey the normal laws of celestial motion. Finally, in the latter portion of the extract Cyril again opposes the view that the star was the daystar, Pleiades, or Aldebaran, all of these being known heavenly bodies which, as such, are not novel. Thus from Cyril's rebuttal we surmise not only that Julian sought to identify the magi's star with the daystar (as Neumann and Masaracchia recognized) but also that he seemingly thought it was implausible that the star in question was a novel phenomenon previously unknown to astronomers which moved in a strange manner and disappeared once its mission was complete.

This fuller understanding of Julian's argument is significant because he is apparently arguing against an interpretation of the star put forward by at least two earlier Christians. In his Contra Celsum, Origen proposed that the star was ‘a new star and not like any of the ordinary ones’ (καινὸν … καὶ μηδενὶ τῶν συνήθων παραπλήσιον), and that it is ‘to be classed with the comets which occasionally occur, or meteors, or bearded or jar-shaped stars' (κομῆται ἢ δοκίδες ἢ πωγωνίαι ἢ πίθοι).Footnote 27 Origen then made precisely the same point as Cyril, namely that such phenomena often appeared at great moments of history, so it should not be surprising to find this occurring at the birth of Jesus.Footnote 28 Eusebius, that fourth-century enthusiastic disciple of Origen, followed his predecessor on this question, asserting in his Demonstratio evangelica that the magi's star was a ‘strange’ (ξένος) and ‘new’ (καινός) star akin to the ‘so-called comets or meteors or beard-shaped stars’ (κομητῶν, ἢ δοκίδων, ἢ πωγωνιῶν) that have often appeared at the occurrence of unusual events.Footnote 29 Thus the two most famous apologists for Christianity before Julian had argued that the star was a novel phenomenon that appeared for a specific time and then disappeared once its mission was complete, the very same position that Julian seems to have set himself against. In one of the other surviving verbatim fragments of his CG Julian, in fact, refers to Eusebius by name and alludes to a passage from his Praeparatio evangelica.Footnote 30 It is, therefore, plausible that Julian learned of this interpretation of the magi's star from his reading of Eusebius, and focussed his treatment of this gospel passage around critiquing the view of that earlier defender of Christianity, a pattern repeated below in CG fr. 111, though it cannot be excluded that he was responding to Origen instead of, or in addition to, Eusebius in light of the parallels between CG and Contra Celsum recently brought to light.Footnote 31

Julian thus apparently opposed the idea that the magi's star was a novel or irregular astrological phenomenon, as Origen and Eusebius had maintained, which is why Cyril felt the need to defend its plausibility, indeed normality, despite the fact that it moved in a strange fashion and did not remain in the sky.Footnote 32 This insight comports with the sentence originally singled out by Neumann in which Cyril claims Julian said that the magi's star was the daystar or Venus: Julian objected to the star as something novel or unusual, and identified it with, or at least compared it to, a known heavenly body. But why would Julian have referred specifically to the daystar in his criticism of Origen's and Eusebius’ position? Answering this question moves into more speculative terrain but a conjecture can be offered. The fifth-century grammarian Servius reported that Varro claimed ‘the morning-star, which is said to belong to Venus, was continually seen by Aeneas until he should reach Laurentian territory and ceased to be visible after he arrived: from which fact he recognized that he had in fact arrived’ (Varro enim ait hanc stellam Luciferi, quae Veneris dicitur, ab Aenea, donec ad Laurentem agrum ueniret, semper uisam, et postquam peruenit, uideri desiisse: unde et peruenisse se agnouit).Footnote 33 The parallels between this tradition and the story of the magi following the star westwards to Bethlehem have long been recognized,Footnote 34 and it could be that Julian himself deployed this similarity in his critique of the biblical account, which would be in keeping with other passages in the treatise that highlight traditions related to Rome's founding and greatness (cf. CG frr. 42, 43, 44, 49 Mas.).

A further testimonium from Varro yields more material relevant for reconstructing Julian's argument. In the De ciuitate Dei, Augustine quotes a passage from Varro's De gente populi Romani in which Varro passes on a report about Venus from the chronicler Castor who in turn was seemingly drawing upon the mathematicians Adrastus of Cyzicus and Dion of Neapolis. According to these sources, during the reign of King Ogyges, Venus ‘changed its colour, size, shape and course’ (mutaret colorem, magnitudinem, figuram, cursum). Moreover, this is said to have been ‘something that has never happened before or since’ (quod factum ita neque antea nec postea sit).Footnote 35 Here we have a tradition about a known star changing its course which is said to be such an unusual event that it has never occurred subsequently. It seems unlikely to be a coincidence that the star in question is the daystar and that the same heavenly body somehow figured into Julian's criticism of the supposed novel behaviour of the magi's star. Perhaps his argument went something like this: ‘The only star known to have ever changed its course was, according to Castor, the daystar, so the story of the magi's star in the gospels must have been fabricated in imitation of it.’ Even if somewhat speculative, this reconstruction of Julian's argument would explain why Cyril in response would argue that the magi's star should not be identified with any of the heavenly bodies known to astronomers.

Before leaving this fragment, we must comment on its relation to the fragment of CG published by Guida in 2020, found in Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola's treatise De rerum praenotione and numbered CG fr. 91a by Riedweg.Footnote 36 Here Pico claims that Julian identified the magi's guide with a star bearing the Egyptian name Asaph which appeared every four-hundred years.Footnote 37 In other words, according to this testimonium, Julian said that the star was what we now today call a comet. As a precursor for this view, Guida points to the aforementioned passage from Origen's Contra Celsum in which the Bethlehem star is said to be a ‘comet’ or ‘meteor’.Footnote 38 It seems more likely that, as argued above, Julian's argument was framed in opposition to the position of Origen and Eusebius. That is, even though Julian in this fragment seemingly agrees with Origen and Eusebius that the star was what we could call a ‘comet’, he rejected their claim that the object was a novelty and instead sought to identify it with a named astronomical phenomenon. The rejection of novelty is indeed the main point of continuity between CG fr. 91 and Guida's new mysterious fragment. It could be that Julian mentioned several well-known heavenly bodies by name, not just the daystar, but perhaps also Pleiades and Aldebaran (also noted by Cyril in CI fr. 3a), as well as an otherwise unknown object called Asaph. There was debate in antiquity over whether comets were recurring heavenly phenomena or random unpredictable events; according to Pico's testimonium, Julian took the view that they regularly appeared at set intervals, a position said to have originated amongst Pythagoras’ followers.Footnote 39 If so, then even a rare event such as the appearance of a comet is something ordered and indeed eternal, in contrast to the strange, new star proposed by Origen and Eusebius.Footnote 40 Moreover, the four-hundred-year period mentioned in Guida's new fragment fits nicely with Cyril's defence of the disappearance of the star. One could imagine Julian saying that the account of the star of Bethlehem is unbelievable since the magi's star did not remain in the sky, unless one were to suppose that it was the star Asaph which is only seen every four hundred years and so had not yet reappeared when Julian was writing CG in 362/3. Unfortunately, no one has discovered the source of Pico's testimonium; it could be a complete fabrication, though this seems unlikely given how closely related it is to the nexus of themes evident in CG fr. 91.

CG fr. 91b apud CI fr. 3b (page 879.7–9 Kaufhold):

But Julian the pagan said this story of the star is not true because none of the astrologers knew this star since it did not exist.

This is the first of three new testimonia to Julian's CG preserved in the unpublished Commentary on Matthew of George of B‘eltan, a Syrian Orthodox bishop educated in Greek and Syriac who died in 789/790.Footnote 41 No testimonia from George's commentary were included in the editions of Neumann/Nestle or Masaracchia; they first appeared in print in the new GCS edition of Cyril's CI. George's commentary survives solely in MS Vat. syr. 154, where the passage extracted as Cyril, CI fr. 3b Kin./Brü. is found on fol. 21v b and 22v b – 23r a. In this passage, George first discusses the timing of the star's appearance and cites by name a work by John Chrysostom as well as Cyril's CI (fol. 21v b). After some intervening material, George transitions to discussing the nature of the star, mentioning John, Cyril and Theodotus of Ancyra, though without naming specific works by these authors. The sentence referring to Julian follows immediately after this one on fol. 22v b.

Given his earlier naming of Cyril's CI, we can be confident that George's mention of Julian in this sentence depends upon that same source. Substantiating evidence is that, in his rebuttal of Julian, George repeats verbatim a sentence of Cyril's own refutation in CI fr. 3a.Footnote 42 Thus, George had no independent access to Julian's text and was entirely reliant upon Cyril. What is more, there is good reason to think that George was drawing upon the same lacunose seventh-century biblical catena found in MS British Library Add. 17214 from which comes CI fr. 3a. In the catena, CI fr. 3a is sandwiched between an extract from the sixth of Chrysostom's Homilies on Matthew (fol. 37r) and an extract from On the Nativity by Theodotus of Ancyra (fol. 39r), the same two texts also mentioned by George when he discusses the nature of the star.Footnote 43 The occurrence of these same sources in both the catena and George cannot be a coincidence; the most likely explanation is that George was using this catena, or one related to it, when composing his Commentary on Matthew, which would mean that George possibly had before him no more of the text of CI than we ourselves have in CI fr. 3a.Footnote 44 The attribution of this objection to Julian appears in at least one later Syriac text. The twelfth-century bishop Dionysius bar Salibi, in his Commentary on the Gospels, also mentioned this Julianic argument, almost certainly drawing upon George's earlier exposition since he repeats, at times verbatim, all three testimonia to Julian's CG found in that earlier text.Footnote 45

George's fragment does not repeat verbatim the criticism of Julian observed in the last passage but it does resonate with it. Although Cyril did not mention ‘astrologers’ as does George here, he did claim that the star was not a ‘known’ star; one could reasonably deduce that Julian objected to the notion that the star was unknown specifically to such experts. If so, then even though George's reference to Julian's speech is marked by the particle which might indicate a quotation, his testimonium would be entirely dependent upon the previous, being merely George's own rephrasing of Cyril's description of Julian's position.Footnote 46 It could be that George both drew upon this catena and had access to Cyril's CI directly, so we must leave open the possibility that his statement does reflect Julian's actual words cited by Cyril in an otherwise lost passage. Whatever the case, the position attributed to Julian by George coincides with the interpretation offered above for the previous fragment, namely that Julian objected to the view that the magi's star was not one of the known heavenly bodies.

CG fr. 108 apud CI fr. 41 (page 889.18–20 Kaufhold):

Tell me then, how can you dare accuse [Christ] of disregarding those earlier people and allotting the calling and salvation through Christ to those who just lived in the last days?

This brief testimonium appears in the middle of a longer extract from Book 16 of Cyril's CI that is preserved in a miaphysite florilegium titled ‘Proofs concerning the holy mysteries of the body and blood of our Saviour’, which survives in three British Library MSS: Add. 12155, fol. 81r; Add. 14532, fols. 79v–80r; and Add. 14538, fol. 115v.Footnote 47 The first two manuscripts were used by Nestle in Neumann's 1880 edition of CG, with the Syriac text of the Cyril fragment being published in the introductory section as CI fr. 25 and the corresponding Latin translation of the Syriac as CI fr. 34.Footnote 48 However, Neumann did not include this passage in his critical edition of CG later in that publication, nor was it included in Masaracchia's 1990 edition, despite Cyril's response giving us a glimpse of Julian's argument. Julian's criticism must have been an attack on the problematic particularity of the divine revelation and salvation effected through Jesus, with him pointing out that Christianity seemingly offers little hope to those countless persons who lived before the time of the incarnation. This forms part of a larger theme in CG, as can be seen in fr. 20 Mas. (apud CI 3.46) in which Julian attacks the notion that God chose Israel as his special nation. The new fragment deriving from Book 16 of Cyril's CI indicates that he revisited this theme in his treatment of the gospels in his second book, presenting the temporal particularity of the timing of the incarnation as being just as problematic as the ethnic particularity of God's choice of Israel above all other nations, a criticism of Christianity also voiced by Porphyry.Footnote 49

CG fr. 109 apud CI fr. 43 (page 890.4–6 Kaufhold):

Thus, [Jesus] takes as an example the eye of a needle and a camel, not [meaning] the animal as the wicked, utterly foolish and idiotic Julian imagined, but instead the thick rope that is in every ship.

This passage comes from a catena on the Old and New Testaments made up of extracts from various Greek and Syriac biblical commentators, completed in 861 by a monk named Severus. It survives in three manuscripts, Vat. syr. 103 (fol. 326v), dated to the ninth or tenth century, and two manuscripts copied from it: Vat. syr. 283 (fol. 95r–v) and British Library Add. 12144 (fol. 200r).Footnote 50 In the prolegomenon to Neumann's 1880 edition of CG, Nestle included the Syriac text of this passage as CI fr. 21 and the Latin translation as CI fr. 29,Footnote 51 but Neumann did not include it as a fragment or a testimonium in his edition of Julian's CG; nor did Masaracchia, despite the fact that it does add, albeit slightly, to our knowledge of Julian's treatise. The passage tells us that Julian at some point dealt with the dominical denunciation of wealth found in Matthew 19:24 / Mark 10:25 / Luke 18:25. Two centuries before Julian, Celsus raised this passage in his own polemic against Christianity, arguing that Jesus borrowed and corrupted this idea from Pl. Leg. 743a,Footnote 52 though it is impossible to say whether Julian's argument had anything in common with that of the earlier Platonist. Moreover, the passage is treated as a problematic text requiring resolution in Macarius Magnes’ apologetic treatise, which must have been written close to the time of Julian.Footnote 53

We can surmise that Julian treated the passage in a dismissive or even mocking manner, probably pointing to the absurdity of a camel going through the eye of the needle, since this is the difficulty resolved in Cyril's indignant reply. Such dismissive mockery is also what we find in Julian, CG fr. 1 Bianchi (apud CI fr. 72 Kin./Brü.), which points out that, because fishermen typically kill their prey, Jesus’ description of his disciples as ‘fishers of people’ (Luke 5:10 / Matthew 4:19) suggests that their ministry led to the destruction rather than the salvation of the people they caught. The two other passages Bianchi has highlighted from Philagathos are even more to the point, since they also attack Jesus’ impossibly high ethical standard, specifically the call to abandon wives for the sake of following Christ (CG fr. 2 Bianchi apud CI fr. 73 Kin./Brü., commenting upon Matthew 19:29 / Mark 10:29 / Luke 18:29–30) and the command to sell all one's possessions, which, Julian points out, would be impossible to fulfil if everyone obeyed it (CG fr. 3 Bianchi apud CI fr. 74 Kin./Brü., commenting upon Matthew 19:21 / Mark 10:21 / Luke 18:22).Footnote 54 Indeed, the saying about a camel passing through the eye of a needle comes from the same episode in the synoptics as these other passages, namely the story of the rich young ruler, so all of these fragments probably derive from the same section of the second book of CG.Footnote 55

CG fr. 110 apud CI fr. 64b (page 890.16–17 Kaufhold):

From the eighteenth book by the same author. When Julian ridiculed Christians who honour the martyrs, [Cyril] opposed him as follows:

This brief testimonium survives in the aforementioned miaphysite florilegium, in a single manuscript. British Library Add. 12155, fols. 87r–104r contains a unique section of fourteen numbered extracts that the scribe added to his Vorlage, and within it appear four unique citations from Books 16 and 18 of Cyril's CI.Footnote 56 The testimonium above is the heading added by the compiler for one of these passages which is found on fol. 101v. Neumann included the passage as CG fr. 13, though Masaracchia omitted it from her edition.Footnote 57 Unfortunately, it adds little to our knowledge of Julian's CG, since we already have extant other passages in which he mocks Christian devotion to the martyrs (cf. CG frr. 47; 81–2 apud CI 6.25; 10.11; 10.17).

CG fr. 111 apud CI fr. 75 (page 891.21–3 Kaufhold):

But Julian raised the following objection to this: if Luke recorded the legal genealogy, why does he call Obed the son of Boaz and not the son of Mahlon instead, since it was for Mahlon that Boaz, in accordance with the law, begot [Obed] by Ruth, whom he had taken in order to raise up a descendant for Mahlon?Footnote 58

As noted above, this is one of three new fragments from Julian's CG that are cited in George of B‘eltan's unpublished Commentary on Matthew found in MS Vat. syr. 154. Although George does not name Cyril as his source for this Julianic objection, the fact that he elsewhere explicitly cites from Cyril's CI suggests that he was probably drawing upon it here too.Footnote 59 Given the lacunose state of MS British Library Add. 17214, from which George probably drew CG fr. 91b, this testimonium may likewise derive from a fragment of Cyril's CI included among the lost pages of that manuscript. At least three other Syriac authors also report this Julianic objection. Coming from the Church of the East, George's contemporary Theodore bar Koni and the later commentator Isho‘dad of Merv mention it, both of them probably reliant upon Theodore of Mopsuestia as their source.Footnote 60 The passages from Theodore bar Koni and Isho‘dad were published by Guida in the Appendix to his 1994 edition of Theodore of Mopsuestia's Against Julian as Theodore of Mopsuestia, De Iul. test. 1.Footnote 61 As mentioned above, Dionysius bar Salibi also repeats the objection, probably drawing upon George.Footnote 62 In addition to these Syriac authors, Jerome also passed down a much simplified version of it, amounting to little more than asserting that Julian claimed the genealogies in Matthew and Luke contradicted one another (CG fr. 90 Mas. apud Jer. Comm. in Mt. 1.16). In response, Jerome pointed out that Eusebius and Africanus had already answered this problem.Footnote 63 The Syriac tradition, however, represented by the above passage from George, preserves a fuller version of Julian's critique that shows Jerome's reply to be insufficient since Julian's objection was already formulated as a response to the explanation offered by Africanus and Eusebius.

In both his well-known Ecclesiastical History and his less well-known but highly influential Quaestiones evangelicae, Eusebius solved the contradiction between the two genealogies of Jesus by endorsing the solution of Julius Africanus, who proposed that Matthew was recording Joseph's biological lineage, Luke his legal lineage. On this line of reasoning, the two lines of descent diverged thanks to the ancient Israelite custom of Levirate marriage which obliged a man to marry a widow of a deceased relative and raise up descendants for the dead husband.Footnote 64 Julian's objection in the passage above only makes sense as a response to this explanation from Eusebius and Africanus. His corresponding objection would seem to be: ‘If Luke was recording the legal genealogy of Joseph, as Eusebius claims, why then did he not do so when he came to Obed's father? For, while Boaz was Obed's biological father, Mahlon was in fact his legal father in light of the fact that Boaz's marriage to Ruth was an instance of Levirate marriage. Eusebius’ proposed solution is, therefore, false because Luke was in fact not recording legal descent, as demonstrated by his naming of Boaz as Obed's father.’

Scholars have thus far seemingly not noticed that in this criticism Julian must have been responding to Eusebius, and recently Cook has argued that it is ‘unlikely’ that Julian would even have been aware of Eusebius’ ‘somewhat obscure text’ Quaestiones evangelicae.Footnote 65 Cook proposes instead that Julian's objections to the resurrection accounts, despite appearing similar to the problems Eusebius addressed in his Quaestiones evangelicae, were instead ‘probably inspired by one of Porphyry's arguments’.Footnote 66 I propose, on the contrary, that the above fragment all but proves that Julian must have been aware of either Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History or his Quaestiones evangelicae, and that the latter is more likely to have been his source, in light of the similarities already identified by Cook between his criticisms of the resurrection accounts and the problems dealt with by Eusebius in that text.Footnote 67 The present fragment is thus further evidence that Julian constructed his polemic against Christianity using Eusebius as his foil. Moreover, we should not miss the sophistication of Julian's critique, which requires not merely understanding the complex solution proposed by Africanus and Eusebius but also knowing the obscure book of Ruth well enough to realize the problem it posed to their explanation.

CG fr. 112 apud CI fr. 76 (page 892.3–4 Kaufhold):

Julian here says, ‘Why, when frankincense was offered to Christ,Footnote 68 do you yourselves not burn frankincense but a perfume compound instead?’

Like CG frr. 91b and 111, this passage comes from George of B‘eltan's unpublished Commentary on Matthew. Because it alludes to the offering of frankincense to the infant Jesus, this criticism presumably derives from Julian's treatment of the canonical infancy narratives.Footnote 69 As with fr. 111, we can plausibly conjecture that Cyril's CI was George's unnamed source for this Julianic testimonium and that the passage of Cyril's treatise upon which he drew may have been found among the lost portion of the catena in MS British Library Add. 17214.Footnote 70 As noted above, Dionysius bar Salibi later repeats this Julianic objection, probably drawing upon George.Footnote 71 This new passage is noteworthy for at least two reasons. First, while it is clear that Julian's primary aim in CG was to undermine the sacred texts that served as the foundation for Christian belief, he also on occasion commented on Christian ritual practice, including denouncing the inefficacy of making the sign of the cross (CG fr. 43.11–13 Mas. apud CI 6.15.13–15), pointing out the inability of baptism to change a person's moral state (CG fr. 59.16–23 Mas. apud CI 7.38.18–25), and claiming that devotion to the tombs of the martyrs involved defilement (CG fr. 81.3–14 apud CI 10.11.5–17). The present passage extends this motif by showing that Julian, rather surprisingly, also addressed the kind of incense used in the liturgy.

This leads to the second noteworthy aspect of this passage. Julian's comment seemingly assumes that Christian rituals should be patterned after what one finds in the New Testament, specifically the offering of frankincense to Jesus by the magi. This could imply that, if Christians simply burned frankincense in their worship rather than the mixed compound that they currently use, their worship would be legitimate, or at least in harmony with ritual practice among other religious groups. It is difficult to discern how best to contextualize this seemingly positive remark given that elsewhere in CG Julian finds nothing about Christian ritual practice to endorse, consistently portraying them as having departed from the legitimate cultic practices of the Greeks, Romans and Jews. It could be that the comment was intended to contrast the practice of Jesus’ earliest followers in the New Testament with the corruptions that occurred later, as Julian elsewhere asserts (cf. CG fr. 79.5–8 Mas. apud CI 10.1.14–16). The passage might also be relying on an assumed deprecation of an incense compound concocted artificially by humans, perhaps seen as a debauched luxury, in contrast to the natural simplicity of frankincense as a material used for honouring the divine.Footnote 72 Whatever the case, this passage from Julian is noteworthy as one of our earliest references to the burning of incense in Christian worship.Footnote 73

CG fr. 113 apud CI fr. 77 (page 892.9–12 Kaufhold):

But the reprobate Julian, along with others, severely criticizes John at this pointFootnote 74 for having uttered an obvious falsehood with these words, since the world could record and narrate not only what Jesus did in three and a half years but also all the stories from the beginning [of time] until the present.

Although Isho‘dad's Commentary on John has long been available in both Syriac and English translations, the above passage citing Julian has only been taken into account in scholarship on Julian's CG with the new edition of Cyril's CI, which prints this as CI fr. 77. This is not the only time Isho‘dad mentions Julian. As noted above, in his Commentary on Matthew he also has a version of CG fr. 111, which he attributes to both Julian and Porphyry. Although Julian alone is named in CG fr. 113 from his Commentary on John, Porphyry is perhaps to be understood as among the ‘others’ who have criticized this Johannine passage along with Julian.Footnote 75 Isho‘dad does not name Contra Galilaeos as the source for this criticism, but that is the most probable text from which it came, perhaps mediated via one of the lost books of the second decade of Cyril's CI.Footnote 76 While one could hardly describe the criticism of John 21:25 offered here by Julian as the kind of sophisticated critique of the gospels evident in CG fr. 111, it is nevertheless in keeping with his polemical approach elsewhere in CG. In the opening fragment of the treatise he claimed that by ‘exploiting that childish and senseless part of the soul that has a fondness for myths, [Christianity] gives its fairy tale the credibility of truth’ (ἀποχρησαμένη δὲ τῷ φιλομύθῳ καὶ παιδαριώδει καὶ ἀνοήτῳ τῆς ψυχῆς μορίῳ, τὴν τερατολογίαν εἰς πίστιν ἤγαγεν ἀληθείας).Footnote 77 The hyperbole employed in John 21:25, which, as he points out, is patently false if taken literally, is probably precisely the kind of ‘fairy tale’ (τερατολογία) he believed Christianity had used to deceive the senseless masses. Moreover, this criticism of John 21:25 put forth here in CG fr. 113 serves as a fitting complement to CG fr. 109 examined above, since in CG fr. 109 Julian seemingly mocked a passage that claimed God could do something obviously impossible (that is, pass a camel through the eye of a needle), while here in CG fr. 113 he points out that the gospels also present something as being impossible although in fact it is well within the realm of possibility (that is, writing enough books to recount all of Jesus’ deeds). The upshot of both criticisms is that the gospels are out of touch with reality and not to be trusted. If it is correct that Julian's second book focussed on the four gospels and that he proceeded through them basically in sequence, then this objection in CG fr. 113 would come from the very end of his second book, focussing as it does on the final verse of the fourth gospel.

CONCLUSION

The harvest of new knowledge from these fragments enriches our understanding of Julian's Contra Galilaeos in several respects. First, it provides further evidence that Julian's critique of Christianity engaged with the prior tradition of pagan polemic and Christian apologetic. In the most thorough study of Julian's sources yet undertaken, Bouffartigue concluded that Julian knew Eusebius’ Praeparatio evangelica and at least Book 1 of his Demonstratio evangelica.Footnote 78 More recently, Boulnois has raised the possibility that Julian was responding to Origen's Contra Celsum.Footnote 79 The above analysis of CG fr. 91 suggests that Julian was aware either of Origen's treatment of the magi's star in that text or of Eusebius’ similar discussion in Demonstratio evangelica Book 9. Moreover, CG fr. 111 proves that he was interacting with other texts in Eusebius’ corpus, most likely his Quaestiones evangelicae.

This leads to the second observation. Elm has recently described Julian's treatise as ‘sophisticated’,Footnote 80 and this is nowhere more apparent than in CG fr. 111, in which he identifies a significant problem in what was at the time the most widespread explanation for Jesus’ discordant genealogies and displays an impressive knowledge of obscure biblical texts. Nevertheless, this is but one aspect of Julian's critique of the gospels. For alongside such incisive criticisms we also find comparatively simplistic objections in CG frr. 109 and 113, as well as CG fr. 1 Bianchi. Julian's attack on the gospels seemingly was a mixture of both kinds of arguments. When combatting the interpretation of the gospels offered by a learned bishop such as Eusebius, Julian shows himself to be an equally sophisticated exegete. However, when addressing the stories in the gospels directly, he apparently thought mocking derision was the best way to show the falsity of what he regarded as trivial fairy tales.

Third, the preceding study answers questions about how Julian's CG was received by the medieval Syriac tradition. These later authors were, at best, relying upon the refutations of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Cyril. However, it seems that often the chain of dependence was more complex. For example, Dionysius bar Salibi was perhaps drawing upon George of B‘eltan when he reported three Julianic objections; and George himself was probably reliant, at least in part and maybe entirely, upon the anonymous florilegium of extracts in MS BL Add. 17214. Julian's CG had a longer afterlife in the Syriac world than is often recognized, but there were multiple layers of mediation at work.

Finally, this study has highlighted the need for a new edition of Julian's Contra Galilaeos. Knowledge of the text has grown considerably since Masaracchia's 1990 edition and a comprehensive reassessment of our single most important source is now in order in light of the new GCS edition of Cyril's CI. Once that has been completed, the new edition of Julian's CG can join Becker's 2016 edition of Porphyry's Contra Christianos, and we will be positioned to undertake a fresh study of the development of anti-Christian polemic and Christian apologetic response over the course of Late Antiquity.

Footnotes

The research leading to this article was supported by a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council (DE180101539). An earlier version was presented as a lecture for the ERC-funded FLOS project (‘Florilegia Syriaca: The intercultural dissemination of Greek Christian thought in Syriac and Arabic in the first millennium c.e.’) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; I am grateful for comments received on that occasion from Emiliano Fiori, Lucas von Rompay and other colleagues.

References

1 Julian, CG fr. 1.2–4 (page 87 Masaracchia [henceforth, Mas.]). For a recent introduction to Julian's treatise, see Riedweg, C., ‘Anti-Christian polemics and pagan onto-theology: Julian's Against the Galilaeans’, in Rebenich, S. and Wiemer, H.-U. (edd.), A Companion to Julian the Apostate (Leiden, 2020), 245–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the historical context, see Elm, S., Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (Berkeley, 2012), 300–2Google Scholar.

2 Cf. Marcone, A., ‘Il Contro i Galilei di Giuliano edito da Voltaire. Storia—e paradossi—di un pamphlet di polemica religiosa’, in Bencivenni, A., Cristofori, A., Muccioli, F., Salvaterra, C. (edd.), PHILOBIBLOS. Scritti in onore di Giovanni Geraci (Milan, 2019), 545–66Google Scholar. On Voltaire's admiration for Julian, see Rebenich, S., ‘Julian's afterlife: the reception of a Roman emperor’, in Rebenich, S. and Wiemer, H.-U. (edd.), A Companion to Julian the Apostate (Leiden, 2020), 398–420, at 409–10Google Scholar.

3 Neumann, K.J., Iuliani imperatoris librorum contra Christianos quae supersunt. Collegit, recensuit, prolegomenis instruxit C.I. Neumann. Insunt Cyrilli Alexandrini fragmenta syriaca ab Eberhaerdo Nestle edita (Leipzig, 1880)Google Scholar; translated as Neumann, K.J., Kaiser Julians Bücher gegen die Christen (Leipzig, 1880)Google Scholar. In addition to several fragments from the lost second decade of Cyril's CI, Neumann also included passages from Jerome (frr. 1, 15, 16 Neumann [henceforth, Neu.]), Theodore of Mopsuestia (frr. 3–7), Photius (fr. 12) and the Suda (fr. 18).

4 W.C. Wright, The Works of the Emperor Julian, vol. 3 (New York, 1923). Wright took into account studies of the textual tradition: Klimik, P., Coniectanea in Julianum et Cyrilli Alexandrini contra illum libros, Dissertatio inauguralis (Vratislavia, 1883)Google Scholar; Gollwitzer, T., Observationes criticae in Iuliani imperatoris contra Christianos libros, Dissertatio inauguralis (Erlangen, 1886)Google Scholar; Asmus, R., Julians Galiläerschrift im Zusammenhang mit seinem übrigen Werken. Ein Beitrag zur Erklärung und Kritik der julianischen Schriften (Freiburg, 1904)Google Scholar.

5 Masaracchia, E., Giuliano Imperatore, Contra Galilaeos: Introduzione, testo critico e traduzione (Rome, 1990)Google Scholar. For the fragments from Theodore, Masaracchia drew on the study by Guida, A., ‘Frammenti inediti del “contro i Galilei” di Giuliano e della replica di Teodoro di Mopsuestia’, Prometheus 9 (1983), 139–63Google Scholar.

6 Guida, A., Teodoro di Mopsuestia: Replica a Giuliano imperatore (Florence, 1994)Google Scholar.

7 A. Guida, ‘Altre testimonianze e un nuovo frammento del “Contro i Galilei” di Giuliano Imperatore’, in M. Serena Funghi (ed.), ΟΔΟΙ ΔΙZΗΣΙΟΣ – Le vie della ricerca: studi in onore di Francesco Adorno (Florence, 1996), 241–52. These passages are now Cyril, CI frr. 8, 15, 21, 24, 25, 26 Kinzig/Brüggemann (henceforth, Kin./Brü.).

8 Bianchi, N., ‘Nuovi frammenti del Contra Galilaeos di Giuliano (dalle omelie di Filagato da Cerami)’, BollClass 27 (2006), 89–104Google Scholar. C. Riedweg, ‘A German Renaissance humanist as predecessor & some further surprises: on the direct and indirect tradition of Cyril's Contra Iulianum’, in G. Huber-Rebenich and S. Rebenich (edd.), Interreligiöse Konflikte im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert: Julian ‘Contra Galilaeos’ – Kyrill ‘Contra Iulianum’ (Berlin, 2020), 257–85, at 262 has proposed that the two new fragments be numbered CG frr. 100a and 100b. On the hypothesis that Cyril served as Philagathos’ unnamed source for this Julianic material, these passages were published as Cyril, CI frr. 72, 73, 74 Kin./Brü.

9 Trovato, S., ‘Un nuovo frammento e nuove testimonianze del “Contra Galilaeos” di Giuliano l'Apostata’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 62 (2012), 265–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 265–7.

10 Riedweg (n. 8), 248 n. 16.

11 Giavatto, A. and Muller, R., Julien l'Empereur: Contre les Galiléens (Paris, 2018)Google Scholar.

12 A. Guida, ‘La trasmissione del testo del Contra Galilaeos di Giuliano e un nuovo misterioso frammento’, in G. Huber-Rebenich and S. Rebenich (edd.), Interreligiöse Konflikte im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert: Julian ‘Contra Galilaeos’ – Kyrill ‘Contra Iulianum’ (Berlin, 2020), 91–109.

13 A.M. Ritter and P. Toth, ‘Sechs ps.-justinische Traktate’, in C. Riedweg, C. Horn and D. Wyrwa (edd.), Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie: Vol. 5. Philosophie der Kaiserzeit und der Spätantike (Basel, 2018), 2256–8. Cf. Riedweg (n. 8), 260, who proposes that these fragments be called CG frr. 91c and 95b. Fuller discussion, including the Greek text, in W. Kinzig and T. Brüggemann (edd.), Kyrill von Alexandrien I: Gegen Julian, Teil 2: Buch 6–10 und Fragmente (Berlin, 2017), 941–3.

14 Riedweg, C. and Kinzig, W. (edd.), Kyrill von Alexandrien I: Gegen Julian, Teil 1: Buch 1–5 (Berlin, 2016)Google Scholar; Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13).

15 Cf. Rebenich, S. and Wiemer, H.-U., ‘Introduction: approaching Julian’, in Rebenich, S. and Wiemer, H.-U. (edd.), A Companion to Julian the Apostate (Leiden, 2020), 1–37Google Scholar, at 31: ‘What remains to be done is to produce an edition of the fragments of Julian's treatise which takes into account the insights that have been reached by close study of Cyril's text.’

16 For an overview of Cyril's works in Syriac translation, see H. Kaufhold, ‘Werke des Kyrill in syrischer Überlieferung’, in G. Huber-Rebenich and S. Rebenich (edd.), Interreligiöse Konflikte im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert: Julian ‘Contra Galilaeos’ – Kyrill ‘Contra Iulianum’ (Berlin, 2020), 229–55; for a detailed analysis of the surviving translations, King, D., The Syriac Versions of the Writings of Cyril of Alexandria: A Study in Translation Technique (Leuven, 2008)Google Scholar. On the accuracy of the Syriac transmission of CI, Kaufhold in Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 829 comments: ‘Der syrische Text folgt dort, wo ein grieschischer Text erhalten ist, diesem in aller Regel ziemlich genau. Das wird man auch bei den Stellen, wo der griechischen Text verlorengegangen ist, voraussetzen können.’ Based on my own study of the text, his description seems accurate.

17 Cf. the overview table of all the Syriac fragments in Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 840–3.

18 Riedweg (n. 8), 259–60 has already begun this process with respect to one passage from Cyril's eighth book that survives in both Greek and Syriac. Although the Greek manuscript tradition unanimously reads φασι at CI 8.48.24, seeming to report an objection from unnamed pagan opponents, the quotation of this passage in the Syriac translation of Severus of Antioch's Contra impium Grammaticum has the singular participle (‘he says’), explicitly attributing this objection to Julian in the opening editorial comment to the passage (page 868.6 Kaufhold). As a result, Riedweg proposes that the plural φασι be emended to the singular φησι and that the passage be added to the new fragments of Julian's CG with the designation fr. 65a. This, however, seems too hasty a decision since there are other indications from the wider context that Cyril has in mind not just a single opponent in this section but a larger group of unnamed contemporary Hellenes (plural references at CI 8.46.1 οἱ δι᾽ ἐναντίας, 8.50.2–3 παρὰ τοῖς Ἑλλήνων παισί).

19 Riedweg (n. 8), 260 n. 17.

20 Cf. Riedweg and Kinzig (n. 14), XCII, CV–CVIII. See also Julian's allusions to topics he intends to treat later in CG, all of which pertain to Jesus and the gospels: CG fr. 50.3–4 Mas. (apud CI 6.42.7–8), fr. 51.3–5 Mas. (apud CI 7.1.14–15) and fr. 64.5–7 Mas. (apud CI 8.15.9–10), with the last passage referring explicitly to the δεύτερον σύγγραμμα of CG.

21 In his German translation, Kaufhold transliterates as ’qdys, seemingly reading initial as a preposition, and adds in brackets that perhaps this is meant to be ἀκοντισμός or ‘Sternschnuppen’ (‘shooting stars’). However, if is read as a part of the word rather than as a preposition, then the Syriac is simply a transliteration of δοκίδες, as also recognized by Nestle (Neumann [n. 3], 65; cf. Masaracchia [n. 5], 185). Hence, I translate the word as ‘meteors’. Cf. Smith, J. Payne, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford, 1903)Google Scholar, s.v.

22 All English translations from Syriac are mine, though I have consulted Kaufhold's German translation of the Syriac fragments published in Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 761–818. I am also grateful for the comments on my initial draft translation offered by my research assistant Hannah Stork.

23 Cf. Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 823–4, 835; Wright, W., Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1871), 2.915–17Google Scholar.

24 Neumann (n. 3), 52–3, 64–5, 234.

25 The lengthier Cyril extract from which Neumann and Masaracchia took their Julian fragments was partially cited by Cook, J.G., The Interpretation of the New Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism (Peabody, MA, 2002), 290Google Scholar, who also noted that Celsus commented on the story of the star, though Cook did not discuss Origen's own view, which was followed by Eusebius and apparently opposed by Julian (see below).

26 Cf. T. Brüggemann, “Ἀποστροφή in Contra Iulianum: Julian als fiktives Gegenüber Kyrills”, in G. Huber-Rebenich and S. Rebenich (edd.), Interreligiöse Konflikte im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert: Julian ‘Contra Galilaeos’ – Kyrill ‘Contra Iulianum’ (Berlin, 2020), 153–64. On Cyril's use of rhetoric in the treatise more broadly, see M. Shramm, ‘Kyrills Argumentationsstrategien in Contra Iulianum: zu Logik und Rhetorik seiner Widerlegung’, in G. Huber-Rebenich and S. Rebenich (edd.), Interreligiöse Konflikte im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert: Julian ‘Contra Galilaeos’ – Kyrill ‘Contra Iulianum’ (Berlin, 2020), 131–51.

27 Orig. C. Cels. 1.58. Text from Borret, M., Origène. Contre Celse, Tome 1 (Paris, 1967), 236Google Scholar. Translation from H. Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge, 2003), 53. At C. Cels. 1.34 Origen noted that Celsus cited the passage about the Bethlehem star in Matthew but did not say how he interpreted it, so it is unclear whether his comments on this issue in this later passage respond to lost criticisms from his opponent. A precedent for Origen's view is found in Clement of Alexandria's report that the Valentinian Theodotus described the star as being ‘strange and new’ (ξένος ἀστὴρ καὶ καινός) and as having ‘destroyed the ancient order of the stars’ (καταλύων τὴν παλαιὰν ἀστροθεσίαν) (exc. Thdot. 4.74.2; text from R.P. Casey, The Excerpta ex Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria [London, 1934], 86).

28 Orig. C. Cels. 1.59.

29 Euseb. DE 9.1.11–13. Text from Heikel, I.A., Eusebius Werke, Band 6: Die Demonstratio evangelica (Leipzig, 1913)Google Scholar.

30 CG fr. 53.7–11 Mas. referring to Euseb. PE 11.5.5 and 11.5.7. Cf. Bouffartigue, J., L'empereur Julien et la culture de son temps (Paris, 1992), 300, 384–9Google Scholar; Elm (n. 1), 305.

31 M.-O. Boulnois, ‘La diversité des nations et l’élection d'Israël: y a-t-il une influence du Contre Celse d'Origène sur le Contre les Galiléens de Julien?’, in S. Kaczmarek, H. Pietras and A. Dziadowiec (edd.), Origeniana Decima: Origen as a Writer (Papers of the 10th International Origen Congress) (Leuven, 2011), 803–30; M.-O. Boulnois, ‘Le Contre les Galiléens de l'empereur Julien répond-il au Contre Celse d'Origène?’, in E. Amato, V. Fauvinet-Ranson and B. Pouderon (edd.), ΕΝ ΚΑΛΟΙΣ ΚΟΙΝΟΠΡΑΓΙΑ: Hommages à la mémoire de Pierre-Louis Malosse et Jean Bouffartigue (Nantes, 2014), 103–23; Boulnois, M.-O., ‘The biblical text and its variants at the heart of the debate between the Emperor Julian and Cyril of Alexandria: the cases of Genesis 6,2 and 49,10’, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 25 (2021), 284–319CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Boulnois (this note [2014]), 110 raises the possibility that Julian was responding to Origen's criticism of Celsus specifically on the topic of the magi's star.

32 Cyril's response to Julian is thus largely a reaffirmation of the view held by Origen and Eusebius (i.e. that the magi's star was something like a comet), though with a denial that this meant it was something strange or novel as they had claimed.

33 Serv. ad Verg. Aen. 2.801. Text from G. Thilo, Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii Aeneidos Libros I–III Commentarii (Leipzig, 1878), 331. I am grateful to my research assistant Edward Jeremiah for drawing my attention to this passage.

34 Cf. de Witt, N.W., ‘The influence of the saviour sentiment upon Virgil’, TAPhA 54 (1923), 39–40Google Scholar; Adair, A., ‘A critical look at the history of interpreting the star of Bethlehem in scientific literature and biblical studies’, in Barthel, P. and van Kooten, G. (edd.), The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Experts on the Ancient Near East, the Greco-Roman World, and Modern Astronomy (Leiden, 2015), 43–84Google Scholar, at 72–3. Adair says the association between the star of Bethlehem and that of Aeneas goes back at least to D.F. Strauss in the nineteenth century.

35 Aug. De civ. D. 21.8. Text from Dombart, B. and Kalb, A., Sancti Aurelii Augustini De civitate Dei (Turnhout, 1955)Google Scholar.

36 Riedweg (n. 8), 261.

37 Citing from Guida (n. 12), 98: ‘Sileant igitur astrologi, et obmutescat Iulianus Caesar impius ille desertor stellam eam aegyptiam blaterans nomine Asaph, viderique quadringentesimo quoque anno. Nusquam enim hoc proditum antea, nec post annos MCCCCC et tres, tot enim a salutifero Christi ortu praeteriere, visa est: suo enim munere functa ab oculis mortalium prorsus evanuit, nec eius cursus cum syderibus aliis conveniebat.’

38 Guida (n. 12), 100.

39 For a survey of ancient views, see Aëtius, Placita 3.2. Cf. Guida (n. 12), 101.

40 Cf. Julian's description of the eternal and unchanging heavenly bodies in CG fr. 11 apud CI 2.50.

41 On this passage, see Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 826–7.

42 Cf. Cyril, CI fr. 3a (page 878.2–3 Kaufhold): ;   Cyril,   CI  fr.   3b (page 879.11–13 Kaufhold):

43 Cf. Wright (n. 23), 2.916–17; John Chrysostom, Hom. in Mt. 6.2 (PG 57.64); Theodotus of Ancyra, Hom. 1 (ACO 1.1.2, pages 87.33–88.3). I have consulted images of the manuscript to confirm Wright's description.

44 The other main idea George attributes to Cyril, that the magi arrived no more than eight days after Jesus’ birth (CI fr. 3b [page 879.3–4 Kaufhold]), is also found in CI fr. 3a (page 878.20 Kaufhold).

45 Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 828; Guida (n. 12), 102 n. 52. For the relevant passage, see Sedlacek, I. and Chabot, I.-B., Dionysii bar Salibi Commentarii in Evangelia (Louvain, 1960), 100–1Google Scholar (Syriac text); Sedlacek, I. and Chabot, I.-B., Dionysii bar Salibi Commentarii in Evangelia (Louvain, 1960), 75–6Google Scholar (Latin translation).

46 Cf. Guida (n. 12), 101–2 n. 52 who says that George depends upon Cyril and ‘unduly simplifies’ (‘semplifica indebitamente’) Julian's position.

47 Cf. Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 822.

48 Neumann (n. 3), frr. 25 (pages 61–2), 34 (pages 79–80).

49 Porphyry, Contra Christianos frr. 76F, 79F (Becker). Cf. Elm (n. 1), 308–9; Smith, R., Julian's Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (New York, 1995), 195–6Google Scholar.

50 Cf. Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 824, 836.

51 Neumann (n. 3), 56, 75.

52 Orig. Cels. 6.16.

53 Macarius Magnes, Monogenes 3.5. Cf. Goulet, R., Macarios de Magnésie: Le Monogénès (Paris, 2003)Google Scholar.

54 On the later Byzantine reaction to Julian's objection to the dominical command of poverty, see S. Trovato, ‘Un'eco del Contra Galilaeos in Liutprando di Cremona e ulteriori tasselli della polemica contro Giuliano nel Medioevo bizantino’, in G. Huber-Rebenich and S. Rebenich (edd.), Interreligiöse Konflikte Jahrhundert: Julian ‘Contra Galilaeos’ – Kyrill ‘Contra Iulianum’ (Berlin, 2020), 65–90.

55 Julian similarly mocked the dominical command of poverty in Ep. 115 as he took over the possessions of the church in Edessa.

56 Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 823; Wright (n. 23), 2.933. Kaufhold says that these pages contain ‘drei Zitate aus den Büchern 16 und 18 Kyrils’, though in his chart of fragments on pages 842–3 he lists four passages from this section: CI frr. 39, 40b, 42, 64b.

57 Neumann (n. 3), 62–3 (CI fr. 27 [Syriac]), 85–6 (CI fr. 48 [Latin]), 237 (CG fr. 13). Cf. Masaracchia (n. 5), 48.

58 Cf. Luke 3:32; Ruth 1:1–4; 4:9–10, 13–22.

59 Cf. Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 827.

60 Cf. Theodore bar Koni, Memra 8.12; Isho‘dad, Comm. in Mt. 1:15. Since it is attributed by Isho‘dad to both Julian and Porphyry, Becker included this criticism in his edition of Porphyry's Contra Christianos as fr. 54T. This could indicate that Porphyry first voiced this criticism and Julian took it from him, akin to the manner proposed for another passage from Isho‘dad by Cook, J.G., ‘Julian and Porphyry on the resurrection of Jesus in the gospels’, International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 10 (2016), 193–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, it seems more likely that the mention of both figures together is a result of a tendency among later authors to conflate earlier sources.

61 As noted by Guida (n. 6), 199, in frr. 62.27–32, 64.5–6 Mas. (apud CI 8.2.18–23; 8.15.9–10), Julian announced that he would deal with problems related to Jesus’ genealogy when he came to his second book; the present fragment appears to be from that discussion.

62 Sedlacek and Chabot (n. 45), CSCO 15.58 (Syriac text); CSCO 16.43 (Latin translation).

63 Julian's treatment of the gospel genealogies is also discussed in Boulnois (n. 31 [2014]), 108–10, though without reference to the passage above.

64 Euseb. Hist. eccl. 1.7.1–17; Ad Stephanum 4.

65 Cook (n. 61), 198.

66 Cook (n. 61), 204.

67 Julian's possible dependence upon Eusebius’ Quaestiones evangelicae was raised in Boulnois (n. 31 [2014]), 108 n. 18, with further evidence in Boulnois (n. 31 [2021]). In the latter article Boulnois proposes that Julian focussed on Jesus’ divergent genealogies in response to Origen's highlighting of Celsus’ silence on this point (Cels. 2.32). If so, then Julian was inspired by Origen to fill in the gaps of Celsus’ polemic but did so by responding to the solutions subsequently proffered by Eusebius.

68 Cf. Matt. 2.11.

69 Riedweg (n. 8), 261.

70 Cf. Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 827.

71 See Sedlacek and Chabot (n. 45), CSCO 15.109 (Syriac text); CSCO 16.81 (Latin translation).

72 Julian elsewhere refers positively to burning frankincense to the gods: Or. 2.23.32 (Bidez); 6.17.8 (Rochefort); Mis. 35.31 (Lacombrade); Ep. 98.41 (Bidez).

73 For an overview, see Harvey, S. Ashbrook, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Berkeley, 2006), 75–83Google Scholar, who (writing before the publication of the fragment of Julian) says Egeria's description of the Jerusalem liturgy c.381 ‘is the only mention of liturgical use [of incense] of which we can be certain at this early date’ (77).

74 The passage in view is John 21:25, which Isho‘dad has just cited.

75 As noted by Kaufhold (Kinzig and Brüggemann [n. 13], 827 n. 32), the anonymous Syriac catena on the gospels in Ming. syr. 480 contains a version of this same criticism of the final verse of the fourth gospel, although it attributes it to both Julian and Porphyry. Cf. Mingana, A., Catalogue of the Mingana Collection of Manuscripts (Cambridge, 1933), 1.869Google Scholar; Porphyry, Contra Christianos fr. 113D (Becker).

76 Cf. Kinzig and Brüggemann (n. 13), 827.

77 Julian, CG fr. 1.4–6 Mas. apud CI 2.2.29–30. See also CG fr. 51.4 Mas. apud CI 7.1.14–15, where Julian says he intends, presumably in his second book, to ‘scrutinize the fairy tale of the gospels and their chicanery’ (περὶ τῆς τῶν εὐαγγελίων τερατουργίας καὶ σκευωρίας ἐξετάζειν).

78 Bouffartigue (n. 30), 379–97. Elm (n. 1), 300–21 agrees with Bouffartigue's conclusions and provides further comparative analysis of Eusebius and Julian.

79 Boulnois (n. 31 [2011]); Boulnois (n. 31 [2014]); Boulnois (n. 31 [2021]).

80 Elm (n. 1), 317–18, pace Smith (n. 49), 205–6.