09 Jan

In delving further in to the beginnings of separating the divine law and the political law as discussed by Cherisey I came across this writing by the Emperor Julian. 

"Julian spends time discussing how, even after having nominally embraced Jewish traditions, Galileans have really rejected them and only accepted their blasphemy of the gods (238A–B). He criticizes the belief that Jesus is the prophet that was predicted by Moses and, as Jesus, supposedly being the son of God, was not descended from Judah, and says that the idea of a god who claims to be the sole God creating a being equal to him (and thus a second God) goes against the monotheistic beliefs of Judaism (253A–B). He points out that Galileans have abandoned many of the central tenets of Judaism, such as the sacrificing of animals (305D) and its dietary restrictions (314C), and criticises the claim that God has set up a new law for them while Moses so adamantly warned against changing the law (320B). Along with abandoning Jewish teachings, Julian also charges the Galileans with abandoning those of the original apostles (327A). He claims that no apostle claimed that Jesus was God until John the Apostle, and he probably only did so to clarify an important dispute within a disunited church (327A). Galileans also disobey the words of Jesus, as they revere tombs and the dead, while Jesus referred to gravesites as places of impurity (335B). Julian then brings up other Jewish practices abandoned by Galileans such as circumcision and the celebration of Passover, wondering why they have abandoned such practices when they were assigned such importance in the Jewish law (351A), going so far as to claim that the religious practices of Moses and Abraham are far closer to the religious practices of the Greeks than those of the Galileans (356C).


Perhaps, as Jesus was a Galilean - one should start here?


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