The Jews of Syrian Antioch and Emperor Julian’s Pagan Program

• In Event: Jews in Late Antiquity: Perspectives of Law, Art, and Imperial Policy

Abstract

In the middle of the fourth century CE, Emperor Julian (361-363), nephew of Constantine the Great, set out to return the Roman Empire to his own brand of paganism based on theurgic Neoplatonism. Julian believed that only proper worship of the gods would ensure their beneficence and guarantee the success of the Roman Empire. Faced with stiff resistance to his program from Christians and pagans alike while in Syrian Antioch, Julian wrote several works and engaged in a number of imperial projects in which Jewish texts, institutions, practices, and heroes were implicated.

Jews were useful tools in Syria because Syrian Neoplatonist philosophers believed Jewish Scriptures and practices to be authentic sources in the reconstruction of pagan (Hellenic) wisdom. Other pagans in Syria and Asia Minor worshipped a supreme being, keeping Sabbath and lighting lamps. For these groups, Jews and their texts were sources of authenticating authority. This paper will focus on Julian’s use of Jewish texts, practices, and the Jewish presence in the space of Antioch and its nearby holy suburb of Daphne to carve out sacred space and model orthopraxy for pagans. Julian claimed that Jews sacrificed in private, tithed, kept their dietary laws, and gave charity according to their ancestral laws. In the absence of pagan ancient religious texts to support “proper” pagan practice, Julian used Jewish texts as authoritative to legitimate “proper” pagan practices. Pagan interaction with real Antiochene Jews in the neighborhoods of Antioch and in Daphne, who sacrificed in private (ritual slaughter), tithed, kept their dietary laws, and gave charity, modeled these practices for pagans.

author

• Ari Finkelstein, University of Cincinnati