Description
By Juilan the Apostate. Translated by Emily Wilmer Cave Wright and Thomas Taylor.
Against the Galileans (where “Galileans” meant the followers of the man from Galilee, or Christians) was written by the last pagan Emperor of Rome, Flavius Claudius Julianus, who lived from 331-363 AD, as part of his attempts to reverse the Empire’s conversion to Christianity started by Emperor Constantine in 313 AD.
This work was acknowledged by one of Julian’s greatest critics, Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria, as one of the most powerful books of its sort ever written. Even though Cyril was Patriarch nearly 90 years after Julian’s death, he was motivated to write a refutation titled Contra Iulianum (“Against Julian”).
For more than 200 years, Julian’s book remained the standard criticism of Christianity. Finally, in an attempt to suppress the work, the Emperor Justinian I (527-565) ordered all copies of the book destroyed. As a result, the only record of Julian’s book remained in the parts quoted from in it in Cyril’s criticism.
It was only more than 1,200 years later that the English classical scholar Thomas Taylor (1758-1835) first translated Cyril’s work into English-and from that, attempted a reconstruction of Julian’s book based on Julian’s quotes from Cyril’s work.
Taylor titled this manuscript “The Arguments of the Emperor Julian against the Christians, translated from the Greek fragments preserved from the Greek fragments preserved by Cyril Bishop of Alexandria, to which are added, Extracts from the other works of Julian relative to the Christians” and privately published his reconstruction in 1809 for a very limited circle of friends. Taylor’s reconstruction was finally published for a larger audience by William Nevis in 1873.
This new edition contains the full Taylor reconstruction, along with his original appendices.
From 1913 to 1923, British-American classical philologist and Professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, Wilmer Cave Wright, retranslated all of Julian’s works. Wright included a new translation of the exact quotes only from Julian, as reproduced by Cyril, and some other remaining fragments.
Wright’s original manuscript is also included in this new edition, making it to be the most complete reconstruction of Julian’s book ever printed.
Flavius Claudius Julianus (331-363 AD) was Roman emperor from 361 to 363, a nephew of Constantine the Great, and a noted scholar and military leader who was proclaimed emperor by his troops. A persistent enemy of Christianity, he publicly announced his conversion to paganism in 361, thus acquiring the epithet “the Apostate.”
Emily Wilmer Cave Wright (née, France) (1868-1951) was a British-American classical philologist and Professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. Her academic achievements included studies at Girton College, Cambridge, a Fellow in Greek, Bryn Mawr College, a Fellow in Latin and Greek at the University of Chicago.
Thomas Taylor (1758 -1835) was a British classicist who was the first to translate into English the complete works of Aristotle and of Plato, while working as Assistant Secretary to the Society for the Encouragement of Art (the precursor to the Royal Society of Arts) in London.
Contents:
Introduction to the New Combined Edition
Introduction to the 1923 Edition by Wilmer Cave Wright
Part I: Section I – Against the Galileans: The remains of the three books, excerpted from Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum. Translated by Wilmer Cave Wright (1923).
Part I: Section II – Fragments Translated and compiled by Wilmer Cave Wright (1923).
Part II: Section I – The Arguments of the Emperor Julian against the Christians, translated from the Greek fragments preserved from the Greek fragments preserved by Cyril Bishop of Alexandria. Translated and compiled by Thomas Taylor (1809).
Part II: Section II – Extracts from the other Works of Julian relative to the Christians. Translated and compiled by Thomas Taylor (1809).
128 pages.
Softcover ISBN
978-1-91564-519-7
Hardcover ISBN
9781915645319
