Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Given that the Emperor Julian wished to rebuild the Jewish Temple what were his motives? The following article states he wanted to;

This article from the non-scholarly Jerusalem Post bring another possible motivation for Julian's proposal. Julian's Persian invasion would've benefited from Jews living in Mesopotamia who presumably would've fought against the Persians or at least provided support for the Roman troops in some way.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Cont ... that-wasnt

Here is a different question about Julian.

Observations on various subjects - III. On the True Reading of the passage 1 Tim. iii. 16 (1773)
Johann Casper Vulthusen
https://books.google.com/books?id=cBlhAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA70

"Not to mention his trusting to that idle assertion of Julian the Apostate that Jesus was never called God by St. Paul."

Do we have this text available?

Thanks!

Julian may be my favorite person from antiquity. I've let many books go but I still have Hoffmann's Julian's Against the Galileans and Ammianus Marcellinus (and maybe even Vidal's Julian). I wish he had lived longer. Yes, he criticized Christians of his time, but I don't think it was any more than was called for and he tolerated them.

Steven Avery wrote: ↑Sun Oct 17, 2021 10:42 am Here is a different question about Julian.

Observations on various subjects - III. On the True Reading of the passage 1 Tim. iii. 16 (1773)
Johann Casper Vulthusen
https://books.google.com/books?id=cBlhAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA70

"Not to mention his trusting to that idle assertion of Julian the Apostate that Jesus was never called God by St. Paul."

Do we have this text available?

Thanks!

Not sure if this answers your question, but here is a link to an English translation of Julian's Against the Galileans in which he writes:

But you are so misguided that you have not even remained faithful to the teachings that were handed down to you by the apostles. And these also have been altered., so as to be worse and more impious, by those who came after. At any rate neither Paul nor Matthew nor Luke nor Mark ventured to call Jesus God. But the worthy John, since he perceived that a great number of people in many of the towns of Greece and Italy had already been infected by this disease, and because he heard, I suppose, that even the tombs of Peter and Paul were being worshipped ----secretly, it is true, but still he did hear this,----he, I say, was the first to venture to call Jesus God.


https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/juli ... 1_text.htm

Does this qualify as 'sock puppetry'?

Not only do I not know what sock puppetry is, I don't know who Steven Avery is either (other than a few things I've read that he's posted here and people's reactions to them). To me this is just another round of you doing what you do: giving names to or questioning the identity of people you don't like. That's been my experience of you from the first thing you ever said to me here ("WTF is this?! Is this Eisenman?!") to the present. I think you have an overactive brain, is all, and it's making you think about things (at least in my case) that I have the advantage of knowing aren't real.

I'm not Eisenman or Steven Avery or anyone else you care to imagine me to be. I'm a "nobody" who grew up secular and was observant in my 20's and early 30's and now (going on twenty years later) I like to pass time reading and commenting on the forum.

John2 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:13 pm Not sure if this answers your question, but here is a link to an English translation of Julian's Against the Galileans in which he writes:

Good job, thanks!
We hear this a lot now, I was surprised to see the argument way back when.

I disagree with Julian here though. My understanding these days is that early Christians believed that Jesus was God (in the guise of Daniel's "son of man" figure and such). Maybe the NT doesn't use the word "God" to describe him, and in that respect Julian may be right, but he is called the "son of God," the "son of man," etc., and Paul may refer to the Messiah as God in Rom. 9:5, though I gather the Greek is tricky here ("Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all").

So Julian may be technically correct (if Rom. 9:5 doesn't count), but to judge from the NT (even if Rom. 9:5 doesn't count), I would say that early Christians thought Jesus was divine and presented him as thinking such about himself (or about his post-resurrected self).

Yes, I was not taking any stance on the idea of Julian, I just thought it is worthy of note.

On Romans 9:5 there are really three translations.

1) an identity translation that says directly Jesus is God, in some modern versions

2) the pure AV text, while high Christology, does not say "Jesus is God"

Romans 9:5 (AV)
Whose are the fathers,
and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came,
who is over all,
God blessed for ever.
Amen.

3) a Socinian gloss (Burgon), that was put in the margin of the Revised Version

And I have been discussing this with a friend on the PureBibleForum.

My view, only 2 has merit.

Titus 2:13 - the modern versions mangle "our Saviour Jesus Christ"
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.ph ... hrist.455/