web analytics
Categories
Catholic Church Emperor Julian Free speech / association Julian (novel)

JVLIAN excerpts – III

“Why were you so ungrateful to our gods
as to desert them for the Jews?”

—Julian, addressing the Christians

Julian


Libanius to Priscus
Antioch, April 380

You cannot imagine the pleasure I experienced when your letter was brought to me this evening.

Since I wrote you, I have not been idle. Through the office of the praetorian prefect at Constantinople, I have proposed myself for an audience with the Emperor. Theodosius has met very few people of our set, coming as he does from Spain, a country not noted for culture.

How often in the past we have been horrified by princes reputed to be good who, when raised to the throne of the world, have turned monstrous before our eyes? The late Valens for example, or Julian’s own brother, Caesar Gallus, a charming youth who brought terror to the East. We must be on guard, as always.

The question that now faces us is this: how seriously will Theodosius enforce the edict? It is customary for emperors who listen to the bishops to hurl insults at the very civilization that created them. They are inconsistent, but then logic has never been a strong point of the Christian faith.

The extraordinary paradox is the collusion of our princes with the bishops. The emperors pride themselves on being first magistrates of the Roman imperium, through whose senate they exercise their power; and though in reality we have not been Roman for a century, nevertheless, the form persists, making it impossible, one would think, for any prince who calls himself August to be Christian, certainly not as long as the Altar of Victory remains in the senate house at Rome. But confusion of this sort are inconsequential to the Christian mind as clouds to a day in summer, and as a teacher I no longer try to refute them; since most of my students are Christian, I suppose I ought to be grateful that they have chosen to come to me to be taught the very philosophy their faith subverts. It is a comedy, Priscus! It is tragedy!

Meanwhile, we can only wait and see what happens. The Emperor grows stronger in health every day, and it is thought that later this spring he may take the field against the Goths, who as usual are threatening the marches of Macedonia. If he decides to go north, this means he will not return to Constantinople till late summer or autumn, in which case I will have to attend him at Thessalonica or, worse, in the field. If so, I am confident the journey will be my last. For my health, unlike yours, continues to deteriorate.

Over the years I have made a number of notes for a biography of Julian. I have them before me now. All that remains is the final organization of the material—and of course the memoir. Please send it to me as soon as the copy is ready. I shall work on it this summer, as I am no longer lecturing. I thought it wise to go into seclusion until we know which way the wind blows.

There have been no incidents so far. My Christian friends come to see me as usual (rather a large number of my old students are now bishops, a peculiar irony). Colleagues who are still lecturing tell me that their classes are much as usual. The next move is up to Theodosius, or, to be exact, up to the bishops. Luckily for us, they have been so busy for so long persecuting one another that we have been able to survive. But reading between the lines of the edict, I suspect a bloodbath. Theodosius has outlawed with particular venom the party of the late Presbyter Arius on the grounds that Galileans must now have a church with a single doctrine to be called universal… a catholic church, no less!

To balance this, we must compose a true life of Julian. So let us together fashion one last wreath of Apollonian laurel to place upon the brow of philosophy, as a brave sign against the winter that threatens this stormy late season of the world. I want those who come after us to realize what hopes we had for life, and I want to see how close our Julian came to arresting the disease of Galilee.

Again, my best wishes to the admirable Hippia, and to you, my old friend and fellow soldier in the wars of philosophy.

Categories
Ancient Rome Emperor Julian

Gibbon on Julian – 3

Edward-Gibbon

The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire

Chapter XIX




Besides the reigning emperor, Julian alone survived, of all the numerous posterity of Constantius Chlorus. The misfortune of his royal birth involved him in the disgrace of Gallus. From his retirement in the happy country of Ionia, he was conveyed under a strong guard to the court of Milan; where he languished above seven months, in the continual apprehension of suffering the same ignominious death, which was daily inflicted almost before his eyes, on the friends and adherents of his persecuted family.

His looks, his gestures, his silence, were scrutinized with malignant curiosity, and he was perpetually assaulted by enemies whom he had never offended, and by arts to which he was a stranger. But in the school of adversity, Julian insensibly acquired the virtues of firmness and discretion. He defended his honor, as well as his life, against the insnaring subtleties of the eunuchs, who endeavored to extort some declaration of his sentiments; and whilst he cautiously suppressed his grief and resentment, he nobly disdained to flatter the tyrant, by any seeming approbation of his brother’s murder.

Julian most devoutly ascribes his miraculous deliverance to the protection of the gods, who had exempted his innocence from the sentence of destruction pronounced by their justice against the impious house of Constantine. As the most effectual instrument of their providence, he gratefully acknowledges the steady and generous friendship of the empress Eusebia, a woman of beauty and merit, who, by the ascendant which she had gained over the mind of her husband, counterbalanced, in some measure, the powerful conspiracy of the eunuchs.

By the intercession of his patroness, Julian was admitted into the Imperial presence: he pleaded his cause with a decent freedom, he was heard with favor; and, notwithstanding the efforts of his enemies, who urged the danger of sparing an avenger of the blood of Gallus, the milder sentiment of Eusebia prevailed in the council. But the effects of a second interview were dreaded by the eunuchs; and Julian was advised to withdraw for a while into the neighborhood of Milan, till the emperor thought proper to assign the city of Athens for the place of his honorable exile. As he had discovered, from his earliest youth, a propensity, or rather passion, for the language, the manners, the learning, and the religion of the Greeks, he obeyed with pleasure an order so agreeable to his wishes. Far from the tumult of arms, and the treachery of courts, he spent six months under the groves of the academy, in a free intercourse with the philosophers of the age, who studied to cultivate the genius, to encourage the vanity, and to inflame the devotion of their royal pupil.

Their labors were not unsuccessful; and Julian inviolably preserved for Athens that tender regard which seldom fails to arise in a liberal mind, from the recollection of the place where it has discovered and exercised its growing powers. The gentleness and affability of manners, which his temper suggested and his situation imposed, insensibly engaged the affections of the strangers, as well as citizens, with whom he conversed. Some of his fellow-students might perhaps examine his behavior with an eye of prejudice and aversion; but Julian established, in the schools of Athens, a general prepossession in favor of his virtues and talents, which was soon diffused over the Roman world.

Whilst his hours were passed in studious retirement, the empress, resolute to achieve the generous design which she had undertaken, was not unmindful of the care of his fortune. The death of the late Cæsar had left Constantius invested with the sole command, and oppressed by the accumulated weight, of a mighty empire. Before the wounds of civil discord could be healed, the provinces of Gaul were overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.

The Sarmatians no longer respected the barrier of the Danube. The impunity of rapine had increased the boldness and numbers of the wild Isaurians: those robbers descended from their craggy mountains to ravage the adjacent country, and had even presumed, though without success, to besiege the important city of Seleucia, which was defended by a garrison of three Roman legions. Above all, the Persian monarch, elated by victory, again threatened the peace of Asia, and the presence of the emperor was indispensably required, both in the West and in the East. For the first time, Constantius sincerely acknowledged, that his single strength was unequal to such an extent of care and of dominion. Insensible to the voice of flattery, which assured him that this all-powerful virtue, and celestial fortune, would still continue to triumph over every obstacle, he listened with complacency to the advice of Eusebia, which gratified his indolence, without offending his suspicious pride.

As she perceived that the remembrance of Gallus dwelt on the emperor’s mind, she artfully turned his attention to the opposite characters of the two brothers, which from their infancy had been compared to those of Domitian and of Titus. She accustomed her husband to consider Julian as a youth of a mild, unambitious disposition, whose allegiance and gratitude might be secured by the gift of the purple, and who was qualified to fill with honor a subordinate station, without aspiring to dispute the commands, or to shade the glories, of his sovereign and benefactor. After an obstinate, though secret struggle, the opposition of the favorite eunuchs submitted to the ascendency of the empress; and it was resolved that Julian, after celebrating his nuptials with Helena, sister of Constantius, should be appointed, with the title of Cæsar, to reign over the countries beyond the Alps.

Although the order which recalled him to court was probably accompanied by some intimation of his approaching greatness, he appeals to the people of Athens to witness his tears of undissembled sorrow, when he was reluctantly torn away from his beloved retirement. He trembled for his life, for his fame, and even for his virtue; and his sole confidence was derived from the persuasion, that Minerva inspired all his actions, and that he was protected by an invisible guard of angels, whom for that purpose she had borrowed from the Sun and Moon.

He approached, with horror, the palace of Milan; nor could the ingenuous youth conceal his indignation, when he found himself accosted with false and servile respect by the assassins of his family. Eusebia, rejoicing in the success of her benevolent schemes, embraced him with the tenderness of a sister; and endeavored, by the most soothing caresses, to dispel his terrors, and reconcile him to his fortune. But the ceremony of shaving his beard, and his awkward demeanor, when he first exchanged the cloak of a Greek philosopher for the military habit of a Roman prince, amused, during a few days, the levity of the Imperial court.

The emperors of the age of Constantine no longer deigned to consult with the senate in the choice of a colleague; but they were anxious that their nomination should be ratified by the consent of the army. On this solemn occasion, the guards, with the other troops whose stations were in the neighborhood of Milan, appeared under arms; and Constantius ascended his lofty tribunal, holding by the hand his cousin Julian, who entered the same day into the twenty-fifth year of his age.

In a studied speech, conceived and delivered with dignity, the emperor represented the various dangers which threatened the prosperity of the republic, the necessity of naming a Cæsar for the administration of the West, and his own intention, if it was agreeable to their wishes, of rewarding with the honors of the purple the promising virtues of the nephew of Constantine. The approbation of the soldiers was testified by a respectful murmur; they gazed on the manly countenance of Julian, and observed with pleasure, that the fire which sparkled in his eyes was tempered by a modest blush, on being thus exposed, for the first time, to the public view of mankind.

As soon as the ceremony of his investiture had been performed, Constantius addressed him with the tone of authority which his superior age and station permitted him to assume; and exhorting the new Cæsar to deserve, by heroic deeds, that sacred and immortal name, the emperor gave his colleague the strongest assurances of a friendship which should never be impaired by time, nor interrupted by their separation into the most distant climes. As soon as the speech was ended, the troops, as a token of applause, clashed their shields against their knees; while the officers who surrounded the tribunal expressed, with decent reserve, their sense of the merits of the representative of Constantius.

The two princes returned to the palace in the same chariot; and during the slow procession, Julian repeated to himself a verse of his favorite Homer, which he might equally apply to his fortune and to his fears. The four-and-twenty days which the Cæsar spent at Milan after his investiture, and the first months of his Gallic reign, were devoted to a splendid but severe captivity; nor could the acquisition of honor compensate for the loss of freedom.

His steps were watched, his correspondence was intercepted; and he was obliged, by prudence, to decline the visits of his most intimate friends. Of his former domestics, four only were permitted to attend him; two pages, his physician, and his librarian; the last of whom was employed in the care of a valuable collection of books, the gift of the empress, who studied the inclinations as well as the interest of her friend. In the room of these faithful servants, a household was formed, such indeed as became the dignity of a Cæsar; but it was filled with a crowd of slaves, destitute, and perhaps incapable, of any attachment for their new master, to whom, for the most part, they were either unknown or suspected.

His want of experience might require the assistance of a wise council; but the minute instructions which regulated the service of his table, and the distribution of his hours, were adapted to a youth still under the discipline of his preceptors, rather than to the situation of a prince intrusted with the conduct of an important war. If he aspired to deserve the esteem of his subjects, he was checked by the fear of displeasing his sovereign; and even the fruits of his marriage-bed were blasted by the jealous artifices of Eusebia herself, who, on this occasion alone, seems to have been unmindful of the tenderness of her sex, and the generosity of her character.

The memory of his father and of his brothers reminded Julian of his own danger, and his apprehensions were increased by the recent and unworthy fate of Sylvanus. In the summer which preceded his own elevation, that general had been chosen to deliver Gaul from the tyranny of the Barbarians; but Sylvanus soon discovered that he had left his most dangerous enemies in the Imperial court. A dexterous informer, countenanced by several of the principal ministers, procured from him some recommendatory letters; and erasing the whole of the contents, except the signature, filled up the vacant parchment with matters of high and treasonable import.

By the industry and courage of his friends, the fraud was however detected, and in a great council of the civil and military officers, held in the presence of the emperor himself, the innocence of Sylvanus was publicly acknowledged.

But the discovery came too late; the report of the calumny, and the hasty seizure of his estate, had already provoked the indignant chief to the rebellion of which he was so unjustly accused.

He assumed the purple at his head-quarters of Cologne, and his active powers appeared to menace Italy with an invasion, and Milan with a siege. In this emergency, Ursicinus, a general of equal rank, regained, by an act of treachery, the favor which he had lost by his eminent services in the East. Exasperated, as he might speciously allege, by the injuries of a similar nature, he hastened with a few followers to join the standard, and to betray the confidence, of his too credulous friend. After a reign of only twenty-eight days, Sylvanus was assassinated: the soldiers who, without any criminal intention, had blindly followed the example of their leader, immediately returned to their allegiance; and the flatterers of Constantius celebrated the wisdom and felicity of the monarch who had extinguished a civil war without the hazard of a battle.

The protection of the Rhætian frontier, and the persecution of the Catholic church, detained Constantius in Italy above eighteen months after the departure of Julian.

Categories
Ancient Rome Constantine Emperor Julian

Gibbon on Julian – 2

Edward-Gibbon

The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire

Chapter XIX




When the two nephews of Constantine, Gallus and Julian, were saved from the fury of the soldiers, the former was about twelve, and the latter about six, years of age; and, as the eldest was thought to be of a sickly constitution, they obtained with the less difficulty a precarious and dependent life, from the affected pity of Constantius, who was sensible that the execution of these helpless orphans would have been esteemed, by all mankind, an act of the most deliberate cruelty.

Different cities of Ionia and Bithynia were assigned for the places of their exile and education; but as soon as their growing years excited the jealousy of the emperor, he judged it more prudent to secure those unhappy youths in the strong castle of Macellum, near Cæsarea. The treatment which they experienced during a six years’ confinement, was partly such as they could hope from a careful guardian, and partly such as they might dread from a suspicious tyrant. Their prison was an ancient palace, the residence of the kings of Cappadocia; the situation was pleasant, the buildings of stately, the enclosure spacious. They pursued their studies, and practised their exercises, under the tuition of the most skilful masters; and the numerous household appointed to attend, or rather to guard, the nephews of Constantine, was not unworthy of the dignity of their birth. But they could not disguise to themselves that they were deprived of fortune, of freedom, and of safety; secluded from the society of all whom they could trust or esteem, and condemned to pass their melancholy hours in the company of slaves devoted to the commands of a tyrant who had already injured them beyond the hope of reconciliation.

At length, however, the emergencies of the state compelled the emperor, or rather his eunuchs, to invest Gallus, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, with the title of Cæsar, and to cement this political connection by his marriage with the princess Constantina. After a formal interview, in which the two princes mutually engaged their faith never to undertake any thing to the prejudice of each other, they repaired without delay to their respective stations. Constantius continued his march towards the West, and Gallus fixed his residence at Antioch; from whence, with a delegated authority, he administered the five great dioceses of the eastern præfecture. In this fortunate change, the new Cæsar was not unmindful of his brother Julian, who obtained the honors of his rank, the appearances of liberty, and the restitution o fan ample patrimony.

The writers the most indulgent to the memory of Gallus, and even Julian himself, though he wished to cast a veil over the frailties of his brother, are obliged to confess that the Cæsar was incapable of reigning. Transported from a prison to a throne, he possessed neither genius nor application, nor docility to compensate for the want of knowledge and experience. A temper naturally morose and violent, instead of being corrected, was soured by solitude and adversity; the remembrance of what he had endured disposed him to retaliation rather than to sympathy; and the ungoverned sallies of his rage were often fatal to those who approached his person, or were subject to his power. Constantina, his wife, is described, not as a woman, but as one of the infernal furies tormented with an insatiate thirst of human blood. Instead of employing her influence to insinuate the mild counsels of prudence and humanity, she exasperated the fierce passions of her husband; and as she retained the vanity, though she had renounced, the gentleness of her sex, a pearl necklace was esteemed an equivalent price for the murder of an innocent and virtuous nobleman.

The cruelty of Gallus was sometimes displayed in the undissembled violence of popular or military executions; and was sometimes disguised by the abuse of law, and the forms of judicial proceedings. The private houses of Antioch, and the places of public resort, were besieged by spies and informers; and the Cæsar himself, concealed in a plebeian habit, very frequently condescended to assume that odious character.

Every apartment of the palace was adorned with the instruments of death and torture, and a general consternation was diffused through the capital of Syria. The prince of the East, as if he had been conscious how much he had to fear, and how little he deserved to reign, selected for the objects of his resentment the provincials accused of some imaginary treason, and his own courtiers, whom with more reason he suspected of incensing, by their secret correspondence, the timid and suspicious mind of Constantius. But he forgot that he was depriving himself of his only support, the affection of the people; whilst he furnished the malice of his enemies with the arms of truth, and afforded the emperor the fairest pretence of exacting the forfeit of his purple, and of his life.

As long as the civil war suspended the fate of the Roman world, Constantius dissembled his knowledge of the weak and cruel administration to which his choice had subjected the East; and the discovery of some assassins, secretly despatched to Antioch by the tyrant of Gaul, was employed to convince the public, that the emperor and the Cæsar were united by the same interest, and pursued by the same enemies. But when the victory was decided in favor of Constantius, his dependent colleague became less useful and less formidable. Every circumstance of his conduct was severely and suspiciously examined, and it was privately resolved, either to deprive Gallus of the purple, or at least to remove him from the indolent luxury of Asia to the hardships and dangers of a German war.

The death of Theophilus, consular of the province of Syria, who in a time of scarcity had been massacred by the people of Antioch, with the connivance, and almost at the instigation, of Gallus, was justly resented, not only as an act of wanton cruelty, but as a dangerous insult on the supreme majesty of Constantius. Two ministers of illustrious rank, Domitian the Oriental præfect, and Montius, quæstor of the palace, were empowered by a special commission to visit and reform the state of the East. They were instructed to behave towards Gallus with moderation and respect, and, by the gentle starts of persuasion, to engage him to comply with the invitation of his brother and colleague. The rashness of the præfect disappointed these prudent measures, and hastened his own ruin, as well as that of his enemy.

On his arrival at Antioch, Domitian passed disdainfully before the gates of the palace, and alleging a slight pretence of indisposition, continued several days in sullen retirement, to prepare an inflammatory memorial, which he transmitted to the Imperial court. Yielding at length to the pressing solicitations of Gallus, the præfect condescended to take his seat in council; but his first step was to signify a concise and haughty mandate, importing that the Cæsar should immediately repair to Italy, and threatening that he himself would punish his delay or hesitation, by suspending the usual allowance of his household. The nephew and daughter of Constantine, who could ill brook the insolence of a subject, expressed their resentment by instantly delivering Domitian to the custody of a guard. The quarrel still admitted of some terms of accommodation. They were rendered impracticable by the imprudent behavior of Montius, a statesman whose arts and experience were frequently betrayed by the levity of his disposition.

The quæstor reproached Gallus in a haughty language, that a prince who was scarcely authorized to remove a municipal magistrate, should presume to imprison a Prætorian præfect; convoked a meeting of the civil and military officers; and required them, in the name of their sovereign, to defend the person and dignity of his representatives. By this rash declaration of war, the impatient temper of Gallus was provoked to embrace the most desperate counsels. He ordered his guards to stand to their arms, assembled the populace of Antioch, and recommended to their zeal the care of his safety and revenge. His commands were too fatally obeyed. They rudely seized the præfect and the quæstor, and tying their legs together with ropes, they dragged them through the streets of the city, inflicted a thousand insults and a thousand wounds on these unhappy victims, and at last precipitated their mangled and lifeless bodies into the stream of the Orontes.

After such a deed, whatever might have been the designs of Gallus, it was only in a field of battle that he could assert his innocence with any hope of success. But the mind of that prince was formed of an equal mixture of violence and weakness. Instead of assuming the title of Augustus, instead of employing in his defence the troops and treasures of the East, he suffered himself to be deceived by the affected tranquillity of Constantius, who, leaving him the vain pageantry of a court, imperceptibly recalled the veteran legions from the provinces of Asia.

But as it still appeared dangerous to arrest Gallus in his capital, the slow and safer arts of dissimulation were practised with success. The frequent and pressing epistles of Constantius were filled with professions of confidence and friendship; exhorting the Cæsar to discharge the duties of his high station, to relieve his colleague from a part of the public cares, and to assist the West by his presence, his counsels, and his arms. After so many reciprocal injuries, Gallus had reason to fear and to distrust. But he had neglected the opportunities of flight and of resistance; he was seduced by the flattering assurances of the tribune Scudilo, who, under the semblance of a rough soldier, disguised the most artful insinuation; and he depended on the credit of his wife Constantina, till the unseasonable death of that princess completed the ruin in which he had been involved by her impetuous passions.

Categories
Emperor Julian Friedrich Nietzsche Indo-European heritage Islam Kali Yuga

Derrida, the Jews and the battle for Europe

by Manu Rodríguez

(translated from Spanish)



jew-derrida
Derrida is, without doubt, the greatest Jewish thinker of late. I speak of what constitutes the whole Jewish “intelligentsia” of the past century. The “letters,” the “humanities”: Kafka, Freud, Lukacs, Benjamin, Arendt, Adorno, Marcuse, Levinas (the list is not exhaustive, of course). Derrida learned from all of them the best way of dealing with the Gentiles—learned from the mistakes of the Frankfurt School, for example. You had to use a different tone.

In view of the results of the present state of things, we can say with confidence that much of the scholarly work of the contemporary Jewish “intelligentsia” has been, and is, the destruction (“deconstruction,” if you prefer) of our culture. From all angles. They have introduced displeasure, mistrust, suspicion, discomfort throughout our culture in our painting, our music, our literature, our philosophy, our law, our traditions, all of our history since Marx… They poison the sources of our knowledge as harpies defile, desecrate, bumble, dirty, pollute our spiritual food.

It’s an old war that we do not want to register in our minds. A cold war. For more than two thousand years the Jews have declared war on the goyim, the gentile Europeans. Their first major victory was the Christianization of Europe, which was also our first step of Judaization (that massive process of forced and violent acculturation and enculturation of European populations 1700 years ago, which is extended, albeit more weakly, to this day). In the last two hundred years it seemed outclassed, left behind. But with Marx a new phase in this long war opened, which reached Derrida. Derrida is one of the last heirs of that pathway, a pathway opened by Marx: the destruction of the old institutions—the family, the nation, the religion, the symbolic parameters of a people, the frame, the skeleton: all of what had us standing.

The current preaching is the same of the past. The same destruction of our institutions and concepts. The same criticism of the nation, the homeland, the feeling of belonging to a land and a people, to our home, to our being ancestral and indigenous. And the same rising to the stars and the “selling” of all things Jewish. Jewish writing, Jewish culture… Theirs—Jewish identity—is untouchable. The Jew simply cannot be “deconstructed,” dismantled, censured, denied. The Jew is always affectionately embraced, and seductively presented as desirable, even as tempting. They tempt us, seduce us, divert us from our path. With one hand he destroys our identity and with the other he offers his. Illusionists, magicians, masters of distraction that swindle what is ours and attach to us what is foreign.

All this I say is shown to us in the media. It is the triumph of the rhetoric of advertising, of propaganda (Bernays). These are the times. Certain words, certain brands, certain slogans. Short messages, provocative, shocking, striking, bold, simple, catchy, leave a “footprint.” And also the gift, justice, forgiveness, friendship, hospitality. It is a “business” with “cause.”

CofC-2A new Messianism comes now from the hand of Benjamin, Levinas, and Derrida (among many others, they are legion—and the converts) beyond the tart procedure of the Frankfurt School (those Maccabees). More subtle now, more Pauline, more cryptic, more cunning, more Marrano.

Internationalism is preached to us; the lack of patriotism. It is a universal, political, transnational, cosmopolitan creed; it is a perspective of the stateless, the rootless. It promotes this narrative, this point of view, this being.

The humpback wants to make humpbacks of all of us. The stateless wants us all stateless. The wandering, the nomads. Not only landless, without culture as well. A thing is not without the other. One thing leads to another. We cannot be deprived of land without first being deprived of culture, of “sky”, of word, of light. First he rails against the super-symbolic structures, against that being symbolic in ours, against the traditions about ourselves, against the basis and foundations of our symbolic being, against our ancient identity, against our collective ancestral memory— we are nothing, indeed.

The Industrial Revolution will end the old ways Marx said; with the Ancient Regime, with the old institutions (European, Western). Why is that hope, that desire, and why the rush? The “world” in which we lived was declared old, sick, mad, guilty, bad, worthy of perishing. We are condemned to death.

We are declared sick (critical, destructive discourse) and they heal us (universalism, cosmopolitanism) alike. They bring both the disease and the remedy (in the manner of the old Jewish Messianism with its “original sin” and its restoring baptism).

But these “cures” or “remedies” are equally destructive. We are pushed toward the abyss (death and oblivion), ​​we are blemished, denied, we are not left any outlet other than the “Other.”

We are being eliminated while we are offered the “diversity,” the Other, hospitality, cosmopolitanism, internationalism, the most suicidal altruism—indeed, the cure they say. We choose the Other, we place his interest before our own interests—the denial of oneself in short (“deny thyself”). And this evil, evil idea we like to accept as the highest and sublime “ideal.” Oh Miserable! It is the poisoned apple. The spreading among us of such universal principles seeks our destruction; that we voluntarily ignore ourselves, that we leave behind ours. Besides, our morality is reprehensible, punishable, it is the “bad” to remove.

Thus part of the cure is to destroy the attachment to the land, to the blood, to what is ours, all that should be up-rooted from the European goyim. Drive them away from their land, their people, away from our ends, away from ourselves. That was, and is, the way of salvation that we preach, and continues to be the cure. Now as then.

Karl Marx: News of the Coming Revolt
These are renewed attacks, and brutal, of the last two hundred years. From Marx to Derrida. New weapons, new missiles, new “reasoning,” new sophistry. Against everything that can strengthen and affirm. This is the whole strategy, and this is the role of the European Jewish “intelligentsia” to the Gentiles, that is what they have to do. They know that only by deconstructing us will they entirely succeed someday. And they spend their energy and greed toward that end. They dream but with the humiliation of the white European peoples. They want to see us defeated, vanquished, isolated, needy, few, solos. Oh, old Shylock!

They were not the first in this “path of destruction,” they were preceded by the enlightened after the Renaissance. The writings of the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries provided political, legal, economic, philosophical arguments of “progress.” But it is not the same fight to combat ideologically the Ancient Regime than trying to destroy the entire European culture.

Nietzsche also, unfortunately, provided plenty of material. And Heidegger. However, the same criticism that a European makes of his culture sounds different when performed by a Jew. Keep in mind who is the subject of an enunciation: who speaks here, who says that. While in a Jew’s mouth these reviews sound like the speech of an enemy, in a European mouth those words sound like those of a father or a mother, or a son, or a brother. Rebukes, corrects, encourages… The European seeks the good of his health; wants to make it better, stronger, more confident; wants to establish it on new foundations and purest symbolism. Nietzsche’s intention is that the European be exceeded, that he leaves behind all the ideological and spiritual, Platonic and Judeo-messianic period. A symbolic change, a change of “heaven,” a complete regeneration, a new dawn, a return perhaps. Marx (Jewish strategy) seeks the destruction of our worlds; Nietzsche seeks correction, transformation, renewal.

In any case, what is allowed to Nietzsche (one of us), is not to any stranger, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or Chinese. Let them stick to their “stuff.”

Why do we allow these strangers interfere in our affairs? Our family affairs. They are ancient, archaic, reach our ancestors, our true first Parents, those Indo-Europeans: Hittite, Vedic Aryans, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts, Slavs, Balts… The relations between different peoples in Europe, our holy land, are sometimes difficult—between Germans and Celts for example (in Ireland and the British Isles), or between southern Roman and Germanics, Slavic and Germanics or between them and the Balts. Our millennial affairs. No outsider is invited to this reunion, it is only for our ancestral peoples. No outsider has here any word, any ear, voice or vote.

These authors I am referring to are Jewish before being French, German, Spanish, or Russian, and only their “nation” moves them—not Europe or its people or their nations. Like Christians or Muslims, they are foreigners in any country or region. They can only speak from the position of the stateless. They have no nation but the Jewish community, or Muslim (the umma). These are their unique perspectives. They have nothing, then, to say. They cannot speak but from outside, from their own language / experience / perspective. Moreover, we can always say, “Take care of your business”, of your “nation and leave us in peace.” “Put your whole exegesis on your ‘Peters’ and ‘Pauls,’ and leave alone Homer, Aristotle and Plato.” This is what Julian told the “Galileans.” Something similar we can tell these new apostles of our newly restored paganism: “Devote yourselves to censor and destroy your own traditions and customs, and leave alone our philosophers and our entire culture.”

Jewish intellectuals among us don’t introduce themselves as Jews but as Westerners and seek to pass as ordinary citizens in appearance, indistinguishable from others (it is important, for their strategy, that we see them as French, German, or American, not as Jews). Mimicry. No Judaic displays or public fanfare. Rather: atheists, agnostics, heterodox, or simply “progressive” or “leftists” (terms that define much of the West). Their work is aimed at Westerners in general. In any case, these intellectuals, I say, never stop being Jews.

In their eternal double game—like aliens who are in any land (except in Israel); their dual nationality, double talk, dual mentality, dual language, double intention; their diabolism, forked tongue, their poison, they can not help it. Before being French, Russians, Germans or Americans, they’re Jews. The Jewish perspective never leaves them. The country or the Jewish nation is the transnational Jewish community, as is the case with Muslims and their umma, and would also happen to Christians and their community (the “people” of the god of the Jews) if they were consistent with their “faith.”

We must return to speak of Jewish philosophy, or Jewish thought, make them out of the current European thinkers (Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger) as we do with medieval philosophy, where we distinguish Jewish thought, European (mostly Christian) and Muslim. There is a contemporary “literature” or “writing” in the West we might call Jewish or Hebrew—for its content, references, fundamental concepts, for their “masters.” Topics, quotes, and Jewish authors (ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary) are common in these scriptures.

The current Jewish thinkers navigate with the masthead of the most notable European thinkers of the past two hundred years (Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger mainly) all the while guided by Jewish thinkers—Marx, Freud, Levinas, Adorno… These are the thinkers who form their conscience, they say. And the consciousness of much of today’s Europeans, unfortunately for us.

Wrapped in gentle nibbles, with a bit of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger they make us swallow handfuls of Jewish issues, we are Judaized—again. Something “sweet” on the tip of the spoon to deceive, something different, something other than what they would have us swallow, something familiar for us not to distrust. As with children. Little by little, until they get used. After that they may withdraw the little sweet, other than Jewish. The art of Derrida. The floured paw hovering below the door. Jewish Scripture for Europeans or western Gentiles, for the European “cousins.” Like the old Judeo-Messianism.

The Jew always makes an appearance with an air of triumph to gentile “confusion”—as deus ex machina, as Socrates in the (rigged) Platonic dialogues. Go to the Derrida webpage, see and check. Texts on Marx, Freud, Benjamin and Levinas; Jewish characters and Jewish allusions, ancient and modern everywhere (article, interview, conference). Jewish writing—Jewish authors, Jewish issues, Jewish concerns, Jewish disquisitions, Jewish Byzantinism, Kabala, Talmud, Messianism. Self-centeredness in short. Megalomania: all about the Jews and their small world.

F-school

Do not forget they hold conferences and meetings of philosophy, of thought, strictly Jewish. Meetings in which a non-Jew, I presume, cannot participate except as a guest. Many of the topics and authors are, however, worldwide (Marxism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School, Benjamin, Derrida…). Authors and philosophical topoi governing, today, much of European and western thought. They are the main current of thought, we might say. They have taken over. The list of Jewish authors whose narrative is relevant to our contemporary culture is excessive.

They do not use exclusively Jewish sources. As said, they are combined with certain doses of the aforementioned European authors. But we notice that these uses are rather to flag, to mark, to marginalize, to set them aside, to distinguish they from them. They fight ultimately against these texts (these authors): they strike them, delete them, make them void—seek their annulment, beat them, disconnect from them we might say, deprive of their strength, power, utility, functionality and present value; spoil them, block the outputs, cut the roads…

I think of the work done with Nietzsche—the pruning. The Nietzsche of Blanchot, Klossowski, Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotardt, Derrida, Vattimo. The post-modern. Weak thought. Weakened off thought, exhausted, dying, end. Nihilism in his misery. This scenario is not noticed in the Jewish front: it has another perspective. They have made that European thinkers rush, throw themselves into the abyss. They contemplate self-extinction. Objective nearly fulfilled.

It is the white Europe, of course, the final destination of these maneuvers and attacks; it is this Europe what he wants weakened, canceled, extinguished… deleted, gone, disappeared (as Sumer and Egypt disappeared). To turn Europe into something spooky, a dim memory.

Say there is a war between European thought and Jewish thought: Darwin and Nietzsche on the one hand, and Marx and Freud on the other (for simplicity). We have sociologies and anthropologies opposing each other. Opposing worlds. It’s a war of words, cultural, symbolic, even of the media. It is a struggle for dominance. Consider if Derrida’s writing is not raised as a fight against certain traditions and European institutions to influence the future of these institutions and traditions. The goal is to take over, to dominate, to possess. Those are “positions” in a fight. It is a war.

Today it is the entire European thought (from the Greek, from Homer) the demonized, which is under suspicion, the defeated, we could say. It’s all ancient European culture which is in question and is in danger of disappearing.

The future of European thinking (and being) is settled these days, although many of the “professionals” are not aware of it, do not realize they are already involved in this fight either one side or the other. You have to ask, what is the dominant thought? Which authors dominate or lead? It is an ideological struggle, a struggle in the heavens. Is the battle for Europe.

The objective is to take the head atop the Citadel (the Acropolis), the government centers, to drive, to lead. Like some retroviruses penetrating the nucleus of cells manage to enter the DNA and from it, replicate using mobile devices. The “replication” of the narrative from the core. Replicants. Cybernetics and the machinery or the social body.

The Jews try to dominate the whole field of thought, to definitely Judaize European philosophical thought, economics, politics, ethics, psychologies, anthropologies. They have spread in all fields of knowledge and culture. We go around figures and pathways of Jewish reflection, created by Jews: this is the intention.

For the achievement of this purpose, it is essential that Europeans and Westerners do not suspect for a moment that they are reading Jewish press, Jewish literature and Jewish thought, or watching Jewish movies (or myths propagated by Jews as the new Zion in Matrix). There are a number of clearly Jewish “products” that pass for art and culture for the mass, purportedly Western. We consume kosher culture prepared especially for Gentiles without knowing it.

judeocristianismo

Like when the old Judeo-Messianic Judaism—an ad hoc Judaism for European gentiles (no circumcision, no food requirements, and everything else—the god, the Jewish god, the Jewish holy book, the Jewish holy land…).

It is the propaganda of literature and art what we always have with Jews. They propagate themselves. They take care of themselves. They sell themselves; they are offered, promoted, one to each other. Is their art, the Phoenician art, Semitic art.

What they have always tried is how to survive, and always master, the strange land and even influence the life and work of the goyim. Among Semites it is always the search, anywhere, the transformation of the culture of the host to make it more favorable to their own interests.

Presently they win the battle in the minds and hearts of Europeans and Westerners. Incomprehensibly, their self-destructive and harmful slogans are in the air; their deadly conceptual beads. There are many Conversos or supporters that do not know they are, or are not taken by such (Marxists, Freudians, Derridans, universalists internationalists, multiculturalists…), those who leave their gold and flaunt the blackest chump.

Oh, simple, naive, gullible, trusting Europeans! Young, new, latest, inexperienced, adolescent race! When will you attain some maturity?

The recent Jewish cultural or intellectual contribution? It’s a room, four walls and a built-in insidious roof, slowly and laboriously from Marx to Derrida, the “intellectual” legacy or Jewish gift for future generations of poisoned Europe: a receptacle, a cell, a hideout. The new canonical texts and authors, the new “Parents” of the new European community or ecclesia—architects of this new Zion, the new Matrix. Is this our fate, the fate of our heirs? Once again enclosed within four walls? To live in the shade, under the roof of this minimum precinct—denying us space and horizon and preventing us from seeing our skies? Will this blackened and dirty roof be our single “heaven”? Nausea. Repugnance. The “universe,” the “world” of Marx, Kafka, Freud, Lukacs, Trotsky, Benjamin, Arendt, Adorno, Levinas, Derrida… The shadowy Jewish world; its unbreathable atmosphere, impure.

Just as the Judeo-Messianic “new testament,” the whole Jewish world came over us (from which we have not left), and with the discourse of Marx, Freud, Levinas, Benjamin, and Derrida we are returned back to that world. The one leads to the other. We are stopped, paralyzed, retained in their maze for centuries. We did not leave their tight and tedious world.

Jewish “intelligentsia” attempts to shape and direct our lives for millennia. The brand new testament; the new apostles of the Gentiles. A new Jewish Messianic millennium, a new supreme winter. This is the threat.

The “Holocaust” is now their Golgotha, their sign, their cross, their pale banner.

The sky is brick-worked, certainly. Our skies are paved with brick through the Jewish skies and Judeo-Messianic Jews. Now we have a new brickwork, and both the old and new are preserved. A double brickwork and double key. In both cases the keys are held by Jews.

These “heavens” are the ways of salvation made by European Jews to the Gentiles. Both destroy us, destroy our being. Both the old Judeo-Messianism as the new—the brand new testament.

Clairvoyance and courage I wish to my own to get out of this mess, to de-brickworking these skies outside, to shoot down these walls, to restore the light of our skies, our breathing of pure air. To win in the end.

We must be stronger than the disease, more vigorous than the evil that invades us. It is time to frustrate the plans of these charlatans, these tricksters, these cheaters, these imposters and usurpers.

Until next time,

Manu

Categories
Alaric Ancient Rome Axiology Christendom Constantine Demography Emperor Julian Franks Goths Huns Racial studies Tacitus Universalism Who We Are (book) William Pierce

Germanics and Romans

Celtic buffer and Tacitus

Five decisive things

Alaric and the Fall of Rome

Christianity Spreads

The toll of Judeo-Christianity

 

Categories
Ancient Rome Christendom Constantine Emperor Julian Franks Goths Universalism Who We Are (book) William Pierce

Germanic People and the Romans (4)

Christianity Spreads

Excerpted from the 18th article of William Pierce’s “Who We Are: a Series of Articles on the History of the White Race”:

During the turbulent and eventful fifth century the Germans largely completed their conquest of the West. In the early years of that century German tribesmen, who had been raiding the coast of Roman Britain for many years, began a permanent invasion of the southeastern portion of the island, a development which was eventually to lead to a Germanic Britain.

 

Oriental Infection

But the Germans did not make their conquest of the Roman world without becoming infected by some of the diseases which flourished so unwholesomely in Rome during her last days. Foremost among these was an infection which the Romans themselves had caught during the first century, a consequence of their own conquest of the Levant. It had begun as an offshoot of Judaism, had established itself in Jerusalem and a few other spots in the eastern Mediterranean area, and had traveled to Rome with Jewish merchants and speculators, who had long found that city an attractive center of operations.

It eventually became known to the world as Christianity, but for more than two centuries it festered in the sewers and catacombs of Rome, along with dozens of other alien religious sects from the Levant; its first adherents were Rome’s slaves, a cosmopolitan lot from all the lands conquered by the Romans. It was a religion designed to appeal to slaves: blessed are the poor, the meek, the wretched, the despised, it told them, for you shall inherit the earth from the strong, the brave, the proud, and the mighty; there will be pie in the sky for all believers, and the rest will suffer eternal torment. It appealed directly to a sense of envy and resentment of the weak against the strong.

The new religion spread from the slaves to the freedmen, that motley conglomeration of Syrians, Egyptians, Jews, Armenians, and members of a dozen other nations who made up Rome’s mercantile, petty entrepreneur, and free worker class. It even began to catch on in some of Rome’s legions.

 

Edict of Milan

By the end of the third century Christianity had become the most popular as well as the most militant of the Oriental sects flourishing among the largely non-Roman inhabitants of the decaying Roman Empire. Even as late as the first years of the fourth century, under Emperor Diocletian, the Roman government was still making efforts to keep the Christians under control, but in 313 a new emperor, Constantine, decided that, if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em, and he issued an imperial edict legitimizing Christianity.

Although one of Constantine’s successors, Julian, attempted to reverse the continuing Christianization of the Roman Empire a few years later, it was already too late: the Goths, who made up the bulk of Rome’s armies by this time, had caught the infection from one of their own slaves, a Christian captive whom they called Wulfila. Wulfila was a tireless and effective missionary, and the Goths were an uprooted and unsettled people, among whom the new religion took hold easily. Wulfila’s translation of the Bible into Gothic greatly speeded up the process.

 

Conversion of the Franks

Before the end of the fourth century Christianity had also spread to the Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards, Gepids, and several other German tribes. A little over a century later the powerful nation of the Franks was converted. By the beginning of the second quarter of the sixth century, the only non-Christian Whites left were the Bavarians, Thuringians, Saxons, Frisians, Danes, Swedes, and Norse among the Germans—and virtually all the Balts and Slavs.

 

Athanaric the Goth

The Christians had many individual opponents, of course: among the Romans several of the more responsible and civic-minded emperors, such as Diocletian, as well as what was left of the tradition-minded aristocracy; and among the Germans many farsighted leaders who resisted the imposition of an alien creed on their people and the abandonment of their ancient traditions. Athanaric, the great Gothic chieftain who led his people across the Danube in 376 to save them from the invading Huns, was notable in this regard.

Athanaric and the other traditionalists failed to halt the spread of Christianity, because they were only individuals. Although there were pagan priests, the traditional German religion never really had a church associated with it. It consisted in a body of beliefs, tales, and practices passed from generation to generation, but it had no centralized organization like Christianity.

Early Christianity, in contrast to German religion, was as utterly intolerant as the Judaism from which it sprang. Even Roman religion, which, as an official state religion, equated religious observance with patriotism, tolerated the existence of other sects, so long as they did not threaten the state. But the early Christians were inspired by a fanatical hatred of all opposing creeds.

Also in contrast to German and Roman religion, Christianity, despite its specifically Jewish roots, claimed to be a universal (i.e., “catholic”) creed, equally applicable to Germans, Romans, Jews, Huns, and Negroes.

As for the brotherhood of man and equality in the eyes of the Lord, the Germans had no time for such nonsense; when confronted with non-Whites, they instinctively reached for the nearest lethal weapon. They made mincemeat out of the Avars, who were cousins to the Huns, in the seventh century, and the Christianized Franks or Goths of that era would know exactly what to do with a few hundred thousand rioting American Blacks; they would, in fact, positively relish the opportunity to do what needed doing.

It could not have been expected to be otherwise. In the first place, a totally alien religion cannot be imposed on a spiritually healthy people—and the Germans were still essentially healthy, despite the dislocations caused by the Voelkerwanderung.

Categories
Ancient Rome Art Emperor Julian Julian (novel)

Vidal’s “Julian”

Translated from the dustcover in Spanish:

Julian has often been considered in the history of Europe “a hero of the resistance”: resistance to Christianity in the name of Hellenism. But what fascinates in this outstanding historical novel is not only the uniqueness of the emperor, but the extraordinary age in which he lived, the fourth century C.E.

During the fifty years between the accession to the throne of Constantine the Great and Julian’s death at thirty-two years old, it began the agony of an Old World and the birth of a New One in the shadow of the Goths and the Cross.

For better or for worse, we are heirs of that time. Julian, philosopher, military genius, was one of the first to oppose Christian absolutism—a religion that refused then, as for centuries has refused, to tolerate any other belief system aside from its own. But Julian never persecuted anyone. He always preferred the methods of reason, persuasion, and even satire. Through peculiar religious ideas he tried to organize rituals, superstitions and magical practices in a Hellenistic church, and of course failed.

Had Julian succeeded, or had he not died (or martyred? —see my previous entries) so young, perhaps the history of Europe would have been different, and Christianity only one among other religions of the West. But the Christians, the “intellectual barbarians” conquered civilization and called it pagan and decadent.

Our problem now is that we are children of the barbarians and not of the civilized; and we are finally beginning to understand that there are other values besides the barbarian ones preached by Paul.

Categories
Ancient Rome Christendom Emperor Julian Julian (novel) Libanius Literature

My impression on Vidal’s “Julian”

Our times are as decadent as the 4th century Rome of the Common Era, an age of treason that dragged our civilization straight into a dark night of the soul that lasted a millennium.

Tom Sunic is surely right in inviting would-be nationalists to become familiar with literature that balances the purely left-hemisphere, intellectual approaches to our western malaise.

The best historical novels ever written are Gore Vidal’s Julian (1964) and Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1980), which cover the gap that my high school skipped over: the zeitgeist of the peoples during Christendom, with Vidal covering its origins when the “Galileans” conquered state power to advance their cult, and Eco its apex in the fourteenth century.

This is my translation of what I wrote in the novel’s blank pages by the end of 1991, when I read a magnificent, hardcover English-Spanish translation of Julian that my girlfriend gave me as a present in Barcelona.

With pencil I wrote:

Now that I read the book, its antichristian message surprised me. What did the book-reviewers could have said?

I would feel appalled to know if the assassination of Julian was historical. I’ll have to check it out…

But the antichristian message of the last pages represents the moral of the story: the first clearly antichristian novel that I know. I wish that Kubrick makes a film of it instead of his dream about a Napoleon movie.

If I interpret the novel correctly, the emergent Christian authoritarianism was the storms harvested after the sowing of winds (the Roman state had persecuted the Christians before). But what makes me furious is that there were no groups that defended Hellenism with their teeth and nails!

What impressed me the most about the book is that it really makes one hate the Christians. I wish it had been published in those times! However, if the assassination of Julian by a fanatic Christian was not historical, Vidal could be accused of fabricating facts in search for drama. This is the most important event of my reading. I’ll find out next Monday when they open the library or perhaps even write the author.

I did go to the library and wrote to Vidal two decades ago but did not receive an answer. According to the Wikipedia article of today, the novel is historically accurate.

I wish I could know whether other assertions of the novel were historical. For example, Vidal makes Julian say in a specific moment (I only have the Spanish translation that Anabel gave me, so I can’t quote the original text) that “thirty years ago” Rome’s archives contained several contemporary reports about Jesus’ life, but they disappeared, destroyed by instructions from Constantine.

But the real climax of the novel are the words of Libanius, telling to himself in painful soliloquy after his most beloved, young disciple deserted him after converting to Judeochristianity that no invention from man can last forever, not even Christ: man’s most noxious invention.

Libanius was a historical figure, the one who claimed that Julian had been assassinated by a Christian. The novel ends with an aged Libanius feeling utterly alone in a world gone mad, telling silently to himself in the solitude of his study that the light of the world was gone with Julian, the last hope for our civilization; and that there was nothing left but let the darkness fall on the West and await for a new sun. A new day. In the future…

Categories
Ancient Rome Christendom Emperor Julian Free speech / association Homer Jesus Judaism Libanius Moses (fictional Hebrew lawgiver) New Testament Old Testament St Paul

Julian on Christianity

“Why were you so ungrateful to our gods as to desert them for the Jews?”

—Julian (addressing the Christians)



Below, excerpts from the remains of the book by Julian the Apostate (Roman Emperor from 361 to 363 C.E.), Against the Galileans. Remains I say, because the totalitarian Church did not even respect the writings of one of their emperors if the emperor himself dared to criticize Christianity!

About the literary remains of Against the Galileans, Hitler said: “The book that contains the reflections of the Emperor Julian should be circulated in millions. What wonderful intelligence, what discernment, all the wisdom of antiquity! It’s extraordinary.”

Julian only reigned twenty months. In 364, his friend Libanius stated that Julian had been assassinated by a Christian. The Roman Emperor had written (ellipsis omitted between unquoted passages):




Now I will only point out that Moses himself and the prophets who came after him and Jesus the Nazarene, yes and Paul also, who surpassed all the magicians and charlatans of every place and every time, assert that [Yahweh] is the god of Israel alone and of Judaea, and that the Jews are his chosen people.

Though in Paul’s case this is strange. For according to circumstances he keeps changing his views about god, as the polypus changes its colours to match the rocks, and now he insists that the Jews alone are god’s portion, and then again, when he is trying to persuade the Hellenes to take sides with him, he says: “Do not think that he is the god of Jews only, but also of Gentiles: yea of Gentiles also.”

Now of the dissimilarity of language Moses has given a wholly fabulous explanation. For he said that the sons of men came together intending to build a city, and a great tower therein, but that god said that he must go down and confound their languages.

And then you demand that we should believe this account, while you yourselves disbelieve Homer’s narrative of the Aloadae, namely that they planned to set three mountains one on another, “that so the heavens might be scaled.” For my part I say that this tale is almost as fabulous as the other. But if you accept the former, why in the name of the Gods do you discredit Homer’s fable?

For I suppose that to men so ignorant as you I must say nothing about the fact that, even if all men throughout the inhabited world ever employ one speech and one language, they will not be able to build a tower that will reach to the heavens, even though they should turn the whole earth into bricks. For such a tower will need countless bricks each one as large as the whole earth, if they are to succeed in reaching to the orbit of the moon.

Why do we vainly trouble ourselves about and worship one [the god of the Jews] who takes no thought for us? For is it fitting that he who cared nothing for our lives, our characters, our manners, our good government, our political constitution, should still claim to receive honour at our hands?

Certainly not. You see to what an absurdity your doctrine comes. For of all the blessings that we behold in the life of man, those that relate to the soul come first, and those that relate to the body are secondary. If, therefore, he paid no heed to our spiritual blessings, neither took thought for our physical conditions, and moreover, did not send to us teachers or lawgivers as he did for the Hebrews, such as Moses and the prophets who followed him, for what shall we properly feel gratitude to him?

For you would be worshipping one god instead of many, not a man, or rather many wretched men [the Hebrew people in the Bible]. And though you would be following a law that is harsh and stern and contains much that is savage and barbarous, instead of our mild and humane laws, and would in other respects be inferior to us, yet you would be more holy and purer than now in your forms of worship.

But now it has come to pass that like leeches you have sucked the worst blood from that [Jewish] source and left the purer. Yet Jesus, who won over the least worthy of you, has been known by name for but little more than three hundred years: and during his lifetime he accomplished nothing worth hearing of, unless anyone thinks that to heal crooked and blind men and to exorcise those who were possessed by evil demons in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany can be classed as a mighty achievement.

As for purity of life you do not know whether he so much as mentioned it; but you emulate the rages and the bitterness of the Jews, overturning temples and altars, and you slaughtered not only those of us who remained true to the teachings of their fathers, but also men who were as much astray as yourselves, “heretics,” because they did not wail over the corpse [the dead Jesus] in the same fashion as yourselves.

But these are rather your own doings; for nowhere did either Jesus or Paul hand down to you such commands. The reason for this is that they never even hoped that you would one day attain to such power as you have.

Why were you so ungrateful to our Gods as to desert them for the Jews?

But if this that I assert is the truth, point out to me among the Hebrews a single general like Alexander or Caesar! You have no such man. Further, as regards the constitution of the state and the fashion of the law-courts, the administration of cities and the excellence of the laws, progress in learning and the cultivation of the liberal arts, were not all these things in a miserable and barbarous state among the Hebrews? What kind of healing art has ever appeared among the Hebrews, like that of Hippocrates among the Hellenes, and of certain other schools that came after him?

Consider therefore whether we are not superior to you in every single one of these things, I mean in the arts and in wisdom and intelligence; and this is true, whether you consider the useful arts or the imitative arts whose end is beauty, such as the statuary’s art, painting, or household management, and the art of healing derived from Asclepius.

For if any man should wish to examine into the truth concerning you, he will find that your impiety is compounded of the rashness of the Jews and the indifference and vulgarity of the Gentiles. Nay, it is from the new-fangled teaching of the Hebrews that you have seized upon this blasphemy of the Gods who are honoured among us; but the reverence for every higher nature, characteristic of our religious worship, combined with the love of the traditions of our forefathers, you have cast off.

And let us begin with the teaching of Moses, who himself also, as they claim, foretold the birth of Jesus that was to be. For the words “A prophet shall the lord your god raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; to him shall ye hearken,” were certainly not said of the son of Mary. And the words The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a leader from his loins,” were most certainly not said of the son of Mary, but of the royal house of David, which, you observe, came to an end with King Zedekiah. And certainly the Scripture can be interpreted in two ways when it says “until there comes what is reserved for him,” but you have wrongly interpreted it “until he comes for whom it is reserved.”

It is very clear that not one of these sayings relates to Jesus; for he is not even from Judah. How could he be when according to you he was not born of Joseph but of the holy spirit? For though in your genealogies you trace Joseph back to Judah, you could not invent even this plausibly. For Matthew and Luke are refuted by the fact that they disagree concerning his genealogy.

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, John, I say, was the first to venture to call Jesus god.

However this evil doctrine did originate with John; but who could detest as they deserve all those doctrines that you have invented as a sequel, while you keep adding many corpses newly dead [the martyrs] to the corpse of long ago?