Jerusalem. The Biography

RESTORED
     
    On 19 July 362, the new emperor, Constantine’s nephew Julian, who was in Antioch on his way to invade Persia, asked a Jewish delegation: ‘Why do you not sacrifice?’
    ‘We aren’t allowed,’ replied the Jews. ‘Restore us to the city, rebuild the Temple and the Altar.’
    ‘I shall endeavour with the utmost zeal’, replied Julian, ‘to set up the Temple of the Most High God.’ The emperor’s astonishing reply was greeted with such Jewish enthusiasm that it was ‘as if the days of their kingdom had already arrived’.
    Julian reversed the Hadrianic and Constantinian persecutions, restored Jerusalem to the Jews, returned their property, revoked the anti-Jewish taxes and granted power of taxation and the title praetorian prefect to their patriarch Hillel. Jews must have poured into Jerusalem from all over the Roman and Persian worlds to celebrate this miracle. They reclaimed the Temple Mount, probably removing the statues of Hadrian and Antoninus to raise a provisional synagogue, perhaps around the stones that the Bordeaux Pilgrim called the House of King Hezekiah.
    Julian was shy, cerebral and awkward. A biased Christian recalled his ‘oddly disjointed neck, hunched and twitching shoulders, wild darting eye, swaying walk, haughty way of breathing down that prominent nose, that nervous and uncontrolled laughter, ever-nodding head and halting speech’. But the bearded, burly emperor was also decisive and single-minded. He restored paganism, favouring the family’s old divine patron, the Sun, encouraging the traditional sacrifices in pagan temples and dismissing Galilean (as he called Christian) teachers in order to diminish their effete, unRoman values.
    Julian had never expected to rule the empire. He was just five when Constantius murdered his father and most of his family; only twosurvived, Gallus and Julian. In 349, Constantius appointed Gallus as Caesar only to behead him, partly for his inept suppression of a Jewish revolt. Yet he needed a Caesar in the West and there was now only one candidate left. Julian, then a student of philosophy in Athens, became Caesar, ruling from Paris. Understandably, he was nervous when the unpredictable emperor summoned him. Inspired by a dream about Zeus, he accepted the imperial crown from his troops. As he marched eastwards, Constantius died and Julian found himself ruler of the entire empire.
    Julian’s rebuilding of the Jewish Temple was not just a mark of his tolerance but a nullification of the Christian claim to have inherited the true Israel, a reversal of the fulfilment of the prophecies of Daniel and Jesus that the Temple would fall, and a sign that he was serious in the overturning of his uncle’s work. It would also win the support of the Babylonian Jews during his planned Persian war. Julian saw no contradiction between Greek paganism and Jewish monotheism, believing that the Greeks worshipped the Jewish ‘Most High God’ as Zeus: Yahweh was not unique to the Jews.
    Julian appointed Alypius, his representative in Britain, to rebuild the Jewish Temple. The Sanhedrin were nervous: was this too good to be true? To reassure them, Julian, setting off for the Persian front, wrote ‘To the Community of Jews’, repeating his promise. In Jerusalem, exhilarated Jews ‘sought out the most skilled artisans, collected materials, cleared the ground and embarked so earnestly on the task that even women carried heaps of earth and brought their necklaces to defray the expenses’. Building materials were stored in the so-called Stables of Solomon. ‘When they had removed the remains of the former building, they cleared the foundation.’
    As the Jews took control of Jerusalem, Julian invaded Persia with 65,000 troops. But on 27 May 363 Jerusalem was struck by an earthquake that somehow ignited the building materials.
    The Christians were delighted by this ‘wonderful phenomenon’, though they may well have helped it along with arson. Alypius could have continued the work, but Julian had crossed the Tigris into Iraq. In tense Jerusalem, Alypius decided to await Julian’s return. The emperor, however, was already in retreat. On 26 June in a confused skirmish near Samara, an Arab soldier (possibly a Christian) stabbed him in the side with a spear. Pierced in the liver, Julian tried to pull it out, shredding the sinews of his hand. Christian writers claimed that he died saying, ‘Vicisti, Galilaee!’, ‘Thou has conquered, Galilean!’. He was