Lecture of Professor Christoph Riedweg University of Zurich entitled ‘Anti-Christian Polemics and Pagan Onto-Theology: Julian’s Against the Galilaeans’.

Monday 4 March 2019, at 10.30 am Room 826, 8th floor, Panepistimioupoli, Zografou, Athens

INVITATION TO THE RESEARCH SEMINAR

OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS

When: Monday 4 March 2019, at 10.30 am

Where: Room 826, 8th floor, Panepistimioupoli, Zografou, Athens

The Department of Classics, Faculty of Philology, invites you to the lecture of

Professor Christoph Riedweg

University of Zurich

entitled

‘Anti-Christian Polemics and Pagan Onto-Theology:

Julian’s Against the Galilaeans’.

Professor Dimitrios Karadimas

Head of the Department of Classics

For further information please contact:

Dr Katerina Carvounis  kcarvounis@phil.uoa.gr

Dr Athena Bazou bazouath@phil.uoa.gr

 

Anti-Christian Polemics and Pagan Onto-Theology:

Julian’s Against the Galilaeans

Professor Christoph Riedweg

University of Zurich

ABSTRACT

During his short period of government (361-363 AD), the Emperor Julian, later called ‘Apostata’, undertook a serious attempt at ‘repaganising’ the Roman ‘orbis terrarum’ from a philosophical, esp. Neo-Platonic background. In this context, he wrote an acrimonious pamphlet against the Christians, whom he mockingly called ‘the Galilaeans’. This pamphlet has been preserved only in fragments. In my presentation, I will first try to sketch and analyse the main topics and structures of argumentation as far as they can be retrieved from the existing fragments. Secondly, I will attempt to reconstruct Julian’s own Neo-Platonic Onto-Theology, which will turn out to be of a distinctively Iamblichean stamp.

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