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Against the Galilaeans, meaning Christians, was a Greek polemical essay written by the Roman Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus, commonly known as Julian the Apostate, during his short reign (361-363). Despite having been originally written in Greek, it is better known under its Latin name, probably due to its extensive reference in the polemical response Contra Julianum by Cyril of Alexandria.As emperor, Julian had tried to stop the growing influence of Christianity in the Roman Empire, and had encouraged support for the original pagan imperial cults and ethnic religions of the Empire. In this essay Julian's described what he considered to be the mistakes and dangers of the Christian faith, and he attempted to throw an unflattering light on ongoing disputes inside the Christian Church. Julian portrayed Christians as apostates from Judaism, which the Emperor considered to be a very old and established religion that should be fully accepted. After Julian's death in battle in 363, the essay was anathematized, and even the text was lost. We only know of Julian's arguments second-hand, through texts written by Christian authors who sought to refute Julian.Julian first criticizes the practice of the Galileans of denying the existence of the gods, and their practice, taken from the Greeks, of being lazy and superstitious. Julian claims that men inherently know of the existence of God without being taught of it and that all men have an inherent belief that the gods reside in the heavens and observe what occurs in the world. Further, all men, from looking at the stable nature of the heavenly bodies, have come to believe that the gods are eternal and unchanging.Julian goes on to discuss the creation myths of the Greeks and the Jews, citing the account of the Book of Genesis. He ridicules the idea of literally interpreting the Jewish account, claiming that it is not only logically impossible, he asks how the serpent was able to speak a human language but that is also blasphemo