The Church Fathers · 362–363; survives in fragments quoted by Cyril of Alexandria
Against the Galileans
Julian the Apostate · 331 – 363
What it is
The only sustained attack on Christianity by a Roman emperor, and by one raised in the faith. Julian argues that the Christians have kept neither Greek philosophy nor the Jewish law but invented a third thing from the worst of both, that Genesis makes God jealous of knowledge, and that Jesus is nowhere foretold as God in the books they cite.
Why it lasted
Written by a man who had read the scriptures as a Christian and turned on them, which gives it a precision no outsider's polemic has. Survives only because Cyril of Alexandria quoted it to answer it, eighty years later.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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