Description

First published in 363 AD., this is possibly the most censored book in history. Christian Church Father Cyril of Alexandria called it the most dangerous book ever written and it was burned by official edict of the Christian emperor Justinian in 592 AD.

When its author, Julian the Apostate (Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus, Emperor of Rome 361--363 A.D.)took up the throne, he reversed the laws making Christianity the Empire's official religion and produced this work refuting the major principles of that religion.

Using logic and satire, Julian pointed out the Hebrew origins of the religion, its inherent contradictions and its inversion of classical Hellenic and Roman thought patterns.

As a result, he was given the title "Apostate" (from the Greek apostasia, the formal renunciation of a religion) by Christian historians.

The book was suppressed after Julian's death in battle the same year it was published, and the last copies were burned by order of Justinian two hundred years later. What remains of Julian's work--captured in these pages--has been reconstructed out of Churchmen's attempts to refute the last pagan emperor of Rome.

It is, I think, expedient to set forth to all mankind the reasons by which I was convinced that the fabrication of the Galilaeans is a fiction of men composed by wickedness. For they have not accepted a single admirable or important doctrine of those that are held either by us Hellenes or by the Hebrews who derived them from Moses; but from both religions they have gathered what has been engrafted like powers of evil, as it were, on these nations--atheism from the Jewish levity, and a sordid and slovenly way of living from our indolence and vulgarity; and they desire that this should be called the noblest worship of the gods.-- Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus, Emperor of Rome 361--363 A.D.