The Arguments of the Emperor Julian Against the Christians — page 35: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

12 THE EMPEROR FULIAN’S ARGUMENTS good and what is depraved? For it is evident that such a one will not avoid some things, I mean evils: and that he will not pursue others, viz. such as are good. But, to crown all, God forbade man to taste of wisdom: than which nothing is more honourable to man. For the know- ledge of good and evil is the proper work of wisdom, as is evident even to the stupid. Hence the serpent was rather the benefactor, and not the destroyer of the human race. And not this only, but in what Moses afterwards adds, he makes God to be envious. For after God saw that man participated of wisdom, lest, said he, he should taste of the tree of life, he expelled him from Paradise, clearly saying, “Behold Adam is become as one of us to know good and evil: and now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: There- fore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden _ of Eden.” Each of these narrations, therefore, unless it is a fable containmg an arcane theory, which I should think is the case, is full of much blasphemy towards divinity. For to be ignorant that the woman, who was to be the assistant of Y Scomresooks,.c©