The Julian Romance

Marianna Mazzola has a vital edition of the Syriac Julian Romance. Effectively this is the first edition of its full text, as intended by the author.

In this form Mazzola reveals it as an edifying (so, fictional) anti-hagiography of the era from Constantius II to Jovian. The Armenians will be seeing similar from Movses of Chorene, that Malalas of the Kavkaz.

Mazzola finds Julian Romance's historical lore from one "ad AD 640". That is a Syriac MS, extracts thence Palmer had translated as Text #2; Mazzola disputes Palmer's eight sections. What mattered to our topic was that Monophysitic rant Palmer's Rubric 5, here #6: another continuation of Eusebius, starting again in 325, as did the Continuatio [Eusebii Antiochiensis], until year 30 of Heraclius (639/640). Palmer translated the end of "Rubric 5" only as a preface to the maddening "Rubric 6" Mazzola's #7. Rubrics 5 and 6 will note that Shahvaraz was met in July... AG 940, which in our calendar be 629. Rubric 5's text carries on to Heraclius' thirtieth year which is indeed AD ~640.

Julian Romance's milieu would, then, precede such antiJewish tracts as Hoyland documented in Seeing Islam. The genre continued to Anastasius in Greek, except that Julian Romance is Syriac...and earlier. As to Rubric 5, it looks independent of the rest of this MS; composed, I think, in a part of Syria not as of AD 640 / AG 951 yet fallen to the Arabs.