Antichrists of the fourth century? Apocalyptic responses to crisis in Cyril of Jerusalem's Catechetical Homily 15

Jerusalem played a key role in apocalyptic expectations for both Christians and Jews in the mid-fourth century. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Homily 15 dealt with these expectations in the context of an earthquake that threatened to destroy the city. By comparing this homily with contemporary apocalyptic texts of other genres, we can see how scriptures were being reinterpreted to cope with the transition to a newly Christian empire and other changing circumstances for eastern Roman citizens and Jews in the turbulent mid-fourth century. I look at the way Greek New Testament terms were reframed to deal with various crises of religion for Christians in Jerusalem: first the Roman imperial persecutors and Jews, then heterodox Christianity, and finally the rise of a false Christ or agent of Satan, in the person of Emperor Julian (361–3).