He believed he had a unique love for humanity and had been endowed with unprecedented gifts and insights to increase its felicity. - Paul Johnson

Julian recognized that the strength of the orthodox Church rested to a great extent on the imperial discrimination in its favour. According to Ammianus, he tried to atomize the Church by ending the system:

<blockquote>'He ordered the priests of the different Christian sects, and their supporters to be admitted to the palace, and politely expressed his wish that, their quarrels being over, each might follow his own beliefs without hindrance or fear. He thought that freedom to argue their beliefs would simply deepen their differences, so that he would never be faced by a united common people. He found from experience that no wild beasts are as hostile to men, as Christians are to each other.'</blockquote>

Enlightenment thinkers, both French and German, argued that the objectionable features of Judaism had to be erased before the Jew could be free: Jews who were discriminated against accepted this, and thus often directed their rage more towards the unregenerated Jew than those who persecuted them both.

Jesus was a learned Jew who said that learning was not necessary, who took the spirit and not the letter as the essence of the Law and who thus embraced the unlearned, the ignorant, the despised, the am ha-arez, made them indeed his special constituency.