The Death of the Gods. Julian the Apostate is a novel by Dmitry Merezhkovsky, first published in 1895 as the first instalment of The Christ and Antichrist trilogy. Exploring the theme of the ‘two truths’, those of Christianity and the Paganism, and developing Merezhkovsky’s own religious theory of the Third Testament, the novel made Merezhkovsky a well-known author both in Russia and Western Europe.