It may not be inappropriate even here to call atten- tion to the fact that this revealed conception of God was lodged with a people whose home was near the centre of the olden world — the pivot, so to speak, about which the movements of ancient social and religious life revolved.
3. Biof/raphical History. — (1.) The earliest in point of time, as well as one of the most important, of those philosophers whom we shall mention as among the pre- cursors of Neo-Platonism was Philo (commonly sur- named Judseus, to distinguish him from Greek writers of the same name), born about twenty or twenty-flve years before Christ, at Alexandria, in Egypt. He be- longed to an illustrious and, according to some authori- ties, to a priestly family of the Jewish race. Josephus (^Ant. xviii, 8) speaks of him as "a man eminent on all accounts, brother to Alexander the Alabarch, and one not unskilful in philosophy." He was of the sect of the Pharisees, and, by reason of his learning and good re- pute, was placed by his co-religionists, when he was al- ready advanced in life, at the head of an embassy sent A.D. 39-40 to Rome, to repel before Caligula the accu- sations of the Greeks of Alexandria against the loyalty of the Jews of that city, and to pjlead in behalf of his race for the uninterrupted exercise of their religion, and against the desecration of their holy places by set- ting up statues of the emperor therein. His embassy was fruitless so far as its immediate object was con- cerned, for the prejudiced and enraged Caligula refused to see them; but that emperor's death in the following year put a stop to the persecution he had ordered.
Philo's works are mainly commentaries, with sepa- rate titles, on the chief subjects of the Pentateuch. He employed the allegorizing method of interpreting the Scriptures which was in use by the cultivated Jews of his native city, and sought thereby to harmonize the philosophy of religion with that of Plato, Aristotle, and others. His theology, consequently, was a "blending of Platonism and Judaism." He taught that God should
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be worsliippcd as a personal being, yet conceived of as ihc most general of existences : ro yiviKtJraruv ianv o ^tnq {Lef/is A lief/, vol. ii). lie is to ov, the existing; is above all human knowledge and virtue, and even '■ above the idea of the (iood" (KptirTiov rt f] dptrff kuI KouTTiiJV t) tTriaTiii.(i], Kill KptiTTtnv 7) duTu Tciya^uv Kni fiiiTo TO KaXiU', I)<' Muiidi Ojnficio, i, 2); the absolute is reached not by demonstration (Xoyiuv diroCii^tt), but by clear insight (ivnp-/(i^). Divinity and matter arc the tv.'o first principles, existing from eternity : tlie Divinity is '■ being, real, infinite, immutable, incomprehensible to human understanding" (ov) ; matter is " non-existing (n>) or), having received from the Divinity a form and life." In creation. Deity, unwilling to come into contact wiih impure matter, employed as his instruments "in- corporeal potencies or ideas," the highest of which, the creative one (TroiriTiKt)), is in Scripture named God (J.'oc) ; the second, the ruling one QiaaiXiKt)), is called Lord (Kvpio(:) : these potencies are conceived of as inde- pendent personal beings who have ap])earcd to men. "The highest of all the divine forces is the Logos," in which tlie world of ideas finds its place. The Logos is the image of (iod, and the type after which the world is formed, and the manifestation of the Deity, making and ruling the world, and serving as the Mediator be- tween (lod and man. The conception of an incarnate Logos was, however, impossible to Philo, who regarded matter as impure. This conception forms one of the fiimlamoiital doctrines which separate Christianity from the Alexandrian theosophy. Philo refers the doctrine of ideas to Moses (MujiJaiioQ icrri to Ooy/m rorro, ovk j/i()»'), and has given to it a character, arising from his own religious conceptions, which has so transformed the I'latonic theory as to interfere "with the correct histor- ical comprehension of I'latonism even down to our own times" (I'clierwcg). Sliari)e (flist. of Egijpt, ii, 111) thinks lliat tlie writings of Philo "explain how Plato- iiisin became united to Judaism, and again show us the \»nnt of agreement between the New Platonists and the I'latonic Ciiristians."
(2.) Of the Greeks who may be classed among the forerunners in the movement tending to harmonize the doetrines of Plato with the speculations of Oriental i)hi- losiiphy wc can notice only (i) Thrasyllus of Jlendes (died A.D. .30), who arranged all the works of Plato ad- mitted by him to be genuine into nine tetralogies, and combined with Platonism certain mystical Neo-Pytha- gorean speculations founded on numbers and the Chal- diean astrology; and (ii) Plutarch of (Jlu-cronea (born about A.D. 40, and died about A.D. 120), the author of the well-known biographies, lie was a pupil of Ainmonius of Alexandria (not Saccas), and taught at Athens during the reigns of Nero and Vespasian. Plu- tarch's doctrines deviate less from pure Platonism than those taught by the Neo-Platonists proper of the school of Alexandria, yet he is regarded by some as standing " next to Piiilo both in age and character as a represen- tative of Oriental tendencies in Greek philosophy." So far as the (Jrecian systems are concerned, while holding mainly to Plato and controverting the views of the Sto- ics and Ejiicureans, he evinced little regard for the dia- lectics of Platonism, and was a strong believer in the Stoic doctrine of a Providence. In regard to Oriental doetrines, wliile profoundly reverent of the ancient cul- ms of his coinitry, and ojiposed to the introduction of foreign superstitions and Jewish and Syrian rites, he, from the (Jreek jioint of view, sought to reconcile the philosophy of religion with the true interpretation of the worship of Isis and Osiris, He distinguished (as did Philo) between an absolute God whose essence is unknown to us and a creating power or energy which formed the world. Isis corresponds to the latter, and connects the creation with Osiris, the supreme and in- visible one. The world is the offspring of two distinct principles, one inherently good, and the other inherent- ly evil (the dualism of Zoroaster), whose battle-ground is the soul of man. Besides one supreme God, Plutarch