To him are attributed the two sayings:
"Either Plato Philonizes or Philo Platonizes," and "What is Plato but
the Attic Moses?" Modern scholars have questioned the correctness of
the reference, but be this as it may, it is certain that Numenius used
the Bible as evidence of Platonic doctrines. "We should go back," he
says, in a fragment, "to the actual writings of Plato and call in as
testimony the ideas of the most cultured races; comparing their holy
books and laws we should bring in support the harmonious ideas which
are to be found among the Brahmans and the Jews."[278] Origen tells
us,[279] moreover, that he often introduced excerpts from the books of
Moses and the Prophets, and allegorized them with ingenuity. In one of
the few remains of his writings which have come down to us, we find
him praising the verse in the first chapter of Genesis, "The spirit of
God was upon the waters"; because, as Philo had interpreted
it--following perhaps a rabbinical tradition--water represents the
primal world-stuff. And elsewhere he mentions the efforts of the
Egyptian magicians to frustrate the miracles of Moses, following
Philo's account in his life of the Jewish hero.
The work of Philo helped to spread a knowledge of the Hebrew
Scriptures far and wide and to give them general authority as a
philosophical book; but it did not succeed in spreading the pure
Hebrew monotheism.
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