itions by which over-zealous Christians sought to maintain the
supremacy and authority of Scripture. The travels of Pythagoras are
altogether mythical, the mere invention of Alexandrian writers, who
believed that all wisdom flowed from the East.[871] That Plato visited
Egypt at all, rests on the single authority of Strabo, who lived at
least four centuries after Plato; there is no trace in his own works of
Egyptian research. His pretended travels in Phoenicia, where he gained
from the Jews a knowledge of the true God, are more unreliable still.
Plato lived in the fourth century before Christ (born B.C. 430), and
there is no good evidence of the existence of a Greek version of the Old
Testament before that of "the Seventy" (Septuagint), made by order of
Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 270. Jeremiah, the prophet of Israel, lived
two centuries before Plato; consequently any personal intercourse
between the two was simply impossible. Greek philosophy was
unquestionably a development of Reason alone.[872]

[Footnote 869: Mr. Watson adopts this hypothesis to account for the
theistic opinions of the ancient philosophers of Greece. See "Institutes
of Theology," vol. i. pp. 26-34.]

[Footnote 870: Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p.
147.]

[Footnote 871: Max Muller, "Science of Language," p. 94.]

[Footnote 872: See on this subject, Ritter's "History of Ancient
Philosophy," vol. i. pp. 147, 148; Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
"Plato," vol. xvii. p. 787; Smith's "Bible Dictionary," article
"Philosophy;" and Thompson's "Laws of Thought," p. 326.]

Some of the ablest Christian scholars and divines of modern times, as
Cudworth, Neander, Trench, Pressense, Merivale, Schaff, after the most
careful and conscientious investigation, have come to this conclusion,
that Greek philosophy fulfilled a preparatory mission for Christianity.
The general conclusions they reached are forcibly presented in the words
of Pressense:

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Greek philosophy
when viewed as a preparation to Christianity. Disinterested pursuit of
truth is always a great and noble task. The imperishable want of the
human mind to go back to first principles, suffices to prove that this
principle is divine. We may abuse speculation; we may turn it into one
of the most powerful dissolvents of moral truths; and the defenders of
positive creeds, alarmed by the attitude too often assumed by
speculation in the p