we do not
discover the germ in Plato, but which are manifestly derived from
the Orientals. Thus God represented under the image of light, and the
principle of evil under that of darkness; the history of the good and
bad angels; paradise and hell, &c., are doctrines of which the origin,
or at least the positive determination, can only be referred to the
Oriental philosophy. Plato supposed matter eternal; the Orientals and
the Jews considered it as a creation of God, who alone was eternal. It
is impossible to explain the philosophy of the Alexandrian school solely
by the blending of the Jewish theology with the Greek philosophy. The
Oriental philosophy, however little it may be known, is recognized at
every instant. Thus, according to the Zend Avesta, it is by the Word
(honover) more ancient than the world, that Ormuzd created the universe.
This word is the logos of Philo, consequently very different from that
of Plato. I have shown that Plato never personified the logos as the
ideal archetype of the world: Philo ventured this personification. The
Deity, according to him, has a double logos; the first is the ideal
archetype of the world, the ideal world, the first-born of the Deity;
the second is the word itself of God, personified under the image of a
being acting to create the sensible world, and to make it like to
the ideal world: it is the second-born of God. Following out his
imaginations, Philo went so far as to personify anew the ideal world,
under the image of a celestial man, the primitive type of man, and the
sensible world under the image of another man less perfect than the
celestial man. Certain notions of the Oriental philosophy may have
given rise to this strange abuse of allegory, which it is sufficient to
relate, to show what alterations Platonism had already undergone, and
what was their source. Philo, moreover, of all the Jews of Alexandria,
is the one whose Platonism is the most pure. It is from this mixture of
Orientalism, Platonism, and Judaism, that Gnosticism arose, which had
produced so many theological and philosophical extravagancies, and in
which Oriental notions evidently predominate.--G.]

[Footnote 14: Joseph. Antiquitat, l. xii. c. 1, 3. Basnage, Hist. des
Juifs, l. vii. c. 7.]

[Footnote 15: For the origin of the Jewish philosophy, see Eusebius,
Praeparat. Evangel. viii. 9, 10. According to Philo, the Therapeutae
studied philosophy; and Brucker has proved (Hist. Philosoph. tom. ii. p.
78