ythagoreans and religious
philosophers, such as Posidonius, Plutarch of Chaeronea, and especially
Numenius of Apamea.[456] Nevertheless, these cannot be regarded as the
actual Fathers of Neoplatonism; for the philosophic method was still
very imperfect in comparison with the Neoplatonic, their principles were
uncertain, and the authority of Plato was not yet regarded as placed on
an unapproachable height. The Jewish and Christian philosophers of the
first and second centuries stand very much nearer the later Neoplatonism
than Numenius. We would probably see this more clearly if we knew the
development of Christianity in Alexandria in the second century. But,
unfortunately, we have only very meagre fragments to tell us of this.
First and above all, we must mention Philo. This philosopher, who
interpreted the Old Testament religion in terms of Hellenism, had, in
accordance with his idea of revelation, already maintained that the
Divine Original Essence is supra-rational, that only ecstasy leads to
Him, and that the materials for religious and moral knowledge are
contained in the oracles of the Deity. The religious ethic of Philo, a
combination of Stoic, Platonic, Neopythagorean and Old Testament gnomic
wisdom, already bears the marks which we recognise in Neoplatonism. The
acknowledgment that God was exalted above all thought, was a sort of
tribute which Greek philosophy was compelled to pay to the national
religion of Israel, in return for the supremacy which was here granted
to the former. The claim of positive religion to be something more than
an intellectual conception of the universal reason, was thereby
justified. Even religious syncretism is already found in Philo; but it
is something essentially different from the later Neoplatonic, since
Philo regarded the Jewish cult as the only valuable one, and traced back
all elements of truth in the Greeks and Romans to borrowings from the
books of Moses.

The earliest Christian philosophers, especially Justin and Athenagoras,
likewise prepared the way for the speculations of the later
Neoplatonists by their attempts, on the one hand, to connect
Christianity with Stoicism and Platonism, and on the other, to exhibit
it as supra-Platonic. The method by which Justin, in the introduction to
the Dialogue with Trypho, attempts to establish the Christian knowledge
of God, that is, the knowledge of the truth, on Platonism, Scepticism
and "Revelation", strikingly reminds us of the l