Akademik

(c. 20 BC– c. AD 50)

Hellenistic philosopher. Philo was a member of a prominent Jewish family of Alexandria, and inaugurated the Islamic, Jewish, and subsequent Christian traditions of reconciling scripture with the teaching of the classical Greek philosophers. In particular, he believed that the early books of the Old Testament, properly interpreted, were allegories which wrapped essential philosophical truths in their tales of gross human happenings. His guiding principle was that Moses was a great Middle Platonist philosopher.