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 attempt to read a Platonic meaning into Jewish doctrine, and certainly the large amount of attention he devoted to exegesis of the Old Testament and to Jewish apologetics would prevent his works from receiving serious attention from non-Jewish readers. Again, although his ideas about monotheism and the nature of God were those to which Platonism was tending, they represent also a Jewish attitude which, starting from a monotheistic standpoint was then, under Hellenistic influence, making towards a supra-sensual idea of God, explaining away the anthropomorphisms of the Old Testament and postulating an emanation, the Hochma or "wisdom" of God as the intermediary in creation and revelation. Undoubtedly Philo, or the Philonic school of Hellenistic Judaism, was responsible for the Logos doctrine which appears in the portions of the New Testament bearing the name of St. John. He had an influence also on Jewish thought as appears in the Targums where the operative emanation which proceeds from the First Cause is no longer the "wisdom" of God but the "Word." He seems to have had no influence at all on the course of Alexandrian philosophy generally.

The tendencies which were at work in Philo were also leavening Greek thought outside Jewish circles and all schools of philosophy show a growing definiteness in their assertion of One God eternal and invariable, as the source and First Cause of the universe. It is a recognition of the principal of uniformity in nature