Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Schmuel <schmuel AT nyc.rr.com>]

Hi b-hebrew,

George Athas wrote:
>Hi Joel! Just a suggestion: Philo is very interested in Plato, and seems to 
>find Plato all through the Torah. I know the connection you're looking for 
>is the other way around (Hebrew Bible to Plato), but research into Philo 
>might turn up something regarding the other way, too.

Schmuel
I had the same thought and skimmed the entries from "The Works of Philo".  
Didn't find anything yet.  However I am quite sure I remember hearing the 
theory coming through Philo that the Greeks had learned from the Hebrews (and 
by implication their scriptures).  

Now.. to find a quote.
And then, if found, we have to evaluate :-)

Wait.. google to the rescue.

Here is the Stromata..Clement of Alexandria.  At least in the ballpark.

http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-02/anf02-57.htm
Of all these, by far the oldest is the Jewish race; and that their philosophy 
committed to writing has the precedence of philosophy among the Greeks, the 
Pythagorean Philo shows at large; and, besides him, Aristobulus the 
Peripatetic, and several others, not to waste time, in going over them by 
name. Very clearly the author Megasthenes, the contemporary of Seleucus 
Nicanor, writes as follows in the third of his books, On Indian Affairs: "All 
that was said about nature by the ancients is said also by those who 
philosophise beyond Greece: some things by the Brahmins among the Indians, 
and others by those called Jews in Syria. 

http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-02/anf02-57.htm#P5515_1675255
"Ye that thirst, go to the waters," says Esaias, And "drink water from thine 
own vessels," Solomon exhorts. Accordingly in "The Laws," the philosopher who 
learned from the Hebrews, Plato, commands husbandmen not to irrigate or take 
water from others, until they have first dug down in their own ground to what 
is called the virgin soil, and found it dry 

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic