The Jewish Quarterly Review Vol 4 PDF Download

Excerpt from The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 4: 1913 1914 Neo-Platonism was the final outcome of Hellenistic philosophy, and it represents in thought the fusion of peoples which characterized the cosmopolitan Graeco-Roman society. Its most distinguished exponent was Plotinus, a Hellenist Egyptian who taught in the third century C. E., but it flourished for 200 years after his time; and it was from this system that in the early Middle Ages philosophical thought made a fresh start among the Arabs. Jewish thinkers thus played an important part in the revival of metaphysics, and found in the last stage of Greek speculation ideas sympathetic to their religious outlook. It is instructive therefore to trace the Jewish elements which were contained in the original amalgam, and more especially to consider the influence on it of the one considerable Jewish Philosopher of the ancient world. Philo-Judaeus, it is generally recognized, was one of the direct forerunners of neo-Platonism, which may be defined as the development of Plato's system in the light of Eastern religious ideas. He it was who in the first century of the common era made fruitful the religious seed which was latent in the Platonic teaching by combining with it Hebraic conceptions, just as he made fruitful the philosophical ideas implicit in Hebraic monotheism by his mastery of Hellenic philosophy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.