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The new method was accordingly found and adopted.
It was an Allegorical Interpretation of every law, precept,
narration and even the names of great personages were
considered to conceal in them a secret idea, which it
attempted to bring to light. This Allegorical Interpretation
soon arrogated to itself the place of the Bible, and was like an
envelope enclosing in itself a system of religious philosophy.

Now the most prominent man who personified this
science was Philon, who was born of a rich Jewish
family in Alexandria in the year 25 before the Christian
era. Well versed in the philosophy of Plato, he wrote his
allegorical work in a pure and harmonious Greek style. He
believed that the doctrines of the Revelation could agree
with the highest human knowledge and wisdom. What
preoccupied his mind most was the phenomenon of the
dealings of God, the pure Spirit, with the earthly beings.
Following Plato’s theory of the “Ideas,” he invented a
series of intermediary ideas called “the emanations of the
Divinity,” which he transformed into angles who unite
God with the world. The fundamental substance of these
ideas, the Logos (Word), constituted the supreme wisdom
created in the world and the highest expression of the
providential action.

TheAlexandrian School followed the triumph of Judaism
over Paganism. “But,” as rightly remarks the Grand-Rabin
Paul Haguenauer in his interesting little book Manuel de
LittératureJuive (p.24). “mais d’elle surgirent, plus tard, des
systémes nuisibles á l’hébraïsme” indeed noxious systems,
not only to Judaism but to Christendom too!

The origin of the doctrine of the Logos is to be traced,
therefore, to the theology of Philon, and the Apostle
John (pbuh) -or the author of the Fourth Gospel, whoever
he be- only dogmatized the theory of the “ideas” which
had sprung up first from the golden brain of Plato. As
remarked in the first article of this series, the Divine Word