Philo Judaeus was a first-century Greek scholar whose writings fuse Judaism, Greek philosophy, and allegorical mysticism in a Neoplatonic manner. Philo provided Jewish doctrines with intellectual and cultural respectability by stating them in Greek philosophical terms. He exerted considerable influence on early Christian thought by reading
Plato into the Bible, interpreting the Bible in an allegorical way, and offering his conception of the divine
Logos. Additionally, his works are important to us today for the historical insight they give us; for example, his “On Ascetics” demonstrates that asceticism was common in the deserts of Egypt even before the Christian monks and thus is by no means peculiarly Christian. Philo lived in Alexandria, Egypt, until his death in approximately 50.