 It may be useful at this point to address the question of Pythagorean influence on Philo. In Probus 2, he speaks of the “holiest sect” of the Pythagoreans, a highly admiring expression. In fact, the quite numerous mentions of this “sect” in his treatises are a confirmation of his fascination for it. He admires Pythagorean elitism (Probus 2), and sees in the ban against pronouncing their Master’s name something akin to the Jewish idea of divine ineffability (QG 1.99). He explicitly mentions twice Pythagorean sources: in Aet. 2, where he says, as we have seen, that he read a treatise of Ocellus; and in Opif. 100, there is a complex passage about the number seven, likened by the Pythagoreans to Zeus, the “Director and Ruler of all things”. In QG 2.12, arithmology is explicitly evoked as a Pythagorean science. Nevertheless, his allusions to Pythagorean themes are often vague and merit further analysis. As an example, Philo is often willing to use adjectives by which Pythagoreans characterized the dyad but reluctant to use the word itself. And when he does so, he clarifies in a very personal manner that “the monad is the image of the first Cause” and the dyad that of “the matter passive and indivisible” (Spec. 3.180). Monad and dyad serve Philo as exegetical tools, not actual substitutes for the narrative of Creation in the Bible. It is as if the imperative not to coincide exactly with Greek philosophical doctrine was for Philo an obligation of identity.