 We have little information about Jewish intellectuals in the Hellenistic epoch. One of our main sources is the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides (Barclay 2007), most likely written in Alexandria by a Jew. They show an interesting mix of Jewish and Greek elements: an absence of attacks against polytheism, some popular Stoic themes, and a rather soft affirmation of the monotheistic faith. It is not easy, however, to date these Sentences. The most probable date would be somewhere between 30 BCE and 40 CE, but other dates are possible. Regardless, the Sentences provides an image of what could have been a Jewish openness towards pagan culture if relations were calmer. According to a well-attested tradition, some Jews posited that Plato had taken his inspiration from Moses, an idea that seems to have been popularized by Aristobulus of Paneas, a Jewish philosopher who lived in the first half of second century BCE. Philo, who lived in a more unstable period, employs this kind of assertion with prudence (Spec. 2.164–167). He himself sometimes alludes to his immediate predecessors, which is the topic of Goulet’s book (1987). Goulet’s central thesis is that the primary source of Philo’s allegories was a Jewish commentary that used Stoic methods of interpretation to attempt a wholly rationalist exegesis of the Bible devoid of any notion of transcendence. In fact, there is only one clear allusion to these phusiologoi, i.e., rationalist allegorists. It is likely that in Alexandria there were Jews who attempted to interpret the Bible as the Stoics had interpreted Homer (Niehoff 2011). It is unclear whether their interpretation was integrated into a comprehensive system of rationalism. The allegoric interpretation did not prevent Stoics from defending divination, a practice that was considered absurd by their opponents. One could add that this evolution towards a more religious cast of mind was not a distinctive characteristic of Philo, but rather a hallmark of the Middle-Platonist period as a whole.