Plato and Moses

The notion that the great sages of pagan antiquity got their ideas from Moses did not die with the Fathers. In the mid-seventeenth century, Theophilus Gale gave a massive defense of the same argument: “the wisest of the Heathens stole their choisest Notions and Comtempations, both Philologic, and Philosophic, as wel Natural and Moral, as Divine, from the sacred Oracles.”

Among the defenders of this view, he cites the usual suspects: Josephus, Origin, Clement, Eusebius, Augustine, but also some lesser figures, both Protestant and Catholic: Steuchus Eugubinus and Ludovicus Vives among the Catholics, and Julius and Josef Scalinger, Serranus, Voffius, Sandford, Heinfius, Bochart, Hammond, Usher, Preston, Owen, and Stillingfleet among Protestants.