82. Origin and Character of Graeco-Judaic Phllosophy. -- Of all the oriental peoples whom Alexander's conquests brought into touch with Hellenic civilization, the Jews alone may be said to have assimilated the Grecian philosophy, by harmonizing it with their religious teachings. This assimilation was achieved in Alexandria. Sprung from religion, the philosophy of the Jews has ever been largely dependent on religion. It was at first considered as a means for the thorough study of the Sacred Books, though it soon outstepped this purely exegetic role. The Jews naively endeavoured to find in the Old Testament itself the ideas they had borrowed from the Greeks; and to this end they introduced the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures. Like Neo-Pythagorism, the Graeco-Jewish philosophy looks for an opposition between the Divine and the terrestrial and emphasizes the contact of man with God by revelation. But these theories underwent very characteristic modifications, because they were adapted to Jewish dogmas and to the philosophical conceptions which these dogmas upheld. Considering it as a whole, this movement of ideas was in its tendency Jewish on the religious side, Grecian on the philosophic side.