ARISTOTLE TO AUGUSTINE heaven and earth and all in them The Jews were God’s chosen people, uniquely privileged by their possession of the divine law revealed to Moses Like Heraclitus and other Greek and Jewish thinkers, Jesus predicted that there would be a divine judgement on the world, amid cosmic catastrophe Unlike the Stoics, who placed the cosmic denouement in the indeWnite and distant future, Jesus saw it as an imminent event, in which he would himself play a crucial role as the Messiah Around the time of Jesus’ cruciWxion (c ad 30) Jewish ideas were gaining a hearing in Rome Since the Hebrew Scriptures had been translated into Greek in Alexandria in the time of the Wrst Ptolemys, there had been a substantial Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora In the Wrst century ad the outstanding representative of Hellenistic Jewish culture was Philo, who led a delegation to the emperor Caligula in 40 to protest against the persecution of the Jews in Alexandria and the imposition of emperorworship He wrote a life of Moses and a series of commentaries on the Pentateuch designed to make the Hebrew Scriptures intelligible and palatable to those educated in Greek culture In its early days Christianity spread through the empire via the Greekspeaking diaspora, but it soon came into contact with Gentile philosophy St Paul, preaching the gospel in Athens, held a debate with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, and the sermon against idolatry placed in his mouth in the Acts of the Apostles is skilfully crafted, and shows an awareness of matters at issue between the philosophical sects Taking his cue from the altar of the unknown God, Paul undertook to show the philosophers the god whom they worshipped in ignorance [God] is not far from every one of us For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his oVspring Forasmuch then as we are the oVspring of God we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stone, graven by art and man’s device (Acts 17: 27–9) The ‘poet’ Paul quoted was Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoa Later legend imagined Paul in philosophical discourse with the Stoic philosopher Seneca The story was no doubt untrue, but it was not wholly fanciful Paul once appeared in court before Seneca’s brother Gallio, and he had friends in the palace of Seneca’s master Nero 105