to Judaism and challenged the authority of the Bible at Alexandria.  A superficial knowledge of the materialistic or rationalistic theories, which were propagated respectively by the Epicurean and Stoic schools, was made the excuse for indifference to the law.  Then as now the advanced Jew would mask his self-indulgence under the guise of a banal philosophy, and jeer easily at archaic myths and tribal laws.  The dominating motive of Philo’s work is to show that the Bible contains for those who will seek it the richest treasures of wisdom, that its ethical teaching is more ideal and yet more real than that which hundreds of sophists poured forth daily in the lecture-theatres[106] to the gaping dilettanti of learning, and lastly that the cultured Jew may search out knowledge and truth to their depths, and find them expressed in his holy books and in his religious beliefs and practices.  Philo frequently introduces into his philosophical interpretation a polemic against the disintegrating and demoralizing forces which were at work in the Alexandria of his day.  His commentary therefore is a strange medley, compounded of idealistic speculation, theology, homiletics, moral denunciation, and polemical rhetoric.  The idea, which is not uncommon, that Philo represents the extreme Hellenic development of Judaism, and that he gathered into his writings the opinions of all Greek schools to the ruin of his Jewish individuality, is utterly erroneous.  In fact, he chooses out only the valuable parts of Greek thought, which could enter into a true harmony with the Hebraic spirit; and he not only rejects, but he attacks unsparingly those elements which were antagonistic to holiness and righteousness.  With the enthusiasm of a Maccabee, if with other weapons, he fought against the bastard culture, which meant self-indulgence and the excessive attention to the body, the idol-worship, the degraded ideas of the Divine power, and the disregard of truth and justice, that were current in the pagan society about him.  The seeking after sensual pleasure and luxury was the most glaring evil of his city—­as the Talmud says,[107] of ten parts of lust nine were given to Alexandria—­and with every variety of denunciation he returns again and again to the charge.  Epicureanism is detestable not only for its low idea of human life, but for its godless conception of the universe.  Its theory that the world was a fortuitous concourse of atoms, which was governed by blind chance, and that the gods lived apart in complete indifference to men—­this was to Philo utter atheism, and as such the greatest of sins.  He attacked paganism not only in its crude form of idolatry,[108] but in its more seductive disguise of a pretentious philosophy.  Always and entirely he was the champion of monotheism.