A good note of Ast (Platon’s Leben und Schriften, p. 363 seq. ) illustrates the analogy between the Platonic Timæus and the old Greek cosmogonic poems.
[120] Respecting Speusippus and Xenokrates, see Aristotel. De Cœlo, i. 10, pp. 279-280, with Scholia, 487, b. 37, 488, b. 15, 489, a. 10, Brandis. Respecting Eudemus, Krantor, Eudorus, and the majority of the Platonic followers, see Plutarch, De Animæ Procreatione in Timæo, 1012 D, 1013 A, 1015 D, 1017 B, 1028 B.
Plutarch reasons against them; but he recognises their interpretation as the predominant one.
See also the view ascribed to Speusippus and the Pythagoreans by Aristotle (Metaphys. A. 1072, a. 1, b. 30).
[121] Proklus ad Platon. Tim. ii. pp. 138 E, 328, ed. Schn.: ἢ γὰρ μόνος ἢ μάλιστα, Πλάτων τῇ ἀπὸ τοῦ προνοοῦντος αἰτίᾳ κατεχρήσατο, φησὶν ὁ Θεόφραστος, τοῦτό γε καλῶς αὐτῷ μαρτυρῶν. And another reference to Theophrastus, in Proklus, pp. 117, 417 Schn. Also pp. 118 E-F, 279 Schn.: Ἀριστοτέλης μὲν οὖν τὴν ἐν τῷ δημιουργῷ τάξιν οὐκ οἶδεν … ὁ δὲ Πλάτων Ὀρφεῖ συνεπόμενος ἐν τῷ δημιουργῷ πρῶτον εἶναι φησι τὴν τάξιν, καὶ τὸ πρὸ τῶν μερῶν ὅλον. For further coincidences between the Platonic Timæus and Orpheus (ὁ θεολόγος) see Proklus ad Timæ. pp. 233-235, Schn. The passage of Aristotle respecting those who blended mythe and philosophy is remarkable, Metaphys. B. 1000, a. 9-20. Οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ Ἡσίοδον, καὶ πάντες ὅσοι θεολόγοι, μόνον ἐφρόντισαν τοῦ πιθανοῦ τοῦ πρὸς αὐτούς, ἡμῶν δ’ ὠλιγώρησαν … Ἀλλὰ περὶ μὲν τῶν μυθικῶς σοφιζομένων οὐκ ἄξιον μετὰ σπουδῆς σκοπεῖν· παρὰ δὲ τῶν δι’ ἀποδείξεως λεγόντων δεῖ πυνθάνεσθαι διερωτῶντας, &c. About those whom Aristotle calls οἱ μεμιγμένοι (partly mythe, partly philosophy), see Metaphys. N. 1091, b. 8.
Compare, on Aristotle’s non-recognition of the Platonic Demiurgus, a remarkable note of Prantl, ad Aristot. Physica, viii. p. 524, also p. 478, in his edition of that treatise, Leipsic, 1854. Weisse speaks to the same effect in his translation of the Physica of Aristotle, pp. 350-356, Leips. 1829.
Lichtenstädt, in his ingenious work, (Ueber Platon’s Lehren auf dem Gebiete der Natur-Forschung und der Heilkunde, Leipsic, 1826), ranks several of the characteristic tenets of the Timæus as only mythical: the pre-existent Chaos, the divinity of the entire Kosmos, even the metempsychosis, though it is affirmed most directly, — see pp. 24, 46, 48, 86, &c. How much of all this Plato intended as purely mythical, appears to me impossible to determine. I agree with the opinion of Ueberweg, that Plato did not draw any clear line in his own mind between the mythical and the real (Ueber die Platon. Weltseele, pp. 70-71).
Adopted and welcomed by the Alexandrine Jews, as a parallel to the Mosaic Genesis.
But though the idea of a pre-kosmic Demiurgus found little favour among the Grecian schools of philosophy, before the Christian era — it was greatly welcomed among the Hellenising Jews at Alexandria, from Aristobulus (about B. C. 150) down to Philo. It formed the suitable point of conjunction, between Hellenic and Judaic speculation. The marked distinction drawn by Plato between the Demiurgus, and the constructed or generated Kosmos, with its in-dwelling Gods — provided a suitable place for the Supreme God of the Jews, degrading the Pagan Gods in comparison. The Timæus was compared with the book of Genesis, from which it was even affirmed that Plato had copied. He received the denomination of the atticising Moses: Moses writing in Attic Greek.[122] It was thus that the Platonic Timæus became the medium of transition, from the Polytheistic theology which served as philosophy among the early ages of Greece, to the omnipotent Monotheism to which philosophy became subordinated after the Christian era.
[122] The learned work of Gfrörer — Philo und die Jüdisch-Alexandrin. Theosophie — illustrates well this coalescence of Platonism with the Pentateuch in the minds of the Hellenising Jews at Alexandria. “Aristobulus maintained, 150 years earlier than Philo, that not only the oldest Grecian poets, Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, &c., but also the most celebrated thinkers, especially Plato, had acquired all their wisdom from a very old translation of the Pentateuch” (Gfrörer, i. p. 308, also ii. 111-118). The first form of Grecian philosophy which found favour among the Alexandrine Jews was the Platonic:— “since a Jew could not fail to be pleased — besides the magnificent style and high moral tone — with a certain likeness between the Oriental Kosmogonies and the Timæus, the favourite treatise of all Theosophists,” see p. 72. Compare the same work, pp. 78-80-167-184-314.