From Philo's religious perspective, paganism had a mistaken esteem for human fabrications and fancies. He maintained a firm boundary between pagan myth and Jewish scripture, a distinction based on his own intuition and on his appreciation of Plato. His criticism of pagan myth reflects Platonic arguments, which he sharpened with a view to stressing characteristic shortcomings of Hellenistic culture and contrasting them to Judaism. Ironically, Philo appropriated pagan hermeneutics and philosophy in order to maintain and redefine the boundary between Judaism and paganism.
