Ideenlehre
Philo of Alexandria believed that the doctrines in Plato's dialogues and Jewish scriptures (the "Torah") were so similar that Plato must have borrowed his philosophy from the Jews. Philo held that, before Plato wrote his dialogues, he must have traveled to Egypt and studied the teachings of the Jewish prophet Moses. Philo's wide-ranging, allegorical re-interpretations of Jewish scripture even found evidence that Plato's Theory of Forms was known centuries before Plato. Philo's theories had little immediate effect upon Jewish theologians, who seem never to have mentioned him or his voluminous writings.