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The Egyptian Contribution to Christianity 315 in the land where Basilides and Valentirms had laboured two generations before. When Origen brought over his friend the Valentinian Ambrosius to the Church, Ambrosius will have unlearnt much and he will have adopted a new attitude towards the world-wide fellowship of Christians, but his mind will not have been wholly unprepared for the scheme of Origenistic doctrine with its pre-cosmic fall and its redemption. It now remains to mention another antecedent of the Christ- ian Platonism of Alexandria, even more important than the Christian Gnostics. Alexandria was the metropolis of Greek- speaking Judaism. It is probable that from the first foundation of the city Jews had formed an important element in the popu- lation. According to Josephus, Alexander the Great had him- self assigned to the Jews one of the five city-quarters as their own possession.1 At a later date the Jews held two quarters and overflowed into the other parts of the city as well.2 It was in Alexandria that the great Greek Version of the Jewish Scrip- tures was made to meet the needs of Greek-speaking Jews. This epoch-making work was carried out in stages, the oldest part of the translation, that of the Law, dating back to the first half of the third century before Christ. The language is for the most part quite obviously translation Greek, but it varies consider- ably in literary quality, the Book of Job for instance reaching a higher standard than most of the rest. The work was carried out by and for men who used Greek for practical purposes and the language shows scarcely any tincture of philosophical cul- ture. Philosophical terms, however, make their appearance in later books composed in the Greek language such as the Book of Wisdom and the Fourth Book of the Maccabees. A large and influential Jewry speaking the Greek language and possessing an authoritative version of the Bible in its adopted tongue opened the way for further developments. Of the ut- most importance for the later growth of Alexandrine Christian 1 Josephus, c. Apwn, n. c. iv. 2 Philo, In Flaccum, 55.