The original entry on Philo Judaeus was written by Harry Wolfson, one of the preeminent scholars of medieval religious philosophy. A major premise of his general work is that Philo's philosophical project stands as the foundation for the religious philosophizing common to the three monotheistic cultures: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Though Philo, a Hellenized Alexandrian Jew of the first century CE, had little impact upon his own people, he had a manifest impact upon the church fathers, and according to Wolfson his "attempt to interpret the scriptural teachings in terms of Greek philosophy" was common philosophical coin until Spinoza, another Jew, in the seventeenth century tore down Philo's harmonizing project.

Philo scholarship was abundant throughout the last few decades of the twentieth century. There originated an annual conference, The Studia Philonica Annual. Much recent work has emphasized the Greek (Alexandrian) milieu that incubated Philo...