How Much Plato Did Paul or the Rabbis Know?

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Last week’s column ended with the question of why Plato’s 19th-century translator Benjamin Jowett chose to render Socrates’ observation in the Phaedo that we see the world around us “in images” as of our seeing it “through a glass darkly,” a phrase taken from a New Testament epistle of Paul’s.

Was Jowett, as some have thought, seeking to Christianize Plato? One suspects that, on the contrary, he was seeking to Platonize Paul.